LONDON â My first exposure to Bill Browder, author of Red Notice, came in 2006 at the Hedge Fund Conference in Nice in the South of France. He was one of the star attractions. His Russia-focussed Hermitage Fund (hailed as the best-performing money fund in the world) at that time. Confident, brash, outspoken; the Browder I saw on the stage had the audience in the palm of his hand. He was riding a wave of the best kind of popularity â the adoration of his peers. The Bill Browder I met in London this week was rather different. Self-contained, professional to the point of being a little guardedâŚhe struck me as one of that most rare of our species â a man whoâs on purpose. Itâs all hardly surprising because Browder has been through the mill and back in the dozen years since I last saw him. The change is for the better. – Alec Hogg
In 2009, hedge fund manager Bill Browderâs life changed dramatically when his Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was jailed on trumped-up charges and, after 11 months of torture, was beaten to death by eight prison guards. As youâll hear in what follows, that event put Browder onto a different path, one which accelerated in 2015 with the publication of his global bestselling autobiographical book Red Notice.
Iâm not an author. Iâm a hedge fund manager and I became a political activist and this book has been a wild bestseller all over the world. I think weâve now got 26 different languages of Red Notice and it really spoke to people. It touched people. Itâs not a finance book. Itâs not a politics book. Itâs kind of a detective story and so a lot of people who donât really like to read non-fiction, found it very pleasant to read because basically, I tell anyone whoâs hesitant, âJust read the first five pages and it just grabs you by the scruff of your neck you wonât be able to put it down until you finish reading the book.â
And it opens eyes in a field, which we hear so much about at the moment.
Well, I would say that the most common reaction to the book is that people knew that Putin and Russia were bad. They always knew that beforehand but they had no idea how bad and what my book does is it really just lays out in granular detail the incredible permeation of corruption and ugliness inside the Russian system â stuff that goes so far beyond peopleâs worst expectations that it really changes peopleâs views of Putin and Russia.
So, what do you do now?
Iâm a fulltime justice activist. Iâm working full time on the Magnitsky Justice Campaign. We have one primary objective, which is to get legislation passed in all countries around the world (called the Magnitsky Act), which will freeze the assets and ban the visas of the people who killed Sergei Magnitsky and the people who commit other atrocities around the world and to punish them in Sergeiâs name. This is my lifeâs work now.
Not surprisingly, itâs a story that fascinates South Africans. Iâve been referred to the book by quite a few people in the upper echelons of financial services â both in that country and abroad â because less than a year ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin cast a long shadow over that country. Then South African President Jacob Zuma spoke publicly and often about his affection for Putin and he even fired cabinet ministers who refused to follow what was quite transparently Putinâs direction, specifically over the unaffordable and unnecessary Russian nuclear power deal that Zuma was ever-determined to push through. Itâs a tale that Browder has been following rather closely.
I know a lot about the country because South Africaâs probably my favourite country in the world. I started travelling there back in 1996. I went there for a trip. I had been tugged there at the time, by my wife. We were staying at the Mount Nelson in Cape Town. I had a prejudice against South Africa, not having any interest in going there because of all the ugliness connected to apartheid. Every American was taught during the apartheid era that there was something really wrong with South Africa and so I really didnât want to go there. I showed up there and I thought, âGod, this is the most unbelievably great place Iâve ever been to.â I just fell in love with the country and since then, Iâve been going back every year (sometimes twice a year). I ended up buying a house and it became my second home.
Unfortunately, as Putin started to chase me and try to have me imprisoned. I got a warning from senior people at the minister level in the South African government that it probably wasnât safe for me to travel there anymore because of Zumaâs close relationship with Putin and so, I stopped travelling there four years ago, which is a great heartbreak for me because I love the country, love the nature, love the people, and it was really a tough thing for me not to be able to go back there.
With the change in government?
Well, Iâm still trying to figure out what that means. Putin is quite good at getting his tentacles into people and situations and so, it probably isnât just Zuma at this point that was compromised. So, Iâve got to be very careful because while I love the country, I donât want to end up⌠If I end up getting sent back to Russia because I wanted to go on a great vacation to South Africa, thatâs a death sentence for me.
And thatâs what the book Red Notice is all about. Just explain what a Red Notice is.
So, a Red Notice describes⌠Thereâs something called the Interpol Red Notice â The International Police Organisation â issues these arrest warrants called Red Notices. Basically, any country in the world thatâs a member of Interpol, which includes almost every country in the world⌠if theyâre after somebody they issue a Red Notice and if the person theyâre after then crosses a border and gives the passport at the border crossing then it gets flagged on the Interpol system and then the person gets arrested. In 98% of the cases, itâs a totally legitimate and useful crime fighting system but there are a lot of countries like Russia that abuse Interpol for political or criminal purposes. In my case, after a long and horrible story of my lawyer Sergei Magnitsky being murdered and us uncovering a massive government corruption scheme that he was murdered for, the Russian government has been abusing Interpol Red Notices.
In my case, when I wrote the book I think they had done two abuses. They had tried twice on the Interpol system by now. Here we are in September 2018 and theyâve now made seven attempts to abuse the Interpol system to have me arrested. Generally, a guy whoâs sitting in a brown uniform at some border somewhere⌠He doesnât know my story of political struggle with Vladimir Putin. All he knows is that there is an arrest warrant for me and so it can be pretty precarious for me to travel because of this Russian attempt to have me arrested all the time.
We had a situation in South Africa with a âcolourfulâ entrepreneur who is involved in the mining industry called Zunaid Moti who was arrested last month in Munich. Again, through a Red Notice in Russia. He claims it is a member of the Russian Mafia who got the Red Notice issued. Is that possible?
Well, I donât know the specifics of the story but I can say itâs not only possible, but itâs probable that if somebody ends up in a business dispute with a high-powered Russian, that Russian can just go to the Russian Bureau of Interpol and give a bribe, and get a person put on the system. Itâs very easy and Russia tends to do this very often with investigative journalists, with opposition, with politicians, and with businesspeople who have fallen foul of the regime. So, itâs something they do often. Itâs something they do regularly and again, I donât know the details of this particular story but it wouldnât surprise me if it was a totally illegitimate Red Notice.
So, in your case, four years ago, you were tipped off that there was potentially a Red Notice that could be issued if you went to South Africa. What would have happened if you had gone to the country and Putin had managed (or Russia had managed) to get this issued?
Well, if I had gone to the country and there was a Red Notice, one of two things could happen. The first is I would be arrested, so thatâs pretty much automatic. Then the question is, âWhat happens to me after Iâm arrested?â I have quite a bit of experience with this because this actually happened. A couple of months ago, I was in Spain and I was arrested on a Russian Interpol Red Notice and in Spain, I was able to tweet out the fact that I was being arrested as it was happening and actually did a second tweet with a picture from the back of the police car as I was being taken to the police station. So, by the time Iâd gotten to the police station, there was an absolute viral frenzy of concern about what was going to happen to me. I donât know exactly how the Russians got the Spanish to act so quickly.
Probably some friendly backhanders were passed out in advance but what I do know is that when this issue went global and viral, 100 journalists called up Interpol, 100 more journalists called up the Spanish Minister of Interior, 100 more journalists called the British Foreign Office because Iâm a British citizen, and by the time I got to the police station Iâd only been incarcerated for two hours before I was released because it was such an international scandal. Thatâs the good outcome. The bad outcome is that I sit in jail and in South Africa, this could have happened where I get arrested, I sit in jail, and as you know, South African jails are not particularly nice. At that point, Putin calls up his friend Zuma and says, âHey, youâve got the guy I want. Please send him back.â South Africa, in theory, has a judicial system thatâs solid and independent but itâs also got a government that has been corrupt and so my fear is that⌠If it had gone through the judicial system, I probably would have been released.
Had it gone through the political system, I probably would have been handed over to the Russians. I should point out that if I was handed over to the Russians, itâs not just an issue of me going to jail in Russia. This is an issue of me being tortured and killed in a Russian prison. I donât say that casually and I donât say that lightly. This is exactly what happened to my lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky who uncovered a massive government corruption scheme about ten years ago and in retaliation for exposing it, he was arrested, tortured for 358 days and killed at the age of 37.
Thatâs the perfect segue for the meat of Browderâs book, which exposes corruption on such a grand scale that it will cause anyone who reads it to think twice before entertaining any business or any other kind of relationship with the Russian elite.
The whole story hinges around $230m of taxes that we had paid to the Russian government in 2006. We paid this enormous tax bill. I had been kicked out of Russia for exposing corruption in companies Iâd invested in. After I was kicked out of the country, I decided I didnât want to own any more shares in Russia because I thought they might seize them and so we sold all of our shares. We paid a $230m tax bill and then subsequently, my offices were raided, all of our documents were seized and those documents were then used by a group of corrupt officials and criminals to refund and steal the $230m of taxes that we paid. I had a team of lawyers. Sergei Magnitsky headed the team but I had a bunch of other Russian lawyers who figured out the tax rebate fraud and Sergei exposed it, and as it was exposed the Russian authorities went after all of our lawyers.
Two of my lawyers were summoned to a police station in Kazan, Russia. Kazan is in Tatarstan, which is in the centre of Russia and has a reputation for being one of the most brutal places in the world and that particular police station had a history of raping detainees with champagne bottles and just the most horrific things. So, when these guys were summoned, both these lawyers then fled. One of them went East and ended up fleeing through Khabarovsk, which is in the Pacific of Russia and the other one fled through Moscow airport. Both of them safely got out of the country. Sergei had not been summoned yet and had not been arrested. He was of the view that he had not done anything wrong and so why should he leave? He was what I would describe as a stubborn idealist and he believed that because he had done nothing wrong, the law would protect him and everything would be fine.
So, he stayed. He not only stayed but he testified again, against the corrupt officials and five weeks after his second testimony he was arrested by some of the same officials he testified against, put in pre-trial detention, and tortured for 358 days. He was put in cells with 14 inmates and 8 beds and they had to sleep in shifts. They were put in cells with no heat and no window panes in December in Moscow so they could have frozen to death. Cells with no toilet and just a hole in the floor where the sewage would bubble up. Theyâd move him from cell to cell to cell in the middle of the night and the purpose of all this was to get him to withdraw his testimony against these corrupt police officers and sign a false confession to say that he stole the $230m and he did so on my instruction. Sergei, who was a man of unbelievable integrity; for him, the idea of perjuring himself and bearing false witness was more horrifying than any physical pain that they could inflict upon him, refused to do what they said.
So, the pressure got worse and worse and more and more intense. He ended up getting very sick. He got terrible pains in his stomach. He ended up losing 20kgs and he was diagnosed as having pancreatitis and gallstones and needing an operation, which was scheduled for the 1st of August 2009. About a week before the operation, these same tormentors came to him and said, âHereâs the false confession. Please sign it.â Again, he refused and in retaliation they abruptly moved him to a maximum-security prison called Pacheco and the most significant thing about Pacheco for Sergei was that there were no medical facilities there to treat his ailments and the situation got worse and worse and worse. He and his lawyers wrote 20 different desperate requests to every different branch of the criminal justice system for medical attention. Every one of their requests were either ignored or in some cases, denied in writing and on the night of November 16th 2009, Sergei Magnitsky went into critical condition.
On that night, the authorities didnât want to have responsibility for him anymore. They put him in an ambulance and sent him to a different prison that had a medical wing but when he arrived at this prison; instead of putting him in the emergency room, they put him in an isolation cell and they chained him to a bed and then eight riot guards with rubber batons beat him to death. He was 37 years old. He left a wife and 2 children. That was November 16th 2009, so that was almost 9 years ago.
You took it personally. You can hear it. Itâs still very deeply ingrained in you and you didnât let it lie. What motivated you to go to the extreme lengths that you went to thereafter to exact some retribution?
Well, when I got the news of his murder it was just the most heartbreaking thing that ever happened in my life â that a man who had been working for me/in my service and had been loyal to me right until the end, trying to do the right thingâŚ
He could have âshoppedâ you.
He could have and I would have liked him to because he would have been alive still. He didnât and he died at the age of 37 and he was the most promising, wonderful young man and he died. He died because of me and for me, that weighs on me so heavily I canât even tell you. The only way that I can have any psychological peace in my life is to go after the people that killed him and make sure they face justice. On the morning when I learned of his death after the hysteria died down, it was obvious to me that I had only one life choice, which was to use all of my time, resources, and energy to go after the people who killed him. I made a vow to his memory, to his family, and to myself that I was going to do that until I got justice and thatâs what Iâve been doing for the last 9 years.
So, we tried to get justice first in Russia after Sergei was murdered and Vladimir Putin personally got involved in circling the wagons and he personally exonerated everybody involved and even gave honours and promotions to some of the people who were most complicit. So, I said to myself, âWe have to find justice outside of Russiaâ and then I said, âWell, how do we find justice outside of Russia?â and I came up with an interesting idea, which was that the people who killed Sergei didnât kill him for ideology or religion. They killed him for money. They killed him for $230m and those people who do all these terrible crimes donât keep their money in Russia. They keep their money in the West. Thatâs why I took this idea to Washington and I said, âLetâs freeze the assets and ban the visas of the people who killed Sergei Magnitskyâ and I first took this idea to a Democratic Senator named Benjamin Cardin. He chaired something called the US Helsinki Commission, which is a US government body, which deals with human rights in the former Soviet Union and he agreed to co-sponsor something which became known as the Magnitsky Act. He said to me, âIf we want to have any luck in getting this legislation passed, we need a Republican because everything needs to be done bipartisanâ and he said, âGo find a Republican.â
So, I looked down the list of Republican Senators and thereâs one name that just jumped right off the page for me, which was Senator John McCain. John McCain, as I think everybody in the world knows; before he was a Senator he was a soldier and when he was a soldier, he was a soldier in Vietnam. He was a fighter pilot in Vietnam and he was shot down. He was put into a Vietnamese prison camp for five-and-a-half years and he was viciously tortured. I thought to myself, âIf thereâs one person in Washington who could truly empathise with the injustice and the horrific abuse that Sergei Magnitsky went through, itâs John McCain.â It wasnât easy getting an appointment with John McCain. He was one of the most powerful people in the Senate and I was able through all sorts of reaching out and networking to find somebody who could help me get a meeting with him. I got a 15-minute meeting with John McCain in 2010 shortly after Sergei died. I went to my meeting with John McCain and he didnât know what he was meeting with me about (someone whoâs doing a favour for a friend, getting me the meeting) so he sat down and as he did â and he probably has 25 15-minute meetings/day â I started telling him the story. As I was telling him the story, he was leaning forward. You could see this deep expression of concern on his face and he started asking me questions and I started answering the questions.
My 15 minutes was up before I got anywhere near into the story and I was really upset that I was going to lose my opportunity and so the 15 minutes comes up and the secretary pops in and says, âSenator McCain, you know your next meeting is waiting outside.â He puts his hand up and he says, âNo, I need more time hereâ and so I kept on telling the story and she came in again and his waiting room was backing up with all of his subsequent meetings. I spent an hour with John McCain and he said, âThis is the most horrifying story. What can I do?â and I said, âWell, you can co-sponsor the Magnitsky Actâ and he said, âOf course, Iâll do that. What else can I do?â I said, âWell, I donât knowâ and he said, âWell, Iâm going to do anything that I can to help you get justice for Sergei Magnitskyâ and then he and Senator Cardin became my two partners in Washington. We took this Magnitsky Act from a concept to a piece of legislation which was eventually passed two years later in the Senate 92-4. 87% of the House Representatives passed it and it became law on December 14th 2012.
And Vladimir Putin was not happy.
Vladimir Putin was not happy. Vladimir Putin was furious. He was so furious because this basically put his whole business model at risk. Vladimir Putin is a kleptocrat. He does terrible crimesâŚviolent crimes such as murder, kidnapping, and extortion to get money and then he keeps that money offshore and the Magnitsky Act basically says anyone who commits Human Rights Abuses in Russia can have their assets frozen offshore and so he was furious. He abandoned the adoption of Russian orphans by American families as a first response. He created an anti-Magnitsky list where he put a bunch of US officials as a second response and then he declared that repealing the Magnitsky Act was the single most important foreign policy priority. Heâs been running that foreign policy priority since then, trying to get the Magnitsky Act repealed and itâs kind of backfired on him because the more he does to try to get it repealed, the more other countries get interested in it. We now have seven countries that have the Magnitsky Act. The United States, Canada, UK, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Gibraltar and we have ten countries that weâre now working the Magnitsky Act on, including South Africa. South Africa is now one of the countries that weâre beginning a legislative initiative with.
What does it do once itâs enacted?
It freezes the assets and bans the visas of Russian Human Rights violators. I say Russian Human Rights violators but actually in fact, the Magnitsky Act now applies to Human Rights violators everywhere around the world. Itâs named after Sergei Magnitsky. Itâs of course, focussed on Russia but a lot of other bad guys get targeted as well. E.g. a few weeks ago, the US just sanctioned a number of Burmese generals that had been involved in the genocide against the Rohingya people. In another situation about a month before that, the US government sanctioned a bunch of Nicaraguan security officials that were responsible for the murder of peaceful protestors in Nicaragua. So, this is not just about Russia. Of course, every bad guy who gets sanctionedâŚtheir governments get furious when it happens but it all comes back to Sergei Magnitsky.
I suppose then the obvious question would be, âWhy do the normal Russian people tolerate this kind of governance?â
Well, the normal Russian people donât know about this. The reason they donât know about this is that Vladimir Putin is such a bad guy and such a thin-skinned bad guy that he has basically taken control of all the means of communication in Russia to the people. He controls all the television. He controls all the newspapers. He controls all the radios and now he controls the internet. So, the message thatâs being broadcast to the Russians is that Sergei Magnitsky was some terrible crook and that Iâm a terrible crook and that Russia is a terrible victim of these innocent crooks trying to take over their country.
What about you? What about your personal security?
Well, my security is certainly at risk. I think itâs fair to say that Iâm Putinâs No.1 foreign enemy. I think that they would like to kill me but I think theyâd like to kill me and get away with it. They donât want another Sergei Magnitsky fallout of a situation and so right now, their strategy has been to arrest me and get me back to Russia where they can then kill me quietly in their own prisons without anybody being able to prove what they did. Thatâs their strategy and so my main concern is to not be arrested and sent back to Russia right now.
How do you defend against that kind of powerful opponent?
Well, there are certain countries that have now fully recognised the illegitimacy of Putinâs campaign against me and so in Britain (where weâre sitting right now); the Russians have made 12 attempts to have me arrested and extradited and every one of those attempts has failed because the British government protects me. I would say the US government protects me, the Canadian government protects me. If I were to travel to Australia, the Australian government would protect me and the German government protects me. The Dutch government protects me but if I travel to Thailand I donât think that the Thai government would protect me or Dubai. I donât think the UAE government would protect me and so Iâve got to be very careful about which countries I travel to which leads us back to the beginning of the conversation where South Africa⌠I donât know.
Yet.
Yeah. Iâm hoping that I can come back to South Africa. It would seem kind of an obvious rule of law place that I should be okay but at the momentâŚ
But, itâs so interesting. There have been many rumours swirling around in South Africa, includingâŚwell, more than rumours including that the Russians were given a deal by the former President to build power stations â R1trn â which would have literally bankrupted the country. Now, thatâs off the table but how do you, given your background and your understanding of these things and the public who just hears lots of noise; how do you know what to believe and what not to believe?
Well, weâre in a world of misinformation, fake news, real news being described as being fake news and so, of course, everything is very confusing right now. However, the one thing that isnât confusing is that there was a contract signed by your former President with the Russian Nuclear Energy Company Rosatom to basically take over the South African energy business, which is the most absurd thing you can imagine. Putting aside whether it was cheap or expensive to sign that contract, but one doesnât want to make yourself beholden to the Russians because they misuse that and again, you donât have to be a rocket scientist to look back at history and say, âWhatâs happened to the Europeans who were depending on Russian Natural Gas?â Well, a bunch of times Russians â for political reasons â have turned off the gas and a number of countries have frozen in the winter and so the idea that South Africans would make themselves beholdenâŚ
I mean, Russiaâs thousands of miles away. Itâs at the other end of the planet. To give the Russians this kind of sway over your country is just absurd. On top of that, I believe that these contracts were never done honestly and transparently and there were people who benefited personally from these contracts. I donât know who and I donât know the details, because thatâs how the Russians operate. The way the Russians operate is a combination of bribery and blackmail. At first, theyâre all buddy-buddy and friendly, backslapping, and âoh my god, youâre gonna get this and youâre gonna get thatâ and âisnât it great we can all do business togetherâ and all of a sudden, some politician has got some $10m in a Swiss bank account and then the Russians start asking them to do stuff that theyâre uncomfortable doing and then the Russians say. âIf you donât do this, weâre going to expose you and not only will we expose you. Weâll kill you.â
Then all of a sudden, these politicians who were feeling all good about themselves with $10m in their bank account, now all of a sudden have to do really horrible things that they never intended to do. They thought they were just signing a Nuclear Energy deal. All of a sudden, theyâre beholden to the Russian Mafia, which is the Russian government. Iâve seen this happen in so many different circumstances around the world. Itâs not just South Africa. Iâve seen it happen in Cyprus. Iâve seen it happen in Switzerland. Iâve seen it happen in Guatemala. Iâve seen it happen all over the place where politicians and government officials end up getting sucked into this horrible blackmail/bribery trap.
There is a State Capture investigation which has just begun in South Africa â The Zondo Commission. What questions should they be asking? Given that the power utility Eskom is right at the centre of a lot of the corruption that went on and the links youâve just described.
Well, I think the way that one does these investigations is to look at who is making the decisions that were not economically rational and then look at those individuals and look at their financial affairs. Dig deep into the financial affairs to find out of if they received any money from the Russians. Itâs not all that hard. Money leaves a permanent, indelible trail.
Since 2005, when you almost found yourself being flung into a jail in Russia, you managed to get out on that trip. Have you ever wanted to go back to the country?
Well, I would love to go back if there was a different government that wasnât going to torture and kill me. I think someday the government will change and there might be a renaissance of democracy and goodness at some point maybe down the road, in 10 or 20 years. Iâd like to go back as a friend of Russia who tried to make it better when thereâs a friendly government but, in the meantime, Iâm staying as far away from there as possible.
Are there other friends of Russia? During apartheid South Africa, there were many anti-apartheid activists. Are there other people who are activists like you are?
Yes, all over the place and growing. Everybody sees whatâs going on there. Thereâs a lot of Russians outside of Russia who are active in this area. There are a lot of Russians who are inside of Russia who are quietly active in this area, just like the whole apartheid story. Itâs actually an interesting South African connection to my Campaign for Justice for Sergei Magnitsky (since weâre talking to a South African audience here), which was that shortly after Sergei was killed, I was in Cape Town and I was watchingâŚIâd brought a bunch of Human Rights movies on disc. This was back in the day when we still had DVDâs. One of the movies that I watched was âCry Freedomâ, which was the story of Steve Biko. I watched this movie and I thought that it just has unbelievable parallels with what happened with Sergei Magnitsky. The murder in custody. The cover-up for the murder.
Then the exposure of the cover-up and after the movie I was so moved by it that I went on to Wikipedia to look up the characters and the main character had passed away from cancer but the other character who wasnât in the movie but was a central person exposing the Steve Biko story, was Helen Zille. I typed up a letter to her that said Iâm going to be in South Africa for three more days and I told her the story of Sergei Magnitsky and asked if there was any way we could meet. This time, she was the governor of the Cape Province and sheâs a pretty important and busy person but she got my letter and said, âAbsolutely, we can meet.â She came over to my house and we spent the whole morning together talking about fighting for justice and she was the one who said that the thing that changed everything in the anti-apartheid movements was US sanctions.
That was always the thing that stuck in my mind when I then went to fight for sanctions which eventually passed and eventually became a huge part of our story. In a certain way, my story is very much connected to the anti-apartheid story coming from one of the main activists.
And from your perspective, how long will you be on this path for?
I think this is my life now. Itâs not just about Sergei Magnitsky anymore. There are a lot of other victims who come to me with horrific stories and we have now created a tool which we can use to right some wrongs and so Iâm Iâve found my new profession, which is as a justice activist.
Fascinating story, isnât it? Bill Browder, one of the bravest men I know. His book Red Notice reads How I became Putinâs No. 1 enemyâ.
This has been the Rational Perspective. Until the next time, cheerio.
