The United States has sanctioned four more alleged Russian rights abusers, including two law enforcement officials linked to the case of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky.
The U.S. Treasury Department said on December 29 that senior Russian prosecutor Viktor Grin and Andrei Strizhov, a senior investigator with Russia’s top investigative agency, have been sanctioned under the so-called “Magnitsky Act,” a 2012 U.S. law punishing Russians accused of human rights abuses.
In 2011, Grin ordered an investigation against Magnitsky, who died in a Moscow jail three years earlier after exposing a massive tax fraud. Magnitsky was convicted posthumously by a Russian court last year.
Magnitsky’s supporters accuse Strizhov of helping to cover up the circumstances of the whistleblower’s death.
The Treasury Department said two officials from Russia’s restive republic of Chechnya were also sanctioned under the law.