Protecting Americans Abroad: Why the Magnitsky Act Matters

We know it works because the bad guys hate it.

by William McGurn
August 10, 2018

When the Wicked Witch meets Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz,” she demands the ruby red slippers the Kansas farm girl is wearing.

The Good Witch advises Dorothy otherwise. “Their magic must be very powerful or she wouldn’t want them so badly,” she says.

The Magnitsky Act is something like those ruby red slippers.

Originally passed by Congress in 2012 and named for the Russian accountant found dead in his jail cell after exposing fraud involving Russian officials, it authorized the president to block travel visas and freeze bank accounts of individual Russians deemed guilty of human-rights abuses.

In 2016 it was expanded so it could be applied to other human-rights abusers anywhere in the world. We know its power the same way we know about the power of Dorothy’s red slippers: The bad guys obsess about it.

Plainly Vladimir Putin hates it. His representatives bring it up to American officials or would-be American officials any chance they get. This includes the inf…