For the last 12 years Bill Browder has been firmly in the sights of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Initially a supporter of Putin, Browder’s company Hermitage Capital Management was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005 — when it was blacklisted. Browder was deemed a threat to national security and deported to the UK.
After his young lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to make sure his killers faced justice, and thus the Magnitsky Act was born. The bill, which applies globally, authorises the US government to sanction those deemed human rights offenders, freeze their assets, and ban them from entering the US.
Browder’s new book is Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, State-Sponsored Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath. It follows his 2015 debut Red Notice.