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The Bill would enable the refusal of entry or leave to remain in the UK to a non-UK or non-EEA national who is “known to be, or to have been, involved in gross human rights abuses”. The Bill defines conduct constituting a gross human rights abuse as that in which “the three conditions referred to in section 241A of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 (gross human rights abuse or violation) are met”. Section 241A of the Proceeds of Crime Act was the result of an amendment to the Criminal Finances Act 2017. This amendment was referred to as the ‘Magnitsky Amendment’, after the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky who died in a Moscow prison in 2009. He had uncovered an alleged $230 million (US dollar) theft from the state budget by Russian tax officials. There has subsequently been a number of questions in Parliament from MPs of various parties asking the Government what action it was taking to impose not only the freezing of property and assets of alleged perpetrators in light of the Magnitsky case, but reforms to the immigration rules. 

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