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A Conversation With Bill Browder, author of Red Notice, a devastating exposé of corruption and cronyism in Putin's Russia.
Bill, your story reads like a spy novel—isn't it dangerous to be telling this story in a book, for all the world to see?
In many senses, it's dangerous for me NOT to be telling this story. The Putin regime goes after their enemies all over the world and often tries to kill them in a plausibly deniable way. By going public and telling the world the whole story, if anything happens to me, you will know exactly who did it. And the people who are thinking about doing something terrible to me will know that you know. That may not prevent the worst from happening, but it does create a real and profound consequence for Putin and his henchmen.
Is the Russian government still trying to affect your life? In what ways?
The Russian government is using all tools to go after me. They have organized multiple trumped-up criminal cases in Russia, and are asking Interpol to arrest me and have me extradited back to Russia. They are using Western courts to subpoena our servers and confidential information to find out where all our people and assets are and how we protect ourselves. They are employing private detective agencies to organize an illegal rendition, and they are using their massive television and media propaganda machine to blame me for just about everything bad going on in Russia. Barely a day goes by where there's not some type of offensive action being generated by the Russian government against me and my colleagues.
When was the moment you knew that Putin was after you—and when was the time you were the most afraid?
I knew the Russian government was after me (in general) the moment I was sitting in the detention center of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport in November 2005, when they refused to let me into the country. But I didn't know how personal it had gotten for Vladimir Putin until December 2012 at his annual four-hour press conference. There he was asked seven times about the Magnitsky case and he became more and more agitated until he finally blurted out "'Magnitsky …as you know, he was not a human rights activist but a lawyer for Mr. Browder, who is suspected by our law-enforcement agencies of economic crimes in Russia." Putin never mentions his enemies by name, so when I heard him say that, I knew I was in trouble.
How is it possible that Putin and his "people" can be committing such obvious offenses against you, with no fear of retaliation or penalties?
Putin and his associates don't worry about the vagaries of the law when they cook up plans against their enemies. They just go about their business. Unlike normal gangsters, they enjoy all the benefits and credibility of a sovereign state. They can murder people by day and then attend state dinners at the G20 by night.
What was Sergei Magnitsky's connection to you? And what was he like?
Sergei was the head of the tax practice at a small Moscow based American law firm called Firestone Duncan. In 2007 when our offices were raided and our companies were stolen, we asked him to investigate. Sergei was one of those special people that everyone turns to for help. He could do ten complicated things in the time a normal lawyer did just one, which made him the "go-to-guy" for all complicated legal issues. In spite of his great legal talents, he was also humble and gracious about his skills and would never make any of his colleagues or clients feel anything but warmth and admiration.
Why was Magnitsky the one the Russians captured and penalized?
When we publicly disclosed that the Russian authorities had raided our offices in order to pull off a $230 million tax rebate fraud, the Russian government immediately started targeting all of our key Russian lawyers in retaliation. I called each of them and begged them to leave Russia and come to London at my expense to get out of harms way. It wasn't an easy conversation and none of them wanted to leave their life, their work, and their country for an unknown future, but in the end everyone left but Sergei. He said "I haven't done anything wrong. Why should I leave when the people who should be scared are the police officers who pulled off this crime?" He stayed and even testified against the corrupt officers. In retaliation, he was arrested by the very same officers he testified against, thrown in jail, and tortured.
After Magnitsky was killed in prison, what was your first thought?
It was like a knife going right into my heart. It was the worst news I had ever received in my entire life. After the initial shock, I regained my strength and decided that I wasn't going to let the people who tortured and killed Sergei get away with it. I made a vow to his memory, to his family, and to myself that I was going to do whatever it took to get justice for Sergei.
How has the U.S. Magnitsky Act made life harder for criminals? Who does it target and how?
The Magnitsky Act places the people who tortured and killed Sergei on the U.S. sanctions list, freezing their U.S. assets and banning their travel to America. This is the same sanctions list that the U.S. uses for Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorists, as well as drug lords and international human traffickers. Some people argue that many of Magnitsky's killers don't have assets in the U.S. and therefore it has no effect on them. That's not true. First, just being on the U.S. sanctions list makes them financial lepers. Almost no bank in the world will allow you to open an account and no company in the world with any U.S. presence will do business with you. In addition, by naming and shaming these people so publicly, they are even being shunned by their criminal co-conspirators in Russia because nobody wants the unwanted attention of being associated with them.
You're trying to enact a global version of the Act—what would that do?
Sadly, there are evil dictators and human rights abusers all over the world, not just in Russia. The more time I spend fighting for justice for Sergei, the more horrific stories I hear from many other countries. It has become clear to me that there is new technology for dealing with human rights abusers, and there's no reason why we shouldn't apply this new technology globally. In the past, the Khmer Rouge killers and the Hutu death squads didn't go on vacation to St. Tropez and South Beach, but now their equivalents would hate nothing more than to lose their freedom to travel. We have a low cost and simple deterrent that creates consequences for evil people, no matter where they come from.
Unless otherwise stated, this interview was conducted at the time the book was first published, and is reproduced with permission of the publisher. This interview may not be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the copyright holder.
Marc Barry, a national authority on intellectual property, is founder of C3I Analytics, a corporate-intelligence firm in New York City. His clients are Fortune 400 companies. (more)
If you enjoyed:
Red Notice
Try:
Spooked
by Marc Barry
Masha Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award-winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. A staff writer... (more)
If you enjoyed:
Red Notice
Try:
The Man Without a Face
by Masha Gessen
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