Topics in brief

• Author: International Law Group, PLLC
• Pages: 127

Page 127

Russian Constitutional Court extends domestic moratorium on death penalty

The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation has ruled that a moratorium on capital punishment should remain in force until the nation expressly and permanently outlaws the death penalty. The original moratorium came about in 1999 but its legal basis will expire in January 2010. The Chief Judge says that Russia must extend the moratorium on executions until it ratifies that amendment to the European convention that bans the death penalty. When it joined the Council of Europe in 1996, an organization of over forty nations in the European sphere (not to be confused with the European Union) Russia proclaimed a moratorium on capital punishment and pledged to abolish it, but has not yet done so. The Russian Federation is a party to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, [312 U.N.T.S. 221; E.T.S. 5, as amended]. On the other hand, it has not yet ratified Protocol 6 [E.T.S. 114] to the Convention which contains an unqualified ban on the death penalty.

citation: Russian Constitutional Court, St. Petersburg, Russia, Thursday, November 19, 2009, 07:59:03 GMT (Associated Press Report).

Major Swiss Bank releases names of allegedly serious dodgers of U S. tax laws

In August 2009, Switzerland agreed to hand over details about the accounts of up to 4,450 American suspected of serious evasions of their U.S. taxes.

UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) admitted that for years its advisers had been helping thousands of American clients hide billions of taxable dollars from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The move was widely viewed as a substantial break with Switzerland’s well-known tradition of banking secrecy for foreigners; it coincides with a broader effort to shake off...