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A Russian opposition politician who has twice survived being poisoned has called on Australia's parliament to pass a Magnitsky Act to punish corrupt oligarchs propping up the regime of Vladimir Putin.
After being poisoned in 2015, Vladimir Kara-Murza was in a coma for close to a month and had to learn how to walk again. Then he was poisoned again last year in Moscow.
Each time he was given only a 5 per cent chance of surviving but, remarkably, he pulled through.
Mr Kara-Murza said the Russian state was trying to kill him in response to his work campaigning for democracy and the introduction of Magnitsky Acts — laws that punish Russian human rights violators through travel bans and preventing them from investing in Western nations.
Speaking to the ABC after testifying at a hearing at Westminster on human rights abuses in Russia, the vice-chairman of Open Russia said it was time Western nations followed the lead of the US and Canada and brought in Magnitsky Acts.
"These are targeted sanctions against those involved in corruption and human rights abuses," Mr Kara-Murza said.
"This is a pro-Russian law and I hope that more countries including Australia pass these pro-Russian laws."
Mr Kara-Murza said Magnitsky Acts targeted what he saw as the hypocrisy at the heart of the Putin regime.
"The same people who violate and attack and undermine the most basic norms of democracy in Russia then enjoy the privileges and protections of democracy in the West" he said.
"It is in the West where they open bank accounts, educate their children, buy real estate and yachts and luxury cars and all the rest of it, and the Magnitsky law puts a stop to that.
"It also puts a stop to the enabling by Western countries of human rights abuses and corruption in Russia because when Western countries open their doors and provide a welcome to the perpetrators of corruption and humans rights abuses in Russia, then that means they are enabling corruption and human rights abuses in Russia."
'High mortality rate' among those who cross Putin's regime
The 36-year-old said he was not surprised when he heard that former Russian agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia had been poisoned with a nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury last month.
"We know that for the last two decades almost, there's been a strangely high mortality rate among the people who have in one way or the other crossed the path of the Putin regime — political opposition leaders, opposition activists, independent journalists, anti-corruption campaigners, former security services officers viewed as traitors by the Kremlin, as in this case.
"We know that it's a dangerous vocation to be acting in anyway against the interests of the Kremlin regime."
The suspicious deaths of Putin critics on British soil has become a problem for British Prime Minister Theresa May's Government.
A Buzzfeed expose which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize suggested there were as many as 14 suspicious deaths in the UK in recent years that could have links to Russia.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd has now asked police and intelligence services to report back to her about the investigations into these suspicious deaths.
Mr Kara-Murza said not enough had been done to prevent further attacks.
"I think one of the reasons these things keep happening, including in the UK, is because frankly speaking there was such a weak reaction," he said.
"In the case of Alexander Litvinenko, it took his widow Marina Litvinenko almost nine years to go through the entire British judicial system to basically force the British Government to even have an inquiry on this issue. They didn't want to do anything."
Concerns over 'dirty money'
In 2013, Mrs May was one of the main people resisting holding a public inquiry into the death of the former Russian agent who had been advising British security services, publishing articles critical of the Putin regime and providing information to Spanish authorities about links between the Russian mafia and the Russian Government.
At the time, Mrs May was home secretary. In a letter to coroner Sir Robert Owen, she admitted that what she called "international relations" were at least part of the reason why the government did not want to hold an inquiry.
The High Court later overruled Mrs May, describing her position as "irrational and legally erroneous".
The subsequent inquiry found that Litvinenko was murdered in London by two Russian agents — Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun — with radioactive poisoning, and that it was "probably" ordered by Mr Putin.
The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee recently heard evidence of the staggering scale of money laundering going on in the UK.
The National Crime Agency estimates that around 100 billion pounds of dirty money comes in to Britain each year. While it is hard to pin down exact figures, there are concerns that a large amount of that money comes from Russia.
Luke Harding, the author of Mafia State and a book on the Litvinenko murder, A Very Expensive Poison, told the Foreign Affairs Committee there was a link between the poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury and the flow of dirty money into Britain.
"There was an element of calculation that Russian money was a price worth paying after the murder in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko," he said.
"Maybe this seems indelicate, but we know that the government in about 2010 took the view that international relations were perhaps more important than responding strongly to what happened in the Litvinenko case.
"I think in part our failure to act then on Russian money and by stronger diplomatic sanctions explains what happened in Salisbury."
If the British Government wants to change its position, it will soon get a chance.
Next week, a coalition of Tory, Labour and other opposition MPs are hoping to bring on a debate that would make it harder for money launderers to buy properties in London using shell companies.
Beyond that debate, the government can soon expect further pressure from MPs who want Britain to follow the lead of the US and Canada and bring in a Magnitsky Act that will send a strong message to Russia.
Mr Kara-Murza is hoping that Mrs May is listening.
"I'm hoping that the UK will join the growing ranks of countries that now include Canada and the US and pass a fully-fledged Magnitsky law which will finally close the doors of the UK and British financial system to those who perpetrate corruption and human rights abuses in Russia," he said.
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, world-politics, government-and-politics, russian-federation, united-kingdom
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