Hedge Funder Bill Browder Reveals Life On The Run From Putin

It was July 2012 and Browder was attending a reception at the Hotel Le Méridien in Monaco as part of a human rights conference with representatives from more than 57 countries. The woman, who introduced herself as Svetlana Melnikova, flirted unabashedly with Browder. “I usually work in fashion,” he said, touching his hand. “But I find politics so exciting.” Browder did not buy any of these. “I am a middle-aged bald man with five legs. The six-legged, blond models do not fall on me. “It could not have been a more glaring honey trap,” he wrote in his now-published book, Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath (Simon & Schuster). He had good reason to be suspicious. He had come to the conference to support the Magnitsky Act, a proposed bill that would impose sanctions on Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses. Later that year, the law would be signed into law in the United States, and Browder was tasked with persuading the European Union to follow suit. Bill Browder is being attacked by Russian officials for his involvement in the Magnitsky Act, a proposed bill that would impose sanctions on Russian officials suspected of human rights abuses. Luke McGregor Russian President Vladimir Putin considered the Magnitsky Act an “existential threat” to his regime and did not stop at anything to bring the perpetrator to justice – or at least his idea of ​​justice. Later that night, Svetlana emailed Browder asking him to meet her for a drink. “I can not stop thinking about you,” he wrote. “I would love to see you tonight.” Browder, who was staying at a hotel across the border in the south of France, knew what she was really looking for. Russian President Vladimir Putin considers Magnitsky’s law an “existential threat” to the regime of Mikhail Klimentiev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP “I had heard stories of Putin’s enemies checking in hotels in Monaco, presenting their passports and being arrested within minutes by local police,” he wrote. Sharing his location with Svetlana, he knew, could have put him in mortal danger. Chased by Russian officials since 2005, Browder left the country after being accused of everything from tax fraud to money laundering. He was one of the most wanted fugitives on Russia’s wanted list, all because of his campaign for Magnitsky’s law – named after Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, a Ukrainian man who was murdered in a Russian prison. November. 2009. Browder’s lawyer was Sergei Magnitsky.AFP / Getty Images Born in New Jersey and raised in Chicago, Browder moved to London after earning his MBA from Stanford Business School in 1989. He worked for consulting firms such as Boston Consulting Group, married a British woman and renounced US citizenship (mainly as a protestant). how his communist grandparents were treated in the McCarthy era). His success with Russian investment in the Salomon Brothers in London inspired him to relocate to Moscow and start the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management in 1996, which became one of the largest foreign investors in post-Soviet Russia. Although he had invested about $ 4.5 billion in Russian stock, he was disappointed that many of his investments were “stolen blindly by Russian oligarchs and corrupt officials,” he wrote. After Magnitsky was killed in Russia for exposing a tax fraud conspiracy, Browder vowed to avenge his murder.PhotoXpress / ZUMAPRESS.com So he retaliated, exposing corruption in the international media. “To make money, I did not have to stop stealing completely,” writes Browder. “I just had to put enough pressure for a marginal change.” It did not, however, make him very popular in Russia. And until November 2005, with false accusations of tax fraud and money laundering – basically accusing him of what he had accused the oligarchs of – the Kremlin declared him a “national security threat” and barred him from ever returning to Russia. Browder hired Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky to investigate, and in the summer of 2008, Magnitsky uncovered a massive $ 230 million conspiracy to commit tax evasion by three Hermitage companies. Browder hoped that with the revelation of the fraud, he would disappear as quietly as before. Instead, he had pierced a sleeping bear. Browder faces up to 18 years in a Russian prison camp if he ever returns to Moscow.REUTERS Magnitsky was arrested, charged with the same fraud he had just uncovered and held for 358 days where, according to Browder, he was regularly tortured and deprived of medical care. On his last day, “he was chained to a bed and eight riot guards with rubber batons beat Sergei until he died,” Browder wrote. “He was only 37 years old.” (The Interior Ministry cited Magnitsky’s cause of death as “heart failure.”) “He was killed because he worked for me,” Browder wrote. “The guilt I felt and continue to feel permeates every cell of my body.” To avenge his late friend and colleague, he launched a campaign called the Magnitsky Act, which punished not only the oligarchs responsible for Magnitsky’s stolen millions but also froze the US assets of all Russians. human rights violators. Alexander Perepilichnyy (far right), a Russian financial adviser who played a key role in Browder’s money laundering investigation, collapsed while jogging near his Surrey home in November 2012. “The Magnitsky Act endangered all of Putin’s wealth and power,” writes Browder, who claims that the Russian president is not just aware of corruption but is directly benefiting from it. “It made him a very angry man. His crusade against Magnitsky’s law was not just philosophical, it was personal. “We were really hit by Vladimir Putin’s Achilles heel.” As Browder traveled around the world, supporting countries to adopt their own versions of the Magnitsky bill, his allies and informants were assassinated. Alexander Perepilichnyy, a Russian financial adviser who “played a key role in our money laundering investigation,” says Browder, collapsed while jogging near his Surrey home in November 2012. He was found with “green foam” gushing from his lips and died soon after. Boris Nemtsov, who “became my partner in the fight for the Magnitsky Act around the world,” writes Browder, was shot in the back in February 2015, a few meters from the Kremlin.EPA Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of Putin who “became a partner in the Magnitsky campaign around the world,” writes Browder, was shot in the back in February 2015, just meters from the Kremlin. When Browder released his first book about Putin, the 2015 bestseller “Red Notice,” and went on tour to promote it, he felt a bigger goal than ever. While in London, his wife and four children were visited at their Aspen cottage by two men who confronted his children outside with questions such as: “Is your dad home?” Even after retiring to the basement, the men stood outside and rang the bell for more than an hour. “I no longer feel safe here,” Browder’s wife told him. After Browder released his first book about Putin and toured to promote it, his wife and four children were chased by Russia-linked process servers at the family’s Aspen vacation home.Corbis via Getty Images “When the dust settled, we learned that the people who were chasing me were not kidnappers or poisoners, but process servers hired by the Russians,” Browder wrote. It was part of a lawsuit against Russian company Prevezon, which was charged by the US Attorney’s Office in New York with tax fraud involving millions of Manhattan properties – all part of the original stolen $ 230 million first recognized by the late Magnitsky. Their defense attorneys were determined to make Browder central to the case, making him the real mastermind behind the scam. Browder finally appeared for his testimony and after nine hours of questioning, in which he largely replied that he did not know or did not remember, he was released. By 2018, Preveza was settled out of court, paying a settlement of $ 5.9 million. Browder was arrested in Madrid in 2018 by Spanish police on a Russian warrant. After writing on Twitter about the bust, he was finally released. Getty Images That same year, however, Browder was finally handcuffed. Not by Russian agents, but by uniformed police officers in Madrid working for Russia, who surprised him in his hotel room. Before ousting him, Browder sent a distress message to his 135,000 followers, many of them journalists, government officials and politicians from around the world: “Urgent: Just arrested by Spanish police in Madrid on a warrant for the arrest of a Russian man” . wrote on Twitter. His captors took him to a building with no signs of a “medical examination”, but Browder refused to leave the car. He was eventually escorted to the police station, but did not stay long. Vladimir Putin brazenly asked President Trump to oust Browder at a 2018 Helsinki summit.AP “My tweets had caused hundreds of phone calls to Interpol and the Spanish authorities,” writes Browder, “who soon realized the chaos in which the waltz had taken place.” Interpol ruled that the Russian warrant was invalid because it was politically motivated and that Browder had been released. He was about to be arrested again that summer, during a Helsinki …