DAVOS, Switzerland -- William Browder, the London-based head of Hermitage Capital, remains unrelenting in his quest for justice in the 2009 death of his former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky.
Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer who was tortured, deprived of medical
attention and left to die in a Russian prison in 2009, nearly a year after
uncovering a $230 million tax fraud allegedly committed by top Russian law enforcement
officials. Russian officials say he was not murdered, but died of a heart
attack while awaiting tax evasion charges. The people Magnitsky implicated in
the fraud arrested him in 2008. A year after his death, several of these
officials were promoted.
The traumatic events transformed Browder into an activist. He lobbied
successfully for the passage in America last year of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule
of Law Accountability Act, which denies visas to and freezes the assets of those
in the Russian ruling elite implicated in Magnitsky’s murder, corruption and
other human rights violations. He now wants to push for a similar law in the
European Union, and says such laws may need to be broadened and aimed against
leaders in Ukraine, Belarus and other nations where human right violations are
severe.
Browder has
made himself an enemy of Kremlin leaders, who accuse him of tax fraud. Browder
is also a co-defendant in the posthumous tax-fraud trial of Magnitsky set to
resume in Russia later this month. He is being tried in absentia, after being barred
from entering Russia since 2005.
“This Mr.
Magnitsky, as is known, was not some human rights champion; he did not struggle
for human rights,” Russian President Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying at a
December news conference. “He was the lawyer of Mr. Browder, who is suspected
by our law enforcement of committing economic crimes.”
Browder’s
ties with Russia run deep. His grandfather, Earl Browder, was a political
activist and a leader of the Communist Party of the United States. Ironically, William
Browder made his millions in Russia right after the U.S.S.R. collapsed.
Last month
at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland Kyiv Post contributor Olena
Tregub sat down to talk about the Magnitsky case, the Magnitsky Act and its
possible implications for Ukraine.
Kyiv Post: Bill, after all that
happened, do you still see any potential in the former Soviet Union for foreign
investors?
William Browder: The fact that there is no rule of law and that there are
no property rights makes Russia, Ukraine and other countries in the region uninvestable
… having been involved in that part of the world for nearly two decades, I
would not put any of my money in post-Soviet space right now.
KP: But something attracted you to
Russia to begin with?
WB: At that time everybody shared the same view that I did. Everything was so
cheap that all you needed to do was not lose your asset within a year and you
could double your money. At the time when I first started looking at Russia it
was trading at a 99.7 percent discount to the West for a unit of assets. But
now it not like that at all – it is much more expensive and perhaps much
riskier that it was when I first started in 1993 – 20 years ago.
KP: There is a media campaign against
you in Russia, a black PR campaign. How are you dealing with this?
WB: It is like a question: how do you prove you are not a camel? Everybody who
knows anything about the case knows that all the stuff is completely
nonsensical. Most of the articles are not even attributed to anybody. It is
preposterously foolish to say that I stole IMF [International Monetary Fund] money.
KP: Let’s move on to the Magnitsky Act.
Do you think the Magnitsky provisions should be applied to places like Ukraine
and Belarus?
WB: There was a very heated debate in Washington just before the Magnitsky Act
was passed, about whether it should be legislation that applies globally or
just to Russia. All of the supporters of Magnitsky Act in the Senate, including
Senator [John] McCain, Senator Cardin, Senator [Joe] [Joe] Lieberman, Senator [Roger]
Wicker, were all extremely motivated to make it global human rights
legislation. It was only because of the timing issue and the difference of
opinions between the House of Representatives and the Senate that it became a
Russian issue. As far as I am aware, there is going to be a very strong
campaign starting in a spring in the Senate to amend the law to make it a
global piece of legislation.
KP: How will it affect Ukraine?
WB: It will affect every country. Ukraine is an obvious example, where
imprisoning and torturing political prisoners and doing all the same type of
atrocious behavior as they do in Russia.
KP: Regarding Russia, their response to
the Magnitsky law was Dima Yakovlev law that prohibits Americans to adopt
Russian children. I am wondering if, given the fact that you were lobbying for
Magnitsky law, do you feel any responsibility for Russia’s adoption ban?
WB: No, the only person responsible for Dima Yakovlev law is Vladimir Putin and
the members of the Duma and the Federation Council. Those are the people who
did it. If somebody grabs a bunch of defenseless hostages, these are the
hostage takers that are responsible, but not the people who are fighting for
justice.
KP: No rational logic behind it?
WB: The logic was absolutely morally bankrupt. It was like a temper tantrum of
a juvenile delinquent as opposed to a normal civilized sovereign state.
KP: Do you see any positive outcomes of the Magnitsky
law?
WB: Yes, the regime is shaking in their shoes right now. They are absolutely
terrified because the Magnitsky law creates consequences for their behavior not
just in the Magnitsky case but in all future cases like it. The Achilles heel
of the Putin regime is their money abroad. They like to behave like cannibals
at home and they may dine at the finest restaurants with white table cloths in
Europe. They think they can do both. All of a sudden, we created the situation
that would take away that privilege.
KP: Do you see any change coming, any
prospect of regime’s fall and democratization?
WB: I believe that there are people inside the Putin regime right now who did
not sign up for this. They did not sign up to kill children. They signed
up for a lot of other stuff and they have a pretty thick moral skin to do bad
things, but a lot of people did not sign up to kill children. I believe this is
a red line that they have crossed. And I believe this will fracture his own
regime and his own administration. They thought that they got opposition under
control after all the demonstrations last year. Then, all of a sudden 50 000
people came in to the streets. People who never came to the streets before.
People who said it is immoral for me not to come out to the streets. This is
probably strategically one of the biggest blunders they could ever make. They
have created the whole class of dissidents.
KP: What is your prediction?
WB: Putin has ventured into territory that is completely unknown to him and to
everybody else. He has created a situation for himself where his only option is
hard-core repression in order to regain control. And how people will react to
hardcore repression is unpredictable.
KP: What do you think about the story of
[imprisoned ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia] Tymoshenko? In Ukraine people
talk about the Magnitsky list and the Tymoshenko list [of those responsible for
her prosecution and conviction].
WB: I think she was completely unfairly treated based on a shocking political
agenda. It is terrible for the country because the message of her arrest is
that if you are in power you can never leave power. Everyone who is in power
will hold on to power in the most vicious ways to avoid her fate. Not just to
Ukraine and to anyone in that part of the world it sends the most terrible
message.
KP: The society in Ukraine does not
support her actively on a mass scale because they believe that she is far from
being innocent.
WB: But same goes for many other people from Ukraine – all here at Davos. You can’t
have a selective justice system or no justice system. You can’t send a former
prime minister in jail just because she is a political opponent of the current
president. Political motivated justice system is a travesty in any account.
KP: She is now facing life in prison
being accused of a murder.
WB: The fact that they put these charges against her many years after the fact
is a clearly politically motivated procedure and shows that they don’t do
this for the purpose of justice. Even if she might be guilty in some things
there should be a proper international court. Ukrainians have no credibility in
their justice system and putting her under trial is a miscarriage of justice by
definition.
OT: What do you do now, after the Magnitsky
bill passed in the United States?
WB: The Magnitsky campaign is far from over. It is only the beginning.
The entire European Union needs to pass the Magnitsky law. We are also working
on extremely difficult criminal investigation about money laundering. Where $230
million that Magnitsky discovered went? So far there have been a number of
criminal cases opened in foreign countries, lots of bank transfers identified,
asserts frozen. At the end we will find out who received that money. When we
do, that money will be frozen. And people who received that money will end up
under criminal investigation. It is very big and important part of the project.
KP: Do you feel pressure and receive
threats?
WB: Today [Russian Prime Minister] Dmitry Medvedev made a statement to a group
of journalists in the Media Council of the World Economic Forum. Something
like: ‘It’s a shame that Sergey Magnitsky died and Bill Browder is still alive.’
KP: Well, they will not touch you because it would be too big of a scandal for
them…
WB: I don’t believe that there is any scandal too big for these people. I do
believe that if they tried this they would get caught. They could kill me
tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it.
KP: So your line of defense is to be in
the spotlight and to stay public?
WB: My line of defense is to share all the evidence of the crime and the
beneficiaries of the crime with every law enforcement agency of the world. So
that everybody knows who will be responsible for killing me.
KP: Being involved in politics so
deeply, do you still have time to do business?
WB: I have two jobs. I work 18 hours a day. A hedge fund manager and a
justice activist. I don’t have weekends off. I don’t watch television. And I
have team of people on both sides who work extremely well and extremely hard.
Olena Tregub runs
an educational consulting company in Washington DC (www.GELead.org) and is a columnist at Kyiv Post
