Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Bill Browder: the Kremlin threatened to kill me

The Guardian

I’m due to meet Bill Browder at Mari Vanna, a favourite hangout for rich Russians in Knightsbridge. But when we get there the restaurant, with its rustic dacha-style Russian decor, leaves us both feeling slightly spooked. So we wander across the road to an anonymous sushi bar. Browder’s reluctance to avoid bumping into anyone with Kremlin connections is understandable. As he explains, matter-of-factly: “They [the Kremlin] threatened to kill me. It’s pretty straightforward.”

American-born Browder is one of Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics. For over a decade he lived in Moscow and ran the most successful investment fund in Russia. Initially, he was a fan of Putin’s. But in 2005 he was deported from the country. A corrupt group of officials expropriated his fund, Hermitage Capital, and used it to make a fraudulent tax claim. They stole $230m (£153m).

Stuck in London, Browder hired a team to fight his case. The same Russian officials arrested his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, after Magnitsky uncovered the money trail and made a complaint. They put Magnitsky in jail and refused him medical treatment. (Magnitsky suffered from pancreatitis and gall stones.) After he had spent almost a year behind bars, guards beat him to death. He was 37 and married with two small boys.

The incident had a transforming effect on Browder. “If Magnitsky had not been my lawyer he would still be alive,” he says. He describes Magnitsky’s death as “absolutely heartbreaking”. “If he hadn’t taken on my case he’d still be enjoying his life, being a father, looking after his wife. A young man whom I was responsible for died in the most horrific way because he worked for me.”

Browder’s memoir, published next week, recounts how Magnitsky’s death changed him from entrepreneur to global human rights crusader. Its title is Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No.1 Enemy; and it reads like a non-fiction version of a Mario Puzo thriller. There’s a ruthless crime syndicate, a mafia boss – for Michael Corleone read Putin – and a growing tally of bodies.

Ever since Magnitsky’s murder in 2009 Browder has waged an extraordinary campaign to bring the officials to justice. Not in a court of law – there’s no prospect of a trial inside Russia – but in the wider court of international public opinion.

After footslogging round Washington, Browder succeeded in persuading US Congress to pass a groundbreaking Sergei Magnitsky law. The 2012 legislation imposed visa bans on the bureaucrats implicated in Magnistky’s murder. It denied them access to US banks. Putin was furious. In 2013 a Russian judge sentenced Browder in absentia to nine years in jail, and, bizarrely, “convicted” the already-dead Magnitsky. The Kremlin sent a Red Notice warrant to Interpol demanding Browder’s extradition. Interpol refused, but Moscow is currently putting together a third extradition bid.