Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Oslo Journal, Part II

National Review Online

A few years ago, I met a man named Bill at a gathering. “I’m sorry, what was your last name again?” I said. He said, “Browder. Bill Browder.” “Any relation?” I said. “Yes. Grandson.”

Bill Browder is the grandson of Earl Browder, the head of the Communist party — the CPUSA. He told me on that occasion, “My grandfather was the biggest Communist in America, and I was the biggest capitalist in Russia.” Bill Browder is the head of Hermitage Capital Management.

Sergei Magnitsky was his lawyer — the man who was tortured to death by the Russian authorities. You may have heard of the Magnitsky Act, in America: an act that places all the restrictions our country can impose, I gather, on the individuals who participated in Magnitsky’s murder. This has to do with visas, bank accounts, and that sort of thing.

That’s why Browder is here at the Freedom Forum: to tell the Magnitsky story, and to discuss the law.

First, he speaks a little about his background (his own background). Earl Browder was from Wichita, he says. I think, “Interesting — same as the Koch family.” Browder went to Moscow in 1927 and stayed several years. Married there. On home soil, he ran for president twice. The country preferred FDR.
When Bill Browder wanted to rebel against his family, what’d he do? “I put on a suit and tie, and I became a capitalist.”