In response to the high-profile posthumous trial of Sergei Magnitsky, the Russian lawyer who died in jail after exposing a massive tax fraud in the Kremlin, the United States Senate published on Friday a list of 18 Russians who would be forbidden to enter the United States, White House spokesman Jay Carney announced in a press conference.
The list is the result of the Magnitsky Act, signed into law last December, which bars the Russian officials from entering the United States as punishment for their implication in human rights abuses surrounding the Magnitsky case.
Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer who was imprisoned after blowing the whistle on Russian officials who defrauded the government of $230 million in tax proceeds and laundered it through a web of phantom companies and offshore accounts. Magnitsky was arrested and charged with the very fraud he uncovered. For four months prior to his death in jail in 2009, Magnistky was held at Butyrka detention center where he was denied treatment for pancreatitis and gallstones.
The complete Magnitsky blacklist exceeds the 18 members revealed on Friday, but only those names that will be made public.
Authorities in Moscow promptly retaliated on Saturday with their own list of 18 Americans who will be banned from entering Russia. Some were chosen for their proximity to "the legalization and application of torture" by the United States government, according to a Reuters report.
Neither list included senior political or diplomatic figures.