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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"I See Him as a Modern-Day Pablo Escobar": Inside Bill Browder's War Against Putin
In a series of revealing new interviews, Putins public enemy No. 1 offers scintillating details about his investigation into Russian financial malfeasance, running for his life, and the Helsinki fallout.
by Marie Brenner
November 11, 2018 5:00 pm
Perhaps all you need to know to understand the essense of Bill Browder is what he carried with him in his briefcase when he lived in Putins Russia. At all times, he told me not long after we met, I had $5,000 in cash in case I had to flee for the border and pay off the guards.
Bill Browders stories are melodramas. They often begin with a ringing phoneor a knock on a door. In May of this year, for example, the American-born financier was bundled into a police car in Madrid by the Spanish police, who, acting on an Interpol warrant at the behest of Russian authorities, simply appeared outside his hotel room and took him away. I was frightened this wasnt an arrest but an illegal rendition to Moscow, Browder said. (He was let go an hour later.) These moments of crisis are familiar to his 180,000 Twitter followersthe army of Bill, they are calledwho worry about his safety in his adopted role as both human-rights advocate and financial sleuth, taking on Putin and his kleptocrats. Vladimir Putin wants me dead, he says almost every time he is interviewed.
Is there anyone, by now, who is unaware of Browders relentless crusade? At 54, he circles the globe helping governments recover millions that Russian oligarchs have illegally parked overseas. He has dodged six warrants seeking his arrest. He takes precautions in his daily routine, wary of possible security threats. His weapons are judicial and legislative: sanctions blocking the assets and the international travel of Russian criminals, murderers, and corrupt industrialists who have plundered their companies.
And he is succeeding. Now every country knows the names of these guys, he contends. Now everyone who thought they could operate under the radar is discovering that you cant. It started with [Special Counsel] Robert Muellers indictment of the 12 G.R.U. agentsoperatives from Russias military-intelligence serviceand they discovered that every e-mail they ever sent is available to the Justice Department. All of a sudden [the authorities] arrested a spy in Norway. They arrested two people who were getting ready to break into a chemical-weapons lab.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11/bill-browder-war-against-putin
UTUSN
(70,496 posts)Xolodno
(6,330 posts)...although says he's "independent".
Him: How do you know he's corrupt? He doesn't even drink.
Me: A real estate investor in New York who built buildings during the era when corrupt politicians, mob bosses and corrupt union officials all had to have their palms waxed. He goes belly up when all that corruption is cracked down on and now gets his funding over seas...and you ask me "How do I know he's corrupt"? Seriously? I'm not in your business can still through this!
BSdetect
(8,989 posts)It ought to come out soon.
Denzil_DC
(7,187 posts)I can forgive him a little melodrama. We could do with a lot more like him.