Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Crusade against the Kremlin

Financial Times

Bill Browder has a stark warning for western investors eyeing opportunities in Russia. “They are not only taking a financial risk – they are taking a very serious personal risk of being arrested or dying,” he says. The same applies to educated Russians: “Even Russians who have the ability and language skills should get out of Russia, because it is only going one way and that is in a very horrible direction.”

Browder should know: his experience over the past two decades provides a spectacular example. During that time, the head of Hermitage Capital Management – at one point one of the largest foreign investors into the country – has gone from staunchly rejecting what he once called western myths about Russia to being a crusader against President Vladimir Putin’s regime.

In return, the Russian authorities have branded him a criminal. In July, a Moscow court found Browder guilty of tax evasion in his absence, a charge he denies. Russia has also twice requested that Interpol provide it with information on his whereabouts. The second time around, it was with a view to extradition in relation to a charge of “qualified swindling”. Both times, the international police organisation rejected the requests on the grounds that they were predominantly politically motivated.

Browder’s story is as convoluted as a classic Russian novel. However, there are broadly two ways to read it. His critics point out he avidly supported Putin until the regime turned against him. Browder accepts he once backed the Russian leader, who he saw as bringing necessary order, but argues it was Putin who did the U-turn. In Browder’s view, Putin moved from campaigning against the oligarchs to becoming the biggest oligarch of all.

Whichever interpretation is preferred, Browder has taken on a dual life as a hedge fund manager and campaigner against Russian corruption. He has taken British citizenship and runs Hermitage from London. The firm long ago became a general emerging markets specialist rather than having a particular focus on Russia.

The story begins with Browder’s grandfather. Earl Browder, born in Kansas, was the head of the Communist Party USA in the 1930s and early 1940s, and twice ran for president. Earl Browder spent several years in the Soviet Union, where he met and married Raisa Berkman, a Russian Jewish intellectual. Together they had three sons, including Bill Browder’s father Felix, all of whom became top-flight mathematicians.