Bill Browder, an American-born, UK-based businessman, says the war in Ukraine is sharpening the world’s focus on Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Suddenly the world cares about the evil of Vladimir Putin,” he told correspondent Seth Doane.
But Browder, who is himself a Putin target, has long been aware of that. While walking in a London park, he received an alarming call: US intelligence had learned that Browder could be kidnapped and taken to Russia.
He recalled, “My safe world in London has really evaporated.”
Browder’s decade-long odyssey at the top of Russian power began after he moved to Russia in the 1990s to benefit from privatization following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Browder’s Hermitage Fund soon became the country’s largest foreign investment fund. They researched Russian companies, initially to invest:
“What we discovered was that the oligarchs and corrupt officials who controlled these companies were stealing all the profits, all the assets from the companies,” Browder said. “And so I felt like I could invest responsibly if I could figure out how they’re stealing and then try to stop them.”
“No way to feel very welcome in Russia?” asked Doane.
“Well it was interesting because at the beginning of that moment Vladimir Putin was fighting the same guys I was fighting. But it turns out he wasn’t trying to end the era of oligarchs; he just wanted to become the biggest oligarch himself.”
Browder showed Doane diagrams depicting the web of sophisticated money laundering operations they had helped uncover. “The money flowed from the Russian Treasury via Moldova to Latvia and then to Switzerland,” Browder said. “The whole idea of money laundering is to make it so complicated that effectively nobody could put together such a table.”
Bill Browder shows correspondent Seth Doane the path to money laundering. CBS News
Doane asked, “To do that, it takes an investment guy who moved to Russia?”
“It takes an investment guy whose lawyer and friend was brutally murdered and dedicated the rest of his life to tracking down the killers,” he replied.
That lawyer and friend was Sergei Magnitsky, who had been investigating a tax fraud scheme on behalf of Browder. “My company paid taxes to the Russian government,” Browder said. “A bunch of Russian officials confiscated my documents and then organized an identity theft of my companies and then organized a $230 million tax refund for taxes we paid back to these stolen companies so they could enjoy the money. Sergei was the person who figured out the whole $230 million tax refund scam.”
Lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was killed for investigating corruption in the Russian government. hermitage
Magnitsky then testified to the Russian State Investigative Committee: “But five weeks after Sergei testified, he was arrested by the same officers against whom he had testified and taken into pre-trial detention in Russia, where he was then tortured to make him withdraw his testimony.”
Sergei Magnitsky died in a Russian prison in 2009. He was 37 years old.
“Do you feel responsible for his death?” asked Doane.
“I do.”
“How do you deal with it?”
“I swore to his memory, his family and myself that I will devote all my time, energy and resources to pursuing the people who killed him. [to] Make sure they are brought to justice,” Browder replied.
He campaigned for a landmark law called the Magnitsky Act. Initially, it sanctioned people connected to this tax fraud and the death of Sergei Magnitsky. It was signed into law in 2012 and drew attention to the type of corruption they had uncovered. Some of the money from this tax system ended up in properties bought in London, New York and Dubai.
Simon & Schuster
Browder’s quest for justice was the basis for a bestseller, Red Notice. Now, this week, comes his latest, Freezing Order (published by Simon & Schuster, a division of Paramount Global, which owns CBS). It is the story of what happened next, a true story of “money laundering, murder and surviving Vladimir Putin’s wrath”.
Doane asked, “Some of this sounds like something out of a mob, mafia movie?”
“Vladimir Putin is the mafia boss,” Browder said. “All of his ministers are actually, if you watch The Sopranos, like the New Jersey Mafia and the Brooklyn Mafia, the Philadelphia Mafia. They can take all the money they can steal and they have to pay homage to mafia boss Vladimir Putin.”
Browder claims that part of that stolen $230 million ended up in the hands of Putin, a leader notorious for his shadowy wealth. The Russian president’s official salary is about $140,000 a year, which raises some obvious questions about his $1.4 billion abode, $700 million yacht, and million-dollar watch collection.
Putin has long claimed that Sergei Magnitsky died of a heart attack. His animosity towards Browder was evident at his 2018 joint presidential press briefing in Helsinki, when he suggested to US President Donald Trump that Moscow might be willing to “swap” 12 accused Russian military intelligence officers if the Trump administration extradited Bill Browder to him .
“I was in shock,” Browder said.
He has successfully lobbied other countries to adopt the Magnitsky Law to target corrupt officials and human rights violators, and Browder is proud that it is now among the sanctions imposed on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine will.
“The story of Sergei Magnitsky is a tiny microcosm of what has now been multiplied by millions,” he said. “The people of Ukraine bear the criminal brunt of Vladimir Putin in the same way that we do, to a very small extent. And I’m heartbroken because if people had listened more to what I’m saying over the last 10 years, then maybe we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Freezing Order” on Putin, money laundering and murder
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Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Publisher: Emanuele Secci.