BOOKSBOOKS
describes his subsequent
crusade to persuade
governments across the world
to introduce “Magnitsky Acts”
that would sanction not only
those involved with the
lawyer’s death but others
accused of similar abuses.
Such sanctions have become
commonplace since Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine, as
oligarch after oligarch has had
his account frozen. But until
recently, as Browder reminds
us, it was a different matter:
many in the West were happy
to give Putin the benefit of the
doubt, while matters became
even worse after the arrival in
power of Donald Trump, who
had his own compromising
links with Russia.
This tale is full of villains —
not just the Russians
determined to smear Browder
and his murdered lawyer, but
also the politicians, lawyers
and judges in the West who
carry out the Kremlin’s dirty
work. Some do so unwittingly;
others, according to Browder,
have gone over to the dark side
for financial gain. “Dealing
with the Russians and their
American enablers felt like
playing a game of Whac-A-
Mole,” he writes. “Every time
they got beaten down in one
place, they popped up
somewhere else.”
Browder survives
everything they throw at him,
dodging subpoenas and a
handful of Russian-inspired
international arrest warrants
that turn him into the “de
facto poster child for Interpol
abuse”. Yet only just: the book
begins with the financier
being taken from his luxury
Madrid hotel to a police cell
after the Kremlin tries to have
him extradited when he
arrives in the Spanish capital
to meet the country’s top
anti-corruption prosecutor.
He has another close
shave when Trump reacts
approvingly to a suggestion
by Putin during their July
2018 summit in Helsinki
that Browder, by then a British
citizen, be sent to Moscow as
part of a swap with 12 Russian
military intelligence officers
the Americans want to
question. Thankfully, the US
administration kills the plan,
though not before Browder
considers having to flee the
country of his birth.On the run from Putin’s goons
POLITICS
Peter Conradi
Freezing Order A True Story
of Russian Money Laundering
and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s
Wrath by Bill Browder
Simon & Schuster £20 pp336Bill Browder’s
page-turning
account of his
battle for justice
— and to stay alive
Several others who support
his crusade are less fortunate:
Alexander Perepilichny, an
exiled businessman, collapses
while out jogging in Surrey;
Boris Nemtsov, a leading
opponent of Putin, is shot
dead near the Kremlin; and,
most extraordinary of all,
Nikolai Gorokhov, the
Magnitsky family lawyer, falls
50ft from the roof of his block
of flats while winching up a
Jacuzzi, although he lives to
tell the tale. A mysterious
“workman” who was helping
him disappears.
Some of them, such as
Nemtsov, once spoken of as a
possible Russian leader, have
clearly fallen foul of the regime
for other reasons. Yet there
is no doubt the campaign
irritated Putin, whose
government accused Browder
and Magnitsky of stealing the
money themselves.
The Russian leader’s
anger “wasn’t just
philosophical, it was
personal”, Browder writes. He
claims that some of the $230
million ended up in the hands
of Putin himself — namely
$800,000 of it that was paid to
the president’s old friend
Sergei Roldugin, a cellist, who
is now worth millions thanks
to his role as one of a series of
alleged “trustees” who hold
Putin’s wealth.
Despite the complexity of
the affair, Browder has made
his story into a real page-
turner. Amid the horrors
being reported every day from
Ukraine, it also provides a
highly readable insight into
the true nature of the regime
that is responsible for them. cIn Red Notice, his bestseller
published in 2015, Bill
Browder, once one of the
largest foreign investors in
Russia, described his battle
for justice after his lawyer
Sergei Magnitsky died while in
custody in a Moscow jail after
uncovering a fraud involving
$230 million. In this sequel,
the American-born financierDangerous enemy Browder’s
campaign has irritated PutinYURI KOCHETKOV/EPA26 10 April 2022