For Bill Browder, Russian Sanctions are Personal
Bill Browder’s new book, Freezing Order, is an engaging window into his decade-long campaign against Russian human rights abusers and money launderers. Beginning with the murder of his tax attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, in 2009, the book follows the legal battles, assassinations, and high-level scandals intended to obstruct the fight against corruption in Putin’s Russia and beyond. Now with Russian sanctions at the forefront of foreign policy, that work is more important than ever. Recently, Bill Browder joined me to discuss Freezing Order, the war in Ukraine, and standing up to Vladimir Putin. Our conversation is below.
David Newstead: There’s a real sense of danger that you articulate in the book as you’re travelling and campaigning to get more countries to adopt their own versions of the Magnitsky Act. Reading it, it felt like any day-to-day interaction might later be revealed to be an elaborate legal strategy against you, a covert attempt to harm you or your family, or possibly kidnap you. Can you just take a moment to talk about the stress of those experiences over the last decade? It sounded very draining.
Bill Browder: Basically, after the Magnitsky Act was passed Vladimir Putin instructed his security services to go after me in every way possible. And that meant death threats, kidnapping threats, arrest threats, arrest warrants, lawsuits. They made propaganda movies about me. They had probably a whole corner of the floor of the St. Petersburg troll factory devoted towards trolling me online. So, every day there was some malicious activity targeting me, going after me. And I guess on one hand, after a while you kind of get used to it. I didn’t feel in distress every day, but I could never relax. Every time they threw something at me, I had to be fully on guard and ready to thwart whatever they were doing. There’s this expression in law enforcement about terrorism: I have to be lucky every day, they only have to be lucky once. And so, the level of vigilance that I’ve had to live my life over the last twelve years to not be destroyed by these people is probably unimaginable for any normal human being. When I was being ambushed in Aspen, I was with my 17-year-old son. Agents of the Russian government were approaching my children. The whole thing was just really not cool.
David Newstead: When we last spoke in 2015, you mentioned that there might be a feature film in the works about Sergei Magnitsky and this whole ordeal. Is that still a possibility? Are there any updates you’d be open to sharing?
Bill Browder: We’ve gravitated from feature film to miniseries, because that’s how everyone consumes their entertainment right now. Since I last spoke to you, I met a very talented British screenwriter named Nicholas Martin who has written the pilot episode of Red Notice. He’s famous for a new movie just coming out called Golda about Golda Meir. And he also wrote an Academy Award nominated film called Florence Foster Jenkins, which has nothing to do with espionage. It’s about a rich woman who wants to be an opera singer. In any event, he’s the screenwriter. Perhaps more importantly, we have Doug Liman who was the director of the Bourne Identity movies, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, American Made, and a whole bunch of others. He’s a top A-list director and he’s joined the team as the director of the miniseries. And we’re now just in discussions with streamers in different parts of the world about funding the miniseries.
David Newstead: That’s great. And again, reading the book, that element of drama and intrigue really comes across in a way that would be very compelling as a miniseries.
Bill Browder: You know, I get a lot of feedback on Twitter and various other social media. And everybody says this has got to be taken to Hollywood. You just can’t make this stuff up.
David Newstead: You’ve done a lot of interviews over the last ten years and especially since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Out of curiosity, what do you think press coverage of either the Magnitsky case specifically or of your campaign work often misses?
Bill Browder: Well, I think the one thing that really upsets me about the press coverage… and I just was noticing this today… is that the invasion of Ukraine didn’t happen on February 24, 2022. It happened in 2014. And the press has jumped into some kind of verbal trick that Vladimir Putin has played on everybody, which is to somehow call the invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014 as being done by “Russian-backed separatists.” They use this phrase “Russian-backed separatists” as if they’re making a distinction that it wasn’t Russia that invaded Ukraine. And that distinction being reported on by the press on a daily basis has led to no sanctions, no serious consequences for Russia. And the fact that Putin was able to trick the world into no consequences led him to believe that he could trick the world again this time around. He assumed that he would be getting the same sort of light touch treatment this time. And I think if the media had reported properly on what’s been done since 2014… I mean, 13,000 people died in Ukraine as a result of Russia’s invasion in 2014. And to call the invaders “Russian-backed separatists” I think is a true injustice to what’s really been going on and that has led to lethal consequences.
David Newstead: Throughout the book, you’re especially critical of the lack of action by the British government over the last twenty years in holding Putin to account. Since February, do you feel British policies are finally where they need to be or are there still critical gaps that need to be addressed?
Bill Browder: I think that Britain has truly stepped up to the plate. And I’m never one to compliment the British government, but I do right now. In terms of leadership, Britain was first to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine in large quantities. They sent soldiers to train Ukrainians how to use those before the invasion. I believe that Britain’s involvement on the military side has been a gamechanger. And if we look at the sanctions list, Britain now has a more devastating oligarch sanctions list than just about any other country. Certainly more than the United States. Roman Abramovich has been sanctioned here (in Britain), he hasn’t been sanctioned in the United States. A whole bunch of other high value targets have been sanctioned in the UK. Now, I think everybody still needs to do a lot more sanctions before this is really going to slow the flow of money to Putin. There’s 118 oligarchs and only 35 have been sanctioned. But I would say that Britain has done a pretty good job and has surprised me on the upside this time around.
David Newstead: I saw earlier this week where you had mentioned this 118 oligarch figure. What’s behind that discrepancy if only 30 something of them have been sanctioned? Why aren’t the others being targeted?
Bill Browder: I think it’s just lack of time and raw intelligence in the different governments to mechanically work their way through the list and do something about it, but I think they will. I mean, it’s sort of the obvious thing to do. And there’s no reason why one Russian oligarch worth $20 billion is on the list and another one isn’t.
David Newstead: In addition to the steps being taken by Western governments, what’s been your reaction to private companies withdrawing from Russia? Have there been any notable examples, either positively or negatively, that have surprised you over the last few months?
Bill Browder: Well, I think the scale of disinvestment and the speed of disinvestment has been another positive surprise. I mean, I’ve literally spent the last fifteen years at places like the World Economic Forum and Davos and other business conferences warning people not to invest in Russia. There were still a lot of people who didn’t listen to me. And all of a sudden, nearly everybody has bit the bullet and pulled their money out even at great loss and I think that’s really helpful.
David Newstead: How long do you think it would take for Russia to recover from an economic loss like that?
Bill Browder: I think this is going to take decades to recover from. And it’s basically going to require a total regime change. And not one that we administer, but one that the Russians administer. And it depends how that regime change then looks afterwards. If it’s another KGB organized regime, this could go on for many decades. But if Putin self-destructs and Alexei Navalny becomes the next president of Russia, I imagine that the West will be quite open to assisting and re-engaging very quickly.
David Newstead: You know one thing that was interesting in the book was that you name and shame several Western based white-collar professionals like lawyers and PR specialists among others who’ve been essentially acting on behalf of the Kremlin for years and are key to Putin’s money laundering operations. Considering the current crisis and death toll, do you think people like that should face further investigations or consequences for what they’ve done?
Bill Browder: Definitely. One of the first things I’m proposing, which is really an easy consequence which doesn’t take a lot of legislative change, is to have countries other than the ones they live in ban their visas from future travel. So for example, there’s a bunch of British lawyers who have tried to terrorize journalists on behalf of Russians. Congressman Steve Cohen wrote a letter last week to the Secretary of State asking for their visas to be denied. That’s one thing we can do right away. But I think a lot of these people have broken the law, not just been unethical. They’ve violated various statutes of law and I think they should be prosecuted. People need to go to jail when it comes to effectively being a traitor to their country.
David Newstead: You specifically touch on several cases where the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) needs to be more strongly enforced.
Bill Browder: Yeah. I mean, this is really a problem, because that’s the main tool for keeping agents of a foreign government from running wild across Washington and trying to disturb U.S. policy.
David Newstead: You also talk about your friendship with opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza and the attempts on his life. Kara-Murza recently returned to Russia against your advice, and he was promptly arrested. Do you have any idea of his current whereabouts or the conditions he’s being held in? Is he okay?
Bill Browder: He’s okay. I just spoke to his wife today. He’s being held in what they call a COVID prison. Like a COVID isolation prison. He’s not isolated from other prisoners, but he’s isolated from his lawyer. So, they’re kind of messing with him using administrative tools. But at the moment, I’m not aware of any mistreatment, any physical mistreatment that he’s been subjected to, which is in the very short-term a relief. But it doesn’t give me a lot of comfort.
David Newstead: You’ve previously outlined three possible endings to Putin’s presidency. The Mugabe scenario where he stays in power until he dies of old age. The Palace Coup scenario where he’s overthrown by other factions in the government. And the Maidan scenario where the Russian population collectively unseats him. How has your view on this evolved overtime and which of these scenarios do you feel like is most likely now?
Bill Browder: I think that the Palace Coup scenario has probably decreased, because Putin is so scared. You know, he’s sitting at these tables like 30-foot long away from his people. He’s truly terrified from anyone rising up. He’s been sending people off to jail among the FSB and his generals and so on and so forth.
But I think that the Maidan uprising scenario has probably increased significantly. Because if for some reason he missteps dramatically in this war, the cost that he’s foisted on the Russian people is so great that’s it’s not going to take a whole lot for fire in the streets. It’s hard for me to put a probability on it. And I think the main thing that would cause people to rise up would be a decisive military defeat. Not the kind that we’ve seen so far, but for the Russians to be chased out of Ukraine entirely. If that were to happen, I don’t think the Russian people would allow Vladimir Putin to remain power. And they wouldn’t exercise that desire in an organized fashion, it would be in a highly disorganized and unpleasant fashion.
But having said all that, I think that the Mugabe scenario is the most likely one. I now call it the Kim Jong-Un scenario, but we can call it the Mugabe scenario.
David Newstead: You know your book really helped close a gap for me in understanding how the Magnitsky case factors into the larger flow of money and the structure of the corruption scheme being perpetrated in Russia. So, lots of these crimes are going on, the stolen money funnels up, Putin and his inner circle get a percentage, and then that goes out of the country. Just because of the sheer scale of that corruption, do you believe that means there are hundreds or thousands of other Russians like Sergei Magnitsky who are victims of injustice represented in all this money being siphoned out of the country?
Bill Browder: I think there are hundreds of thousands of them. In fact, there’s some statistic that there are 300,000 economic hostages in Russian prisons right now. I mean, they’re not all being killed, but they’re all being taken hostage.
David Newstead: If there was just one thing that you wanted Americans to know or to do in response to all this information, what is it?
Bill Browder: That Vladimir Putin and a thousand people around him have stolen a trillion dollars from the Russian people in the last 22 years and that’s the driver of everything he does: covering up that crime, distracting the people from that crime, and trying to keep that money safe. Everything about their actions in the world is driven and originating from that theft.
