As a financier working in Russia from the 1990s onwards, Bill Browder, of American descent, soon learned that the theft was rampant among the oligarchs who benefited from the privatization that followed the collapse. of the Soviet Union. While investigating a $ 230 million tax fraud against his company, Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was jailed, tortured and killed by Russian authorities.
In response, Browder defended the passage of the Magnitsky Act, which was intended to freeze the assets of those involved in human rights violations. The Magnitsky Act has spread beyond the United States to other nations around the world and has made Browder a Kremlin target.
Browder has followed his New York Times bestseller “Red warning” with a new book, “Freeze Order: A Real Story of Money Laundering, Murder and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath” (both published by Simon & Schuster, a division of Paramount).
Read a snippet of “Freeze Order” below and don’t miss correspondent Seth Doane’s interview with Bill Browder “CBS Sunday Morning” April 10!
Simon & Schuster
When we began investigating the $ 230 million tax evasion fraud by which my lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was assassinated, we had no idea what would lead to any of these global advances or these unthinkable Russian reactions. Why didn’t Putin just throw a few of his low-level officials under the bus to assassinate Sergei? Why did he judge a dead man for the first time in Russian history? Why would his relationship with the West be ruined by the Magnitsky Act? Why hack Western elections? Why is he so committed to fomenting chaos?
Now we know. Not only were millions of dollars at stake. Or even billions. There was probably more than a trillion dollars at stake. And Putin will do anything to protect it.
That amount of money also helped explain why so many people had been killed. People like Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov, Alexander Perepilichnyy and Andrei Kozlov. He also explained why the Kremlin had tried to kill Vladimir Kara-Murza and Nikolai Gorokhov.
No matter how despicable Putin’s behavior and his regime may be, none of this can happen without the cooperation of Western facilitators. Lawyers like John Moscow and Mark Cymrot, doctors like Glenn Simpson, politicians like Dana Rohrabacher and executives like Danske Bank: these people, along with many others, lubricate the machine that allows Putin and his colleagues to escape with their crimes. .
Nor can these crimes take place without the acquiescence of timid and ineffective governments that refuse to follow their own declared laws and values. Let’s take Britain, just as an example. The largest amount of money associated with the $ 230 million crime did not end up in New York or Spain or France or Switzerland, but right in my hometown: London. This money has been used to buy luxury property and goods, and despite all the evidence I have presented to British law enforcement, Parliament and the British press, no money laundering investigation has been launched to date. capital related to the Magnitsky case. in the United Kingdom.
As you follow me through this story, you may have wondered, “The odds are very long and there are so many risks … Why do you do all this stuff?”
At first, I made them because I owed them to Sergei. He had been murdered because he worked for me, and he couldn’t let his killers get away with it. As with the theft of my flute, but on an infinitely larger and more significant scale, I have been forced to do justice. As the theft of my flute proved, this inclination towards justice is part of who I am. It is in my nature. Rejecting it would have poisoned me from within.
Then, as things escalated, it also became a struggle for survival. Not only for me and my family, but also for my friends and colleagues, and all the people who were helping Sergei’s cause in Russia.
But in the end, I did these things because doing them is the right thing to do. For better or worse, I’ve been obsessed with this cause since Sergei’s death. This obsession has affected every facet of my life and all my relationships, even those with my own children. These effects have not always been for the better.
But this obsession has also introduced me to notable people who have not only changed my life, but the course of history.
Most importantly, my obsession has created a legacy for Sergei so that his murder makes no sense, unlike so many others.
At the time of writing, there are Magnitsky Acts in 34 different countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, the 27 European Union countries, Norway, Montenegro and Kosovo. This does not take into account the British Overseas Territories and the Crown Protectorates of Gibraltar, Jersey, Guernsey, the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands. New Zealand and Japan are on deck.
More than 500 people and organizations have been sanctioned by these laws. In Russia, they include Dmitry Klyuev, Andrei Pavlov, Pavel Karpov, Artem Kuznetsov, and Olga Stepanova and her husband, along with 35 other Russians involved in Sergei’s false detention, torture, and murder, as well as discount fraud. $ 230 million in taxes.
But not just the Russians. Magnitsky’s sanctions have now been imposed on Saudi assassins responsible for the assassination and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; Chinese officials who set up Uighur concentration camps in Xinjiang; the Myanmar generals responsible for the Rohingya genocide; the Gupta brothers, who stripped the South African government; and hundreds more for equally pernicious acts.
For every person or organization that has been sanctioned, there are thousands of human rights violators and kleptocrats waiting in terror to see if they will be sanctioned next. There is no doubt that the Magnitsky Act has altered behavior and has been a deterrent to potential killers and thieves.
I can’t bring Sergei back. And that’s why I carry a heavy load that will never go away. But his sacrifice has not been meaningless. He has saved, and will continue to save, many, many lives.
If Russia ever has a true democratic criterion, the future Russians will expand these legal monuments by building them from physicists to a real hero: Sergei Magnitsky.
For now, however, the struggle continues.
From “The Freeze Order: A Real Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath” by Bill Browder. Copyright © 2022 by Bill Browder. Reprinted with permission from Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
For more information:
- “Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath” by Bill Browder (Simon & Schuster), in hardcover and e-book formats, available on Amazon and Indiebound
- billbrowder.com
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