Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Bill Browder: I am Russia’s Biggest Enemy over Magnitsky Act

International Business Times

British hedge fund manager Bill Browder said he was now the Russian state’s single biggest enemy because of the Magnitsky Act, a US law approved last year to punish Russian officials thought to have been responsible for the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

Browder told the Oslo Freedom Forum that the act, which targets 18 named Russians subject to visa bans and asset freezes in the US, “really touches them” and that Russian president Vladimir Putin was “going completely out of his mind” over the repercussions.

In retaliation for the act, which it deemed “absurd’, Russia banned 18 Americans from entering the country.

Targeted sanctions and freezing of visa applications are “a new technology of fighting human rights abuse”, according to Browder, who is a British citizen but American by birth.

Founder of Hermitage Capital Management, Browder moved from the UK to Russia in 1996 to invest in newly privatised countries in Eastern Europe.

“My father was the biggest communist in America, so I said I’m gonna become the biggest capitalist in eastern Europe,” joked Browder. “How do you rebel against a family of communists? You put up a suit and become a capitalist.”