Browder: Tymoshenko imprisonment ‘sends the most terrible message’

Kyiv Post

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 займ онлайн payday loan https://zp-pdl.com https://zp-pdl.com/emergency-payday-loans.php займ на карту