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WASHINGTON (AP) — Supporters of a bill that would make international sports doping a crime argued Wednesday that the legislation would deter scandals like Russian state-sponsored drug use at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Yulia Stepanova, a Russian former track athlete who became a whistleblower about the drug program, said at a congressional hearing that ending doping in her country would have to “start from the top” — with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself. The bill was named for Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the Russian lab director who exposed the cheating in Sochi. Rodchenkov has said the doping stemmed from Putin’s command to his sports ministry to “win at any cost.” Several European countries have passed similar legislation. The bill being considered in the House is stronger because it would allow the United States to police doping that occurs outside its borders. U.S. and foreign athletes would be subject to the law if competing in an event that includes four or more U.S. athletes and athletes from three or more countries. The bill has bipartisan support but has yet to be introduced in the Senate, and its prospects for approval are unclear. The hearing occurred while, in the same Senate office building, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was questioned by lawmakers who accused President Donald Trump of being too soft on Putin. While the president has made conflicting claims about the extent of Russian interference in the 2016 election, the hearing on doping turned attention back to other ways in which Putin’s actions have brought scorn from the international community. In written testimony, Rodchenkov and Stepanova said that those who participated in the doping program were essentially following orders, fearing that to refuse or speak out would mean the end of their careers, or possibly even lead to their deaths. “You will lose your job, your career and even fear for the safety of you and your family,” Stepanova said. “You will be called a liar and a traitor if you stand up against the system that unfortunately still exists in Russia today.” Asked by Democratic Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas how to end Russian doping, Stepanova said, “It should start from the top because if it started from the top, they ... would stop doping.” “If Mr. Putin had a different attitude and expressed that, it would stop?” Jackson Lee asked. “Yes, I think so,” Stepanova said. Rodchenkov did not attend the hearing, but his attorney, Jim Walden, said he and his client believe Putin needs to be held accountable. “There are some in our government who refuse to confront Russia for its abject criminality,” Walden said. “Doping fraud is one more example of the gangster state that Vladimir Putin has created in Russia.” The hearing also featured emotional testimony from Katie Uhlaender, who finished fourth in skeleton — by four hundredths of a second — in Sochi to Elena Nikitina of Russia. Nikitina’s bronze medal was later stripped for suspected doping before the Court of Arbitration for Sport restored it on the eve of the Pyeongchang Olympics. Uhlaender feels that she was unfairly denied a medal twice, although it’s still possible she could prevail on appeal. “My moment was stolen,” Uhlaender said through tears. “A line was crossed. It erased the meaning of sport and the Olympics as I knew it.” Travis Tygart, CEO of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, said he would continue trying to persuade Congress to address international doping and called on the corporations that sponsor the Olympics to join the effort. “If the governments of the world aren’t going to step up and do something about it, where are the corporations? They’re profiting off the backs of these athletes,” Tygart said. “I think it all it would take would be a couple phone calls from them to get this situation fixed and cleaned up. But where are they? They’re sitting there counting the money.”

A Maine native is on the list of U.S. officials that Russian President Vladimir Putin says he’d like his prosecutors to interrogate. Old Town native and former U.S. House committee staffer Kyle Parker helped draft sanctions against Russians suspected of human rights violations. Parker tweeted Tuesday he was “honored” to make Putin’s list. Congress passed 2012 sanctions following Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s death in prison after exposing a tax fraud scheme involving Russian officials. The White House Thursday said Trump “disagrees” with Putin’s offer to allow U.S. questioning of 12 Russians who have been indicted for election interference. Putin in exchange wanted Russian interviews with the former U.S. ambassador to Russia and other Americans the Kremlin accuses of unspecified crimes. Trump initially had described the idea as an “incredible offer.”

Standing by President Trump’s side in Helsinki for their first bilateral summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin made what Trump described as an “incredible” offer: He would help U.S. investigators gain access to Russian intelligence officers indicted for the 2016 election hacking, on one small condition. “We would expect that the Americans would reciprocate and they would question [U.S.] officials … who have something to do with illegal actions on the territory of Russia,” Putin said, producing the name to indicate what actions he had in mind: “Mr. Browder.” Bill Browder, an American-born financier, came to Russia in the 1990s. The grandson of a former general secretary of the Communist Party USA, Browder by his own admission wanted to become “the biggest capitalist in Russia.” He succeeded and was for a decade the country’s largest portfolio foreign investor. Whatever the sins of Russia’s freewheeling capitalism, Browder’s real crime in the eyes of the Kremlin came later, after he had been expelled from Russia in 2005. In 2008, his Moscow lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a tax scam involving government officials that defrauded Russian taxpayers of $230 million. He did what any law-abiding citizen would, reporting the crime to the relevant authorities. In return, he was arrested and held in detention without trial for almost a year. He was beaten and died on Nov. 16, 2009, at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison under mysterious circumstances. Officials involved in his case received awards and promotions. In a chilling act worthy of Kafka, the only trial held in the Magnitsky case was a posthumous sentencing of himself — the only trial against a dead man in the history of Russia. It was then that Browder turned from investment to full-time advocacy, traveling the world to persuade one Western parliament after another to pass a measure that was as groundbreaking as it would appear obvious: a law, commemoratively named the Magnitsky Act, that bars individuals (from Russia and elsewhere) who are complicit in human rights abuses and corruption from traveling to the West, owning assets in the West and using the financial system of the West. Boris Nemtsov, then Russia’s opposition leader (who played a key role in convincing Congress to pass the law in 2012), called the Magnitsky Act “the most pro-Russian law in the history of any foreign Parliament.” It was the smartest approach to sanctions. It avoided the mistake of targeting Russian citizens at large for the actions of a small corrupt clique in the Kremlin and placed responsibility directly where it is due. It was also the most effective approach. The people who are in charge of Russia today like to pose as patriots, but in reality, they care little about the country. They view it merely as a looting ground, where they can amass personal fortunes at the expense of Russian taxpayers and then transfer those fortunes to the West. In one of his anti-corruption reports, Nemtsov detailed the unexplained riches attained by Putin’s personal friends such as Gennady Timchenko, Yuri Kovalchuk and the Rotenberg brothers, noting that they are likely “no more that the nominal owners … and the real ultimate beneficiary is Putin himself.” Similar suspicions were voiced after the publication of the 2016 Panama Papers, which showed a $2 billion offshore trail leading to another close Putin friend, cellist Sergei Roldugin. Some of the funds in his accounts were linked with money from the tax fraud scheme uncovered by Magnitsky. Volumes of research, hours of expert testimony and countless policy recommendations have been dedicated to finding effective Western approaches to Putin’s regime. The clearest and the most convincing answer was provided, time and again, by the Putin regime itself. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin tasked his foreign ministry with trying to stop; it was the Magnitsky Act that was openly tied to the ban on child adoptions; it was the Magnitsky Act that was the subject of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-linked lawyer; it is advocating for the Magnitsky Act that may soon land any Russian citizen in prison. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin named as the biggest threat to his regime as he stood by Trump’s side in Helsinki. After the Trump-Putin meeting, the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office released the names of U.S. citizens it wants to question as supposed associates of Browder. The list leaves no doubt as to the nature of the “crime.” It includes Michael McFaul, senior director for Russia policy at the Obama White House and later U.S. Ambassador in Moscow who oversaw the “compiling of memos to the State Department … on the investigation in the Magnitsky case.” It includes David Kramer, former assistant secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration, who, as president of Freedom House between 2010 and 2014, was one of the most effective advocates for the Magnitsky Act. Perhaps most tellingly, it includes Kyle Parker, now chief of staff at the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, who, as the lead Russia staffer at the commission, wrote the bill that subsequently became the Magnitsky Act. Vladimir Putin has left no doubt: The biggest threat to his regime is the Magnitsky Act, which stops its beneficiaries from doing what has long become their raison d’être — stealing in Russia and spending in the West. It is time for more Western nations to adopt this law — and for the six countries that already have it to implement it with vigor and resolve.

The comments made by Russia President Vladimir Putin targeting William Browder are boosting the hedge-fund manager’s efforts to get more countries to impose sanctions on Russia. Mr. Browder, who was born in the U.S. but is a U.K. citizen, has been a thorn in Russia’s side for nearly a decade; he has spent much of that time crisscrossing the globe exposing Russian corruption and punishing Russian officials who he blamed for the 2009 death of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. Starting with the U.S., Mr. Browder has successfully lobbied seven countries to pass laws invoking Mr. Magnitsky’s name that impose sanctions on Russian human-rights abusers. He said in an interview with Risk & Compliance Journal on Thursday that the comments made by Mr. Putin in Helsinki will “increase the probability” that the eight countries he is working with now — France, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, South Africa and Ukraine — will impose their own measures. The comments by Mr. Putin answer one of the key questions countries ask, which is whether these sanctions will work, he said. “It’s so important to him to not have [the sanctions] that he’s willing to bring it up in his summit with the most powerful man in the free world,” said Mr. Browder, referring to the summit between President Donald Trump and Mr. Putin. The U.S. Magnitsky Act, signed in 2012, targets human-rights abusers in Russia. The U.S. passed another law in 2016, the Global Magnitsky Act, that authorizes sanctions against human rights abusers across the world, as well as those accused of grand corruption. A U.S. Treasury Department spokesman said that Washington has put sanctions on 51 Russian and Russia-related targets under the two laws since their implementation. “Under this administration, Treasury has consistently confronted Russian activities that threaten our institutions, our interests or our allies,” the spokesman said. Lawmakers have approved of the U.S. handling of Russia sanctions targeting human-rights abuse. “The Magnitsky sanctions are clearly making an impact on Putin and his inner circle,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R., Miss.). Mr. Browder praised the U.S. effort, saying the Magnitsky Act sanctions have been used “quite effectively” by both the Obama and Trump administrations. He said the Trump administration has added high-value targets to the Russia-only list, and that the global list is “a rogues gallery” of the corrupt and violent. “There will be huge pressure to add many more names to the list” in the wake of Mr. Putin’s remarks, he said. Mr. Putin mentioned Mr. Browder at a press conference Monday following a summit with Mr. Trump, suggesting that the U.S. could hand over Mr. Browder and other targets of Russian investigations in exchange for Moscow’s help with the U.S. special counsel’s probe. Mr. Trump initially seemed open to the idea, but the White House Thursday turned it down and the U.S. Senate unanimously rejected the Russian president’s gambit. A Russian court sentenced Mr. Browder in absentia last December to nine months in prison after convicting him of deliberate bankruptcy and tax evasion; Mr. Browder has called the trial a farce and maintains his innocence. Mr. Browder, however, is a U.K. citizen and runs Hermitage Capital Management from London. In the interview, Mr. Browder said the U.K. has rejected 12 Russian requests to interrogate or extradite him and that Interpol has rejected six Russian requests for his arrest, citing political motivation. “The world is now seeing firsthand what I’ve been experiencing for five years,” Mr. Browder said. “The level of danger is no greater or no lesser than it was over the last five years.”