Sir Bill Browder | |
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Born | William Felix Browder 23 April 1964 [1] Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. |
Education | University of Colorado, Boulder University of Chicago (BSc) Stanford University (MBA) |
Occupation(s) | CEO, Hermitage Capital Management |
Spouse | Elena Molokova [2] |
Children | 3 |
Father | Felix Browder |
Relatives | Earl Browder (grandfather) William Browder (uncle) Andrew Browder (uncle) Joshua Browder (son) |
Sir William Felix Browder, KCMG (born 23 April 1964) [1] is an American-born English financier and political activist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisor to the Hermitage Fund, which was formerly the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. [3] [4] [5] The Hermitage Fund was founded in partnership with Republic National Bank, with $25 million in seed capital. The fund, and associated accounts, eventually grew to $4.5 billion of assets under management. In 1997, the Hermitage Fund was the best-performing fund in the world, up by 238%. [6] Browder's primary investment strategy was shareholder rights activism. Browder took on large Russian companies such as Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, Unified Energy Systems, and Sidanco. [7] In retaliation, on 13 November 2005, Browder was refused entry to Russia, deported to the UK, and declared a threat to Russian national security. [8]
Eighteen months after Browder was deported, on 4 June 2007, Hermitage Capital's offices in Moscow were raided by twenty-five officers of Russia's Interior Ministry. Twenty-five more officers raided the Moscow office of Browder's American law firm, Firestone Duncan, seizing the corporate registration documents for Hermitage's investment holding companies. Browder assigned Sergei Magnitsky, head of the tax practice at Firestone Duncan, to investigate the purpose of the raid. Magnitsky discovered that while those documents were in the custody of the police, they had been used to fraudulently re-register Hermitage's holding companies to the name of an ex-convict. [9] Magnitsky was subsequently arrested by Russian authorities and died in prison.
The reregistration of the Hermitage holding companies was an intermediate step before the perpetrators used those companies to apply for a fraudulent $230 million (~$326 million in 2023) tax refund, awarded on 24 December 2007. [10]
After Magnitsky's death, Browder lobbied for Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a law to punish Russian human rights violators, which was signed into law in 2012 by President Barack Obama. [11] In 2013, both Magnitsky and Browder were tried in absentia in Russia for tax fraud. [12] Both men—Magnitsky had died four years prior—were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. Interpol rejected Russian requests to arrest Browder, saying the case was political. [13] In 2014, the European Parliament voted for sanctions against 30 Russians believed complicit in the Magnitsky case; this was the first time it had taken such action.
On 21 October 2017, the Russian government attempted to place Browder on Interpol's arrest list of criminal fugitives, the fifth such request, which Interpol eventually rejected on 26 October 2017. [14] [15] After the initial request, Browder's visa waiver for the United States was automatically suspended. After a bipartisan protest by U.S. Congressional leaders, his visa waiver was restored the following day. [14] While visiting Spain in May 2018, Browder was arrested by Spanish authorities on a new Russian Interpol warrant and transferred to an undisclosed Spanish police station. [16] He was released two hours later, after Interpol confirmed that it was a political case. [17]
William Felix Browder was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and he grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of mathematician Felix Browder, and the grandson of Earl Browder. He attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, before transferring to the University of Chicago, from which he graduated with a degree in economics. He earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business [18] in 1989 and entered the financial sector. [19]
Browder's paternal grandfather Earl Browder was born in Kansas in 1891. [1] He was a radical and had lived in the Soviet Union for several years from 1927 and married Raisa Berkman, a Jewish Russian woman while living there. [1] After his return to the United States in 1931, [1] Earl Browder became the leader of the Communist Party USA from 1930 to 1945 and ran for U.S. president in 1936 and 1940. [9] After World War II, Browder lost favour with Moscow and was expelled from the U.S. Communist Party. [1]
Earl and his wife Raisa had three children, all sons, and all three became mathematicians who headed the mathematics departments of top American universities, [1] including Bill Browder's father Felix Browder, who married Eva (Tislowitz). Felix was a mathematics prodigy who had entered MIT at 16, acquired his bachelor's degree in two years, and by the age of 20 received a Ph.D. from Princeton. [1] But during the McCarthy era, he could not find work because he was the son of the onetime head of the Communist Party USA. [20] [21] After a series of job rejections in the 1950s, he was championed by Eleanor Roosevelt, the former First Lady who was then chairman of the board of Brandeis University; she overrode the rest of the board who were afraid to hire him, and he gained a position at Brandeis. [1] Felix went on to chair the mathematics department at the University of Chicago, and in 1999 became the president of the American Mathematical Society. [1]
Felix Browder was renowned in the field of nonlinear functional analysis—a branch of mathematics with wide applications to such fields as physics, engineering, and finance. He was instrumental in establishing a science and technology center in conjunction with Princeton University and Bell Labs. In 1999, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by President Bill Clinton, for his "key role in the explosive growth of nonlinear functional analysis and its applications to partial differential equations in recent years". [1]
Bill Browder has one sibling, Tom Browder, who entered the University of Chicago at 15, and became a particle physicist. [1] Bill Browder's son Joshua is the founder of DoNotPay, a startup that helps to automate certain legal services. [22]
Browder started his career in the Eastern European practice of the Boston Consulting Group in London, [23] then worked for Robert Maxwell's Maxwell Communication Corporation, and after that managed the Russian proprietary investments desk at Salomon Brothers. [24]
In 1999, Browder received naturalisation as a British citizen. Meanwhile, he relinquished his U.S. citizenship in 1998. [3] [4] [5] He cited that he did so because of "a legacy of bad feeling about the rule of law" as a result of his family having been "viciously persecuted" by U.S. authorities in the 1950s, citing especially his communist grandfather, Earl Browder who was imprisoned twice during the era of McCarthyism. [3] [25]
Browder and Edmond Safra (1932–1999) founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996 for the purpose of investing initial seed capital of $25 million in Russia during the period of the mass privatisation after the fall of the Soviet Union. Beny Steinmetz was another of the original investors in Hermitage. [26]
Following the Russian financial crisis of 1998, Browder remained committed to Hermitage's original mission of investing in Russia, despite significant outflows from the fund. Hermitage became a prominent activist shareholder in the Russian gas giant Gazprom, the large oil company Surgutneftegas, RAO UES, Sberbank, Sidanco, Avisma, and Volzhanka. [27] Browder exposed management corruption and corporate malfeasance in these partly state-owned companies. [28] He has been quoted as saying: "You had to become a shareholder activist if you didn't want everything stolen from you". [9]
In 1999, Avisma filed a RICO lawsuit against Browder and other Avisma investors including Kenneth Dart, alleging they illegally siphoned company assets into offshore accounts and then transferred the funds to U.S. accounts at Barclays. Browder and his co-defendants settled with Avisma in 2000; they sold their Avisma shares as part of the confidential settlement agreement. [29]
From 1995 to 2006, Hermitage Capital Management was one of the largest foreign investors in Russia, [30] and Browder amassed millions through his management of the fund. In both 2006 and 2007, he earned an estimated £125–150 million. [31]
In March 2013, HSBC, a bank that serves as the trustee and manager of Hermitage Capital Management, announced that it would end the fund's operations in Russia. The decision was taken amid two legal cases against Browder: a libel court case in London and a trial in absentia for tax evasion in Moscow. [32]
In June 2018, HSBC reached a settlement with the Russian government to pay a £17 million fine to Russian authorities for its part in alleged tax avoidance. [33] [34]
In 2005, after ten years of business deals in Russia, Browder was blacklisted by the Russian government as a "threat to national security" and denied entry to the country. The Economist wrote that the Russian government blacklisted Browder because he interfered with the flow of money to "corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices". Browder had earlier supported Russian president Vladimir Putin. [35]
As reported in 2008 by The New York Times , "over the next two years (according to Browder) several of his associates and lawyers, as well as their relatives, became victims of crimes, including severe beatings and robberies during which documents were taken". [9] In June 2007, dozens of police officers "swooped down on the Moscow offices of Hermitage and its law firm, confiscating documents and computers. When a member of the firm protested that the search was illegal, he was beaten by officers and hospitalized for two weeks, said the firm's head, Jamison R. Firestone." [9] Hermitage became "victim of what is known in Russia as 'corporate raiding': seizing companies and other assets with the aid of corrupt law enforcement officials and judges". Three Hermitage holding companies were seized on what the company's lawyers insist were bogus charges. [9]
The raids in June 2007 enabled corrupt law enforcement officers to steal the corporate registration documents of three Hermitage holding companies. They perpetrated a fraud, claiming (and receiving) a rebate of $230 million (~$335 million in 2023) in taxes paid by those companies to the Russian state in 2006. [36] In November 2008, one of Hermitage's auditors, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested. He was "charged with two counts of aggravated tax evasion committed in conspiracy with Mr. Browder in respect of Dalnyaya Step and Saturn" (ECHR § 35). [37] Magnitsky died on 16 November 2009, in prison, after eleven months in pretrial detention, nearly the limit allowed under the law. [38]
On 27 August 2019, the European Court for Human Rights, in judging a case brought against Russia by the Magnitsky family, ruled that Magnitsky was detained in conditions which amounted to "inhuman and degrading treatment in breach of Article 3 of the Convention" (§ 193). This, combined with negligence, lack of adequate medical care, and ill-treatment also amounted to a breach of the convention (§ 240). Magnitsky's family was awarded €34,000. [37]
As a result of the controversy related to his arrest and evidence of mistreatment and claimed abuse, his death aroused international coverage and outrage. Magnitsky's death was the catalyst for passage by the U.S. Congress, of the Magnitsky Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama on 14 December 2012. The act directly targeted individuals involved in the Magnitsky affair by prohibiting their entrance to the United States and their use of its banking system.[ citation needed ]
In February 2013, Russian officials announced that Browder and Magnitsky would both be tried for evading $16.8 million (~$21.7 million in 2023) in taxes. In March 2013, Russian authorities announced that they would be investigating Hermitage's acquisition of Gazprom shares worth $70 million (~$90.3 million in 2023). The investigation was to focus on whether Browder violated any Russian laws when Hermitage used Russian companies registered in the region of Kalmykia to buy shares. An investigation by the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights cleared Browder of the accusations of improprieties that surfaced at this time. [39] Browder was also charged with trying to gain access to Gazprom's financial reports. [40]
Browder admitted having sought influence in Gazprom, but denied any wrongdoing. [41] He said that purchasing Gazprom shares was an investment in the Russian economy, and the desire to influence the Gazprom management was driven by the need to expose a "huge fraud going on at the company". However, at the time it was illegal for foreigners to buy Gazprom shares in Russia, and he did it through shell companies that hid his ownership. He also said that the scheme of using Russian-registered subsidiaries entitled to tax advantages was practised by other foreign investors at the time and was not illegal. [42] He also said that he believed the trial was a response to the United States passing the Magnitsky Act, which had blacklisted Russian officials involved in Magnitsky's death, preventing them from entering the U.S. The Financial Times reported that this trial was the first in Russian history that included a dead defendant. [43]
Amnesty International described the trial as "a whole new chapter in Russia's worsening human rights record" and a "sinister attempt to deflect attention from those who committed the crimes Magnitsky exposed". [44]
On 11 July 2013, Browder was convicted in absentia by a district criminal court in Moscow on charges under article 199 of the RF Criminal Code (tax-evasion by organisations), and sentenced to nine years. Magnitsky, according to Browder, was posthumously convicted of fraud. [45] [46] In May 2013 and again in July 2013, Interpol rejected requests by Russia's Interior Ministry [47] to put Browder on its search list and locate and arrest him, saying that Russia's case against him was "predominantly political". [48]
In April 2014, the European Parliament unanimously passed a resolution to impose sanctions on more than 30 Russians complicit in the Magnitsky case; the first time in the parliament's history that a vote was held to establish a public sanctions list. [49] However, the vote was only advisory to the European Commission, which did not act on it.[ citation needed ]
In December 2017, Browder was tried in absentia and convicted of tax evasion and deliberate bankruptcy by a Russian court, receiving a sentence of nine years of imprisonment. [50]
On 30 May 2018, Browder was arrested by Spanish police in Madrid on a Russian Interpol arrest warrant. [16] He was freed soon after when the General Secretary of Interpol warned the Spanish police not to follow the Russian arrest warrant. Browder had come to Spain to brief anti-mafia prosecutor José Grinda. After briefing him, Browder returned to the United Kingdom later that evening. [51]
In November 2018, Russian prosecutors announced new charges against Browder, accusing him of organising a "transnational criminal group" and claimed he may have poisoned Sergei Magnitsky. [52]
External videos | |
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Browder's testimony on the Foreign Agents Registration Act before the Senate Judiciary Committee, July 27, 2017, C-SPAN |
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in May 2022, Browder criticised Germany for its earlier Russia course: "Putin is 95 percent to blame for this war, because he is the one who throws the bombs and murders civilians" but "the West is also responsible for five percent and especially Germany to blame for what is happening in Ukraine," Browder told the media. "Merkel fought hard to make Germany and Europe dependent on Moscow and open to blackmail. Putin's attack on Ukraine is therefore also Merkel's war!", [53] said Browder.
Browder has also strongly criticized Switzerland and the role played by Swiss banks in allegedly aiding the financing of Russia's invasion. Browder called on Switzerland to adopt its own sanctions against Russia and not just those proposed by the EU, as it had been doing. Browder cited a Swiss Bankers Association estimate stating that there were in excess of $200B of Russian money in Swiss accounts, while bemoaning the fact that Switzerland had sanctioned fewer than $10B worth of Russian deposits. [54] Switzerland's Department for Foreign Affairs rejected the accusations, stating that "claims that Switzerland is doing less than other countries and that it is still harbouring funds from sanctioned individuals without freezing them are unfounded". [55] The Swiss government has explained it sees no reason to sanction Russians that the EU would not sanction, accounting for the disconnect in how much Russian money is estimated to be in Switzerland banks, and how much has been blocked to date.[ citation needed ]
On 27 July 2017, Browder testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in regards to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and Fusion GPS. The latter is the opposition research firm based in Washington D.C. that commissioned former MI6 staffer Christopher Steele to collect information on Donald Trump's ties with Russia. The hearing was set up to examine the firm's separate work on a legal case involving the Magnitsky Act. He directly discussed the President of Russia Vladimir Putin. Browder testified that President Putin is "the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world", building a fortune by threatening Russian oligarchs and getting a 50% cut of their profits:
I estimate that he has accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains from these types of operations over his 17 years in power. He keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation. Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions.
Browder concluded his statement by reviewing the circumstances that led to U.S. passage of the Magnitsky Act:
I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests. I also hope that this story and others like it may lead to a change in the FARA enforcement regime in the future. [56] [57]
In February 2015, Browder published a book about his career, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice , focusing on his years spent in Russia and the Russian government's attacks on Hermitage Capital Management. Browder's responses to Russian corruption and his support of the investigation into the death of his attorney Sergei Magnitsky are at the heart of the book. [49] [58] A film adaptation written by William Nicholson was reportedly in the works in 2015. [59]
A new book by Browder was published on 12 April 2022: Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath . [60]
In 2013, the U.S. Attorney's Office for New York's Southern District filed a civil asset forfeiture case against Prevezon Holdings Limited, a real estate holding company belonging to Russian businessman Denis Katsyv, based on information from Browder. [61] Prevezon and the Department of Justice settled the case in May 2017 for $5.9 million (~$7.21 million in 2023). [62] Pursuant to a subpoena, [63] Browder gave deposition testimony in the case. [64]
Browder has been the recipient of dozens of awards and recognitions. Some of the most significant are listed below.
In 2017, GQ magazine named Browder one of its Men of the Year for standing up to Vladimir Putin. [65]
In 2018, Browder was named the 67th most powerful person in the world by Worth magazine. The magazine noted, "Browder has become one of the biggest thorns in Putin's side—and appears to be a key reason Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election." [66]
Browder's interview with Preet Bharara on the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast received the People's Choice Webby Award for Best Individual Podcast. [67]
In 2018, Browder received the Aspen Institute Henry Crown Leadership Award, a prize honouring "an outstanding leader whose achievements reflect the high standards of honor, integrity, industry, and philanthropy." [68]
In October 2018, Browder received the Coalition for Integrity's Integrity Award for "his courageous fight to expose state-sponsored corruption and shine a light on individuals whose wealth is built on wrongdoing, so that they are denied safe havens anywhere in the world." [69]
In June 2019, Browder was presented with the American Spirit Award for Citizen Activism at The Common Good Forum & American Spirit Awards. The committee noted Browder's "relentless fight against human rights abuses, corruption, and his work spearheading the Magnitsky Act." [70]
In September 2019, Browder received the Trinity College (Dublin) SMF award for outstanding contributions to finance. [71]
In 2019, Browder received the Lantos Human Rights Prize from the Lantos Foundation for his work as the "driving force behind the Magnitsky Sanctions, the most consequential enforcement mechanism of the modern human rights movement." [72]
In the 2024 King's Birthday Honours, he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) "for services to human rights, anti-corruption, and international affairs". [73]
A film by Andrei Nekrasov, The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes (2016), available on YouTube, according to The Daily Beast , "absolves the Russian government of any responsibility for Magnitsky's death" [74] and claims that Browder was behind the $230-million tax-rebate fraud. [75] The Washington Post commented in an editorial: "The film is a piece of agitprop that mixes fact and fiction to blame Magnitsky for the fraud and absolve Russians of blame for his death." [76]
Several of the key figures interviewed in the movie have declared it mendacious. The Washington Post described it as part of "a campaign to discredit Mr. Browder and the Magnitsky Act". [76]
Some European theatre screenings and a television broadcast of the film were cancelled after threats of libel suits from Browder. [75] According to Browder's 2017 testimony to the United States Senate Judiciary Committee, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya hired a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Chris Cooper of the Potomac Group, to organise its US premiere. [56] Over Browder's objections, the Newseum in Washington, D.C. held a screening in June 2016 hosted by Seymour Hersh. [74] Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA)'s office actively promoted the screening, sending out invitations from the office of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats, which Rohrabacher chaired at the time; he was described by The Daily Beast as "a long-standing Russia ally". [77]
On 16 July 2018, during a joint press conference with President Donald Trump in Helsinki, Finland, Russian president Vladimir Putin stated that Browder had funnelled $400 million to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, an effort that he claimed involved members of the U.S. intelligence community who, Putin said, "accompanied and guided these transactions." The statement was made after Putin said he would allow special counsel Robert Mueller's team to come to Russia for their investigation—as long as there was a reciprocal arrangement for Russian intelligence to investigate in the U.S.
Putin said:
For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder, in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia and never paid any taxes neither in Russia nor the United States and yet the money escaped the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent [a] huge amount of money, $400,000,000, as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. (Later, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office spokesman Alexander Kurennoy clarified that it was not $400 million, but rather $400,000. [78] ) Well that's their personal case. It might have been legal, the contribution itself but the way the money was earned was illegal. So we have solid reason to believe that some [US] intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions. So we have an interest in questioning them.
The Washington Post and The New York Times rated Putin's claim about the funding "false," noting that there is no evidence to substantiate it. [79] [80] Politifact gave it a "pants on fire" rating. [81] Bill Browder, in his own article for Time , called the accusation "so ludicrous and untrue that it falls into delusion." He maintains that Putin continues to make false allegations against him in response to Browder's involvement with the Magnitsky Act. Browder also says that he is a British citizen and no longer American, therefore Trump would be unable to respond to Putin's request. [82]
On 22 November 2019, German news magazine Der Spiegel published an article in which it claimed Browder accusations concerning the "Magnitsky Case", do not withstand thorough examination. [83] The English version appeared on 26 November 2019. [84] After Browder filed a complaint against this article with chief editorship of Der Spiegel and the German Press Council, Der Spiegel published a further article, releasing its evidence and emphasising its stance on the matter. [85] [86]
PJSC Gazprom is a Russian majority state-owned multinational energy corporation headquartered in the Lakhta Center in Saint Petersburg. The Gazprom name is a contraction of the Russian words gazovaya promyshlennost. In January 2022, Gazprom displaced Sberbank from the first place in the list of the largest company in Russia by market capitalization. In 2022, the company's revenue amounted to 8 trillion rubles.
An Interpol notice is an international alert circulated by Interpol to communicate information about crimes, criminals, and threats by police in a member state to their counterparts around the world. The information disseminated via notices concerns individuals wanted for serious crimes, missing persons, unidentified bodies, possible threats, prison escapes, and criminals' modus operandi.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza is a Russian-British political activist, journalist, author, filmmaker, and former political prisoner. A protégé of Boris Nemtsov, he is vice-chairman of Open Russia, an NGO founded by Russian businessman and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which promotes civil society and democracy in Russia. He was elected to the Coordinating Council of the Russian Opposition in 2012, and served as deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party from 2015 to 2016. He has directed two documentaries, They Chose Freedom and Nemtsov. As of 2021, he acts as Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. He was awarded the Civil Courage Prize in 2018.
Suleyman Abusaidovich Kerimov is a Russia-based billionaire, oligarch, and politician of Lezgian origin. Kerimov has close ties to Vladimir Putin's government in Russia, as well as Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader.
Hermitage Capital Management is an investment fund and asset management company specializing in Russian markets founded by Bill Browder and Edmond Safra. Chief operating officer is Ivan Cherkasov. Hermitage Capital Management headquarters are in Guernsey; it also maintains offices in the Cayman Islands, London and Moscow.
Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov is a Russian film and TV director from Saint Petersburg.
Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky was a Russian lawyer and tax advisor responsible for exposing corruption and misconduct by Russian government officials while representing client Hermitage Capital Management. His arrest in 2008 and subsequent death after eleven months in police custody generated international attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations in Russia. His posthumous trial was the first in the Russian Federation.
The Magnitsky Act, formally known as the Russia and Moldova Jackson–Vanik Repeal and Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act of 2012, is a bipartisan bill passed by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama in December 2012, intending to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow prison in 2009 and also to grant permanent normal trade relations status to Russia.
Federal Law of 28 December 2012 No. 272-FZ "On Sanctions for Individuals Violating Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms of the Citizens of the Russian Federation", popularly known as the Dima Yakovlev Law, is a law in Russia that defines sanctions against U.S. citizens involved in "violations of the human rights and freedoms of Russian citizens". It creates a list of citizens who are banned from entering Russia, and also allows the government to freeze their assets and investments. The law suspends the activity of politically active non-profit organisations which receive money from American citizens or organisations. It also bans citizens of the United States from adopting children from Russia.
Arkady Romanovich Rotenberg is a Russian billionaire businessman and oligarch. With his brother Boris Rotenberg, he was co-owner of the Stroygazmontazh, the largest construction company for gas pipelines and electrical power supply lines in Russia.
Jamison Reed Firestone is an American attorney. Firestone graduated from Tulane University in 1988 and Tulane Law School in 1991. In August 1991, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, he moved to Moscow, Russia and co-founded the law firm Firestone Duncan. He fled Russia in August 2009 following the arrest of his employee Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison, after eleven months' incarceration without trial.
Nord Stream 2 is a 1,234-kilometre-long (767 mi) natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany running through the Baltic Sea, financed by Gazprom and several European energy companies. Feasibility studies began in 2011 to expand the Nord Stream 1 line and double annual capacity to 110 billion cubic metres, with construction beginning in 2018. It was completed in September 2021, but has not yet entered service. Planning and construction of the pipeline were mired in political controversy over fears that Russia would use it, one of 23 pipelines between Europe and Russia, for geopolitical advantage with Europe and Ukraine.
Fusion GPS is a commercial research and strategic intelligence firm based in Washington, D.C. The company conducts open-source investigations and provides research and strategic advice for businesses, law firms and investors, as well as for political inquiries, such as opposition research. The "GPS" initialism is derived from "Global research, Political analysis, Strategic insight".
Natalia Vladimirovna Veselnitskaya is a Russian lawyer. Her clients include Pyotr Katsyv, an official in the state-owned Russian Railways, and his son Denis Katsyv, whom she defended against a money laundering charge in New York. On 8 January 2019, Veselnitskaya was indicted in the United States with obstruction of justice charges for allegedly having attempted to thwart the Justice Department investigation into the money laundering charges against Katsyv.
Rinat Rafkatovitch Akhmetshin is a Russian-American lobbyist and a former Soviet counterintelligence officer. Bill Browder alleges that Akhmetshin represents Russian intelligence interests. He came to the American media's attention in July 2017 as a registered lobbyist for an organization run by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, along with him, had a meeting with Donald Trump's election campaign officials in June 2016.
Denis Katsyv is a Ukrainian, Russian and Israeli businessman based in Moscow and owner of Prevezon Holdings Limited. He was linked in a civil forfeiture case to money laundering through real estate investments in the United States, in violation of the Magnitsky Act of 2012; the case was settled in 2017 with the United States Justice Department by Prevezon agreeing to pay $5.9 million.
The Parties agree that the Complaints do not allege that any of the Defendants, Claimants, or Denis Katsyv, Alexander Litvak, or Timofey Krit, is responsible, directly or indirectly, for the arrest, detention, or death of Sergei Magnitsky, or that they have acted as an agent of, on behalf of or in agreement with a person in a matter relating to the arrest, detention, or death of Sergei Magnitsky.
The Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights (RWCHR) is a Canadian non-governmental organization dedicated to pursuing justice through the protection and promotion of human rights. The RWCHR's name and mission is inspired by Raoul Wallenberg's humanitarian legacy.
The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is a 2016 film directed by Andrei Nekrasov, concerning the 2009 death in a Moscow prison cell, after 11 months in police custody, of 37-year-old Russian tax accountant Sergei Magnitsky. In 2007, Magnitsky was hired by American-born British financier Bill Browder to investigate the government's seizure of three of Browder's Russian subsidiaries. Discovering evidence of embezzlement, Magnitsky implicated two senior police officers in a tax rebate scam that used shell corporations plundered from Browder's holdings to defraud the Russian treasury of $230 million. Subordinates of those officials then arrested Magnitsky and charged him with the very crime he had exposed.
Alexander Vasilyevich Prokopchuk is a Russian employee of the internal affairs agencies, head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation National Central Bureau of Interpol from 14 June 2011, and vice-president of Interpol from 10 November 2016.
Magnitsky legislation refers to laws providing for governmental sanctions against foreign individuals who have committed human rights abuses or been involved in significant corruption. They originated with the United States which passed the first Magnitsky legislation in 2012, following the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky in Russia in 2009. Since then, a number of countries have passed similar legislation such as Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union.
In 1995–2006 Hermitage Capital Management was one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia. Mr. Browder campaigned for the rights of minority shareholders, criticising the governance of Russia's partly state-owned corporations.
HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) is closing Hermitage Capital Management Ltd.'s flagship Russia fund just as its co-founder, William Browder, is being sued for libel in London and tried in absentia for tax evasion in Moscow. "It was too small to continue as a viable concern," Browder, 48, said by phone yesterday from London, where he's based. Browder said the closing is "completely" in the hands of HSBC, which is the trustee and manager of the fund.
As the manager of a big Russian investment fund, Bill Browder has contributed to the circulation of the first kind of money—as well as making a packet for himself, and making his rich clients even richer. But he has also interfered with the supply of the second sort of money—and been ...
Retaliation came quickly. But in fact, he was the Hermitage accountant who handled its tax evasion. Clearly, the conspirators hadn't reckoned on publicity and so decided to cover their backs. They invented a cover story. In January, Sergei Magnitsky, one of Firestone Duncan's top attorneys and auditors, was unexpectedly arrested as he arrived to give evidence to a prosecutor assigned to investigate the case.
Sergei Magnitsky was our attorney, and friend, who died under excruciating circumstances in a Moscow pre-trial detention center on November 16, 2009.
He said he had bought Gazprom shares in order to invest in the Russian economy and influence the Gazprom management because 'we noticed that there was huge fraud going on at the company'. Mr Browder insists that the way he bought the shares—through Russian-registered subsidiaries entitled to tax advantages—was legal and used by other foreign investors at the time.
Media related to Bill Browder at Wikimedia Commons