As his previous book, Red Notice, details, he did just that. He founded Hermitage Capital Management, with the help of Monaco-based billionaire Edmond Safra (later died in a fire lit by one of his servants). It was a time of savage speculation, as post-Soviet state assets sold out cheaply and a venous oligarchy was created. Business disputes were regularly settled with bullets and bankers’ life expectancy was radically reduced. When Putin came to power on New Year’s Eve 1999, promising to eradicate corruption, Browder was a relieved man. And he remained in Putin’s favor for the next three years, as the new Russian leader imposed state order on capitalist anarchy. During these years, Browder made a fortune, turning Hermitage into the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. His big innovation was shareholder activism, which targeted corrupt practices in some of the largest companies, such as Gazprom, and thus increased their share price. There is something deeply offensive to our sense of justice for an innocent man surrounded by powerful forces. Then, in 2003, Putin imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the richest oligarch in Russia at the time, and instead of opposing corruption, he began to put pressure on the duly intimidated oligarchy. That meant stopping Browder’s busy body from being deported from Russia in 2005. Eighteen months later, Russian authorities raided the Hermitage’s offices and removed his papers. These documents were then used by Home Office officials to organize a $ 230 million (£ 175 million) tax deduction fraud. Browder was later charged with fraud and when his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, revealed the officers responsible for the fraud, the same police officers arrested Magnitsky. Imprisoned for almost a year, Magnitsky died a few days before his release from prison – he was killed, says Browder, and several independent investigators, by prison guards who beat him to death. Browder, a London-based naturalized Briton, then sought justice for his friend, mainly by pushing for the Magnitsky Act – a bill that authorized the US government to impose sanctions on human rights abusers and their assets. A similar law has been enacted in 33 other countries, including the United Kingdom and the EU. Bill Browder at a Senate hearing in Washington DC, 2017. Photo: Drew Angerer / Getty Images Once enacted, however, the Magnitsky Act remained largely unused in the United States, and especially in the United Kingdom. Only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine did the UK authorities belatedly notice the dominance of corrupt Russian billionaires laundering their money in London. As Browder informs us at the end of the book, most of the $ 230 million in tax fraud has found its way to these shores. Typically, the British authorities did nothing about it. But the Russian authorities did it. They targeted Browder. He was involved in a US case against a Russian shell company that had used part of the stolen $ 230 million to buy real estate in New York. The Russians hired a lawyer who had previously worked for Browder, a conflict of interest that eventually banned the lawyer, but not before Browder feared that his personal information had been passed on to people outside to pick him up. He was also subject to a number of Interpol warrants and at one stage of the book was arrested in Madrid on an order requested by Russia. At first he is not sure if the Spanish police are really disguised Russian agents and then he is not sure if he will be detained and extradited to Moscow – where he will probably have the same fate as his lawyer. Witnesses of Russian corruption die in strange conditions, falling from roofs or from sudden heart attacks As scary as this incident was, it somehow pales in comparison to another moment in the book where Browder recalls the 2018 Helsinki summit between Putin and Donald Trump. As a matter of fact, Putin offered to exchange some Russian intelligence agents for Browder, and in a joint press conference, Trump said he considered it “an incredible offer.” Browder was vacationing at his home in Colorado at the time and imagined that secret service cruise ships would arrive and fly to Moscow to face a staged demonstration and a mysterious death behind bars. It’s an incredible story, told with rhythm and lust, that looks like a thriller. There is something deeply offensive to our sense of justice for an innocent man surrounded by powerful forces. It is a fear used by Alexandre Dumas and Alfred Hitchcock with dramatic effect, but what is most worrying here is how much the Western establishment consents to Russian crimes and lies. Lawyers, politicians, and ordinary useful idiots have been successfully recruited into the Russian cause, either through financial incentives, bribery, bovine anti-Western sentiment, or perhaps worst of all, complacency. Representatives of each of these groups appear in this book, in which witnesses of Russian corruption die in strange circumstances, falling from rooftops or having sudden heart attacks. There are also poisonings, threats, intimidation and the whole range of dirty tricks. In all of this, Browder remains remarkably optimistic and determined. Perhaps the story of a very rich man coming out against the Russian state seems forgiving against the background of the nightmare unfolding in Ukraine. But they are relative facts, and as this book makes very clear, it took us a very long time to recognize the true nature of the regime that binds them.
Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath by Bill Browder released by Simon & Schuster (£ 20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
