The United States has placed three people, including former customs official of Kyrgyzstan Raiymbek Matraimov, under Magnitsky sanctions. Radio Liberty reports.
The sanctions fall under the Magnitsky Act, a piece of legislation passed by the United States in 2012 that penalizes individuals responsible for committing human rights violations or acts of significant corruption.
The sanctions include visa restrictions on entering the United States and the blocking of financial assets in U.S. banks.
«Matraimov is designated for being a foreign person who is a current or former government official responsible for or complicit in, or directly or indirectly engaged in, corruption, including the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources, or bribery,» official website of the U.S. Department of Treasury says.
The statement also says that the other two people who have come under the sanctions are citizens of Macau and Liberia.
Joint journalistic investigation by Azattyk, Kloop and OCCRP on smuggling and corruption at Customs caused a wide public outcry.
Raiymbek Matraimov is a defendant in a criminal case on corruption at the Customs Service. In November 2019, he was already summoned for interrogation by the State Committee for National Security.
In October, the national security bodies of Kyrgyzstan began pre-trial proceedings on the fact of corruption at the Customs. It was found out that since the beginning of 2016 to the present the former deputy chairman of the Customs Service Raiymbek Matraimov, other officials of the state service and controlled participants of the foreign economic activity established a corruption scheme on extraction of shadow incomes during customs administration, as a result of which the state budget was damaged on an especially large scale.
The detainee agreed to enter into a plea bargain and stated that he was ready to reimburse 2 billion soms to the budget. The court released Raiymbek Matraimov on pledge not to leave town. He had to transfer the entire amount of damage by the end of November 2020.
