By Andrei Skvarsky.
Dutch Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal has called for European Union-wide sanctions on Russian officials blamed for the death of Hermitage Capital lawyer Sergei Magnitsky if Russia fails to take criminal action against them.
“Depending on the outcomes of the Russian judicial investigation, I intend to raise the possibility of further action at EU level,” a Hermitage statement quoted Rosenthal as saying in a letter to the Dutch parliament.
The Dutch legislature in July 2011 unanimously passed a resolution calling for the Netherlands to join European Parliament and US Congress initiatives to slap visa and economic sanctions on 60 Russian officials accused of torturing Magnitsky to death and of stealing $230m from the state in an alleged scam the lawyer had tried to expose.
Magnitsky, arrested on a tax evasion charge, died of a grave illness in a Moscow remand prison in 2009. Russian authorities admitted this summer that he had been denied essential medical care.
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