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Duma considers US step over Magnitsky Act non-parliamentary step

“This decision has nothing in common with legitimate procedures and the principles of law,” Irina Yarovaya said

MOSCOW, June 27 (Itar-Tass) — The State Duma considers the approval of the Magnitsky Act by the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations “an illegal and non-parliamentary step”.

“This decision has nothing in common with legitimate procedures and the principles of law,” head of the State Duma Committee for Security and Countering Corruption Irina Yarovaya (United Russia) said on Wednesday.

She believes that this step “tosses a challenge. This is an unreasonable, non-parliamentary and illegal step”. “This decision violates the parity in interstate relations,” the lawmaker added.

For his part, State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee first deputy chairman Andrei Klimov (United Russia) said American senators’ decision run counter the Roman Law when “charges are brought in violence of the presumption of innocence without any proof”.

The Duma lawmaker named this approach as “any medieval barbarism”.

Klimov warned that the adoption of the Magnitsky Act “will not lead to any good”. Speaking about the linkage between the Magnitsky Act and the cancellation of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, the deputy said the life itself had cancelled it because American business would have the negative impact on its use. “During the election campaign in the United States, such ‘stone’ was prepared for Russophobes,” the Duma foreign relations committee first deputy chairman said.

He noted, “One can say all you want about dead persons at places of confinement. But more people die there in America.” The lawmaker said he is sure that the reaction to the death of Sergei Magnitsky was directly linked with influential lobby. “One can speak about democracy by a long stretch of the imagination,” Klimov said.

He did not rule out that the approval of the Magnitsky Act could step up the debates on a draft law, which envisioned sanctions against foreign officials, who infringed upon Russian citizens’ rights abroad.