Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Billion Dollar Hedge Fund Mgr Goes After Putin And Russia, This Time In Europe

Forbes

Bill Browder, the founder of Hermitage Capital Management in London, is doing his best to embarrass Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Russian government once again.

After successfully and single-handedly lobbying for the passing of the Magnitsky Act in the U.S. Senate in November, Browder seems to have convinced European governments to go after alleged Russian criminals in the same way: by banning travel and access to bank accounts in their respective countries.

Browder’s colleague and friend, Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer with the Moscow-based law firm Firestone Duncan, was arrested in 2009 for tax fraud affiliated with Hermitage. The billion dollar hedge fund was subsequently kicked out of Russia, and Magnitsky died in prison, a victim, it is widely believed, of poor treatment.

Late last year, Congress passed two laws that make life increasingly difficult for Russians currently on a “black list” at the U.S. State Department for their involvement in Magnitsky’s death. Under the so-called Magnitsky Act, both houses of Congress now have access to that list of Russians the State House had been inclined to keep under wraps out of concern of embarrassing The Kremlin.

Washington and Moscow are going through a revamp, or a reset, of bilateral relations and the current human rights scandals had put a strain in that relationship. Under the new law, Congress now knows which Russians to ban from traveling or having any type of financial business in the United States.

Immediately after its passing, Pavel Khodorkovsky, director of the Khodorkovsky Center in New York, told me that the idea was for some countries in Europe to pass similar legislation.