In terms of Western relations with Vladimir Putin, Bill Browder has played the role of the canary in the coal mine – or perhaps the gold mine would be more appropriate. A graduate of Stanford Business School, he came to Moscow in the late 1990s via a stay in London, determined to make his fortune.
As his previous book, Red Notice details, he did just that. He founded Hermitage Capital Management with the help of Monaco-based billionaire Edmond Safra (who later died in a fire started by one of his servants).
It was a time of rampant profiteering when post-Soviet state assets were sold cheap and a venal oligarchy created. Business disputes were routinely settled by bullets, and the life expectancy of bankers was drastically reduced. When Putin came to power on New Year’s Eve 1999 and vowed to root out corruption, Browder was relieved.
And he remained pro-Putin for the next three years while the new Russian leader imposed state order on capitalist anarchy. During those years, Browder made a fortune and made Hermitage the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. His great innovation was shareholder activism, in which he cracked down on corrupt practices in some of the largest companies, such as Gazprom, thereby raising their share price.
There is something deeply offensive to our sense of justice about an innocent man framed by powerful forces
Then in 2003 Putin jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Russia’s richest oligarch, and instead of taking a stand against corruption, he began to pressure the appropriately intimidated oligarchy. That meant putting an end to Browder’s hard work by deporting him from Russia in 2005.
Eighteen months later, Hermitage’s offices were raided by Russian authorities and the paperwork removed. These documents were then used by Home Office officials to stage a $230million (£175million) tax refund scam. They then blamed Browder for the fraud, and when his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, exposed the officers responsible for the fraud, the same officers had Magnitsky arrested.
Held without charge for nearly a year, Magnitsky died days before his release — murdered, say Browder and a number of independent investigators, by prison guards who beat him to death. After that, Browder, a naturalized Brit based in London, devoted himself to bringing justice to his friend, most notably by lobbying for the Magnitsky Act — a law that empowered the US government to sanction human rights violators and freeze their assets. Similar legislation has been passed in 33 other countries, including the UK and the EU.
Bill Browder at a Senate hearing in Washington DC, 2017. Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesHowever, once enacted, Magnitsky’s law went largely unused in the US and particularly in the UK. It was only after the Russian invasion of Ukraine that the British authorities belatedly noticed that mostly corrupt Russian billionaires were laundering their money in London. As Browder tells us at the end of the book, most of the $230 million in tax fraud made its way to these shores. Significantly, the British authorities did nothing.
But the Russian authorities did. They aimed at Broder. He was involved in a US case against a Russian shell company that used part of the stolen $230 million to buy real estate in New York. The Russians hired a lawyer who had previously worked for Browder, a conflict of interest that eventually resulted in the lawyer being disfellowshipped, but not before Browder feared his personal information had been leaked to the people who were after him .
He has also been the subject of a number of Interpol warrants, and at one point in the book he is arrested in Madrid on an order requested by Russia. First, he’s unsure if the Spanish police are actually Russian agents in disguise, and then he’s unsure if he will be arrested and extradited to Moscow – where he likely would have met the same end as his lawyer.
Witnesses to Russian corruption die under bizarre circumstances, from falling from rooftops or from sudden heart attacks
As chilling as this incident must have been, in some ways it pales in comparison to another moment in the book in which Browder commemorates the 2018 Helsinki summit between Putin and Donald Trump. Out of the blue, Putin offered to swap some Russian intelligence agents for Browder, and in a joint press conference, Trump said he thought it was an “incredible offer.”
Browder was on vacation at his Colorado home at the time, imagining that blacked-out Secret Service land cruisers would arrive and he would be taken to Moscow, where he would face a rigged show trial and a mysterious death behind bars.
It’s an incredible story, told with pace and panache, and reads like a thriller. There is something deeply offensive to our sense of justice about an innocent man framed by powerful forces. It’s a fear that Alexandre Dumas and Alfred Hitchcock have harnessed to dramatic effect, but what’s most troubling here is the Western establishment’s tolerance of Russian crimes and lies.
Lawyers, politicians, and the usual useful idiots have all been successfully recruited to the Russian cause, either through financial inducements, bribery, swinishly anti-Western sentiment, or perhaps worst of all, through complacency. Representatives of each of these groups appear in this book, in which witnesses to Russian corruption die under bizarre circumstances, falling from rooftops or dying from sudden heart attacks. Add to that poisoning, threats, intimidation, and all kinds of dirty tricks.
Browder remains impressively optimistic and determined. Perhaps the story of a very rich man taking action against the Russian state seems indulgent against the backdrop of the nightmare unfolding in Ukraine. But they are related events, and as this book makes all too clear, it has taken us far too long to appreciate the true nature of the regime that links them.
Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath by Bill Browder is published by Simon & Schuster (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Shipping costs may apply