Or, the Law of Unintended Consequences. The best of intentions can be detached and used as a cudgel, as AL Monitor reports:
Congress passed the Magnitsky Act in 2012 to punish Russian officials accused of beating to death a whistleblower who publicized government corruption.
A decade later, the law has unwittingly spawned a multimillion-dollar lobbying cottage industry.
The Wikipedia entry for this law is here. The article notes an unusual provision:
But a unique facet of the Magnitsky law and subsequent amendments has created a whole new opening for more creative lobbying. Unlike similar laws blocking sanctioned parties’ US assets and banning travel to the United States, Magnitsky requires that US officials consider information from credible human rights organizations when weighing whether to apply sanctions.
There’s a lot of cockroaches that’ll try to build credible human rights organizations, I’m guessing. But there’s more!
In recent months, lawyers for Kuwaiti private equity firm KGL Investment and its former CEO, Marsha Lazareva, have launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to threaten Kuwait with Magnitsky sanctions if it does not drop embezzlement charges against her.
And it sure sounds like it’s all politics:
Working on the account are big names, including President George H.W. Bush’s son, Neil Bush; former House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif.; former FBI Director Louis Freeh; and ex-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, until she joined Trump’s impeachment team. But the Lazareva camp has also consistently sought to portray her defenders as “human rights activists,” notably working with Washington nonprofit In Defense of Christians and former human rights lawyer Cherie Blair, the wife of ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in its efforts.
Of course, this is the Middle East, a long ways away and has a dubious reputation for its links with such tawdry concepts as truth, honor, and justice; I have no inclination to comment on the quality of accusations against Lazareva or Kuwait.
But there’s certainly a lot of money being pitched into this metaphorical war, all hinging on the contents of an American law. It’s as if we’re exporting our law to the Middle East, isn’t it? Has anyone notified President Trump of this export, and its apparently high valuation? Only partly in jest, I should like to suggest that he put a price on it.
Of course, if you see the law as a proxy for morality – a concept for which I have an exceedingly wary sympathy – then our foreign policy since World War II has essentially been an export of our views on morality, starting with the Geneva Convention; any international lawyers out there who’d like to go into more detail?
