Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Interpol won’t arrest Moscow’s foreign enemy number one

Blouin News

Interpol has refused a Russian request to issue an international arrest warrant for controversial hedge fund manager Bill Browder. Although the Russian Interior Ministry claims it was “puzzled” by the decision, this simply represents the latest phase in an unprecedented struggle between the multi-millionaire and the Russian government.

Browder was an early investor in Russia, co-founding Hermitage Capital in 1996. After ten years of rapid expansion in Russia, though, the company began to run into problems in 2006 when Browder was barred from the country. In 2007, Hermitage officers were raided by the police, who claimed it had been used to defraud the tax authorities of $230 million. In 2008, one of Browder’s lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested: after eleven months of pre-trial detention, he died in prison, having been denied medical treatment.

Browder has countered the official charges with allegations that they were a front for the theft of assets by a criminal conspiracy within Russian officialdom and successfully lobbied for the passage in the U.S. of the 2012 Magnitsky Law, blacklisting 60 officials regarded as involved in the theft and the subsequent persecution of Magnitsky in prison.