'Something rotten': Putin critics lay into Johnson over Russia report

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'Something rotten': Putin critics lay into Johnson over Russia report

By Latika Bourke
Updated

London: Prominent global Putin critics say British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to suppress a parliamentary report into Russian influence is more evidence that the British political system is rotten when it comes to cracking down on Russian oligarchs.

Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, Magnitsky Act campaigner Bill Browder, US talk show host Meghan McCain and Dr Andrew Foxall discuss Russian interference in the West in London.

Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, Magnitsky Act campaigner Bill Browder, US talk show host Meghan McCain and Dr Andrew Foxall discuss Russian interference in the West in London.

A high-profile panel including anti-corruption campaigner Bill Browder, Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza, US TV commentator Meghan McCain and the globally awarded Ukrainian activist Oleg Sentsov addressed an audience in London at the hawkish think tank The Henry Jackson Society on Thursday.

Kara-Murza said that, weeks after he survived an assassination attempt in early 2016, a British MP berated him, asking why the City of London should jeopardise millions of pounds in investments from Russians because of "hearsay".

"His face turned all red, like my tie here and he started shouting across the table something to the tune of 'how dare you, why should we follow your advice? Why should we do this? Why should we deprive the City of London of millions of pounds in profits over some human rights hearsay?' " Kara-Murza told an astonished, packed room at Millbank Tower.

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He said this attitude meant it was vital that a light was shone on Russian President Vladimir Putin's activities.

The conversation occurred before both the Brexit referendum and US President Donald Trump's election in which US intelligence agencies say Russia interfered.

Kara-Murza said that Putin's greatest export to the West was corruption via oligarchs sinking their money in London and other Western cities. This was only possible where the other side was willing to accept its importation, he said.

Asked by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age about the British Prime Minister's refusal to publish the Intelligence and Security Committee's report into Russian interference, Kara-Murza said that, when someone hides something, it means they have something to hide.

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Under a cloud over this delay on the Russian report: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Under a cloud over this delay on the Russian report: Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson.Credit: AP

"It certainly doesn't look very good that, four weeks before a very important general election in this country, the government would suppress a report on a major issue that has not only political but national security implications for this country too.

"I just hope that a country that always valued its openness and its approach to the freedom of information would actually go and practise what it preaches," he said.

Browder, a campaigner for the implementation of the British-US bipartisan Magnitsky Act, which carries punishments and sanctions for Russian human-rights violators, said it was further evidence the British system was rotten. The act was named after Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky who died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after investigating fraud involving Russian tax officials.

"There's something rotten in the United Kingdom in relation to dealing with Russian criminal behaviour," Browder, a US-born British citizen and one of Russia's most wanted men, said.

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"And I think we all have a view of that today as the Intelligence and Security Committee has a 50-page report that goes into details naming names of people in the British establishment who are taking money from Russians and acting on the interests of Russians in the British political process."

"The fact that we have this report sitting there suppressed is just one more symptom of a deep, entrenched problem in this country, which needs to be fleshed out and solved, soon."

Browder said it was not just the political establishment that was weak and repeated allegations concerning Britain's National Crime Agency (NCA).

"I've been to the National Crime Agency to provide evidence about tens of millions of dollars in illicit Russian money coming into the country in connection with the Magnitsky murder and the National Crime Agency refused to investigate and the person who was in charge of the decision came to me a year later and apologised to me and said 'I'm sorry, I was instructed not to investigate. We thought that there was a case there.' "

The NCA has been contacted for comment.

Johnson refused to release the intelligence committee's report, despite urgings from the committee's chairman, former Conservative attorney-general Dominic Grieve to do so before Parliament was dissolved for the December 12 election.

The report could only be released while the Parliament was constituted but Johnson stared down widespread calls across the Commons for the document's publication, amid reports his chief aide and head of the Vote Leave campaign, Dominic Cummings, was given top-secret security clearance, despite questions over his three years spent in Russia, where it is alleged he formed relationships with key Putin backers.

McCain, daughter of the late former Republican presidential nominee and senator John McCain, said it worried her that Putin's attempts at disrupting liberal democracies was being normalised in the Republican Party, on Fox News and in popular culture.

She cited the example of Baywatch star Pamela Anderson coming on her US ABC show to discuss what she wrongly thought would be her new relationship.

"All she wanted to talk about was Julian Assange and, if you look up the clip, I basically have a meltdown and say 'You're not going to spew propaganda from a cyber terrorist on my show,'" McCain recounted.

"And it showed that [Putin] is brilliant, he is using proxies, not only in media and in the government but also in pop culture, which I find particularly dangerous and disconcerting because I'm sure she has a bunch of fans who are like, 'Well what's wrong with Julian Assange?'"

McCain also pointed to rapper MIA's visit to Belmarsh prison to visit Assange, after which she told Russian television she was "given" the date of November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, to stage a protest outside the British Home Office in support for the Australian-born hacker.

"So for me the fear is it's not just that it's the President which is extremely ...  I don't even know the right words to describe scary on several different levels, but it's also infiltrating generations, there's young Millennials who now think 'What's the problem? What why can't we do business with him?'"

But McCain said the coverage over Russia's role in the US elections had meant some of the public were alive to the threat.

"Putin is committed to spreading propaganda across the West and completely gaslighting Americans and I think there are a lot of people that see that now, which brings me joy."

"But I had hoped that it wouldn't be as partisan as it has become and I worry specifically within the Republican Party how normalised it has become.

"I used to work at Fox News - I have a lot of friends that still work there - but when I see some of the things that are being said about Vladimir Putin on a major news network, it is petrifying."

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