Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, Murder,and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath

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Reading Bill Browder’s zesty new book about the theft, extortion, intimidation, lies and murder that are the Russian state’s daily levers of power can feel like reading several books at once. Thereafter Browder, a naturalised Briton based in London, dedicated himself to gaining justice for his friend, primarily by lobbying for the Magnitsky Act – a bill that authorised the US government to sanction human rights offenders and freeze their assets. Bill Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005.

It would be entertaining fiction, but it is a true story that serves as a roadmap for fighting back against the crime and corruption from Putin’s Russia. Once adopted, however, the Magnitsky law remained mostly unused in the US, and particularly in the UK. Lawyers, politicians and the usual useful idiots have all been successfully recruited to the Russian cause, either through financial inducement, bribery, bovine anti-west sentiments, or perhaps worst of all, complacency. He scanned my passport and fed the credit card—a Black American Express Card to which I’d recently been upgraded—into a chip reader. We all know of Putin's total disregard for the deaths he is currently responsible for in Ukraine and amongst his own soldiers, but the greed of this evil man, who for years has been robbing Russia's citizens of billions, aided by those in the West, has been a revelation.When Putin came to power on New Year’s Eve 1999, promising to stamp out corruption, Browder was a relieved man. A dark blue sign reading POLICIA stuck out from the side of a weathered stone-and-redbrick building. Biography: Bill Browder, founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005.

there is no question that Browder’s dogged persistence against a backdrop of undoubted stress and personal courage have made an important contribution in highlighting the failures of contemporary Russia and the west alike, and offered new tools with potential to try to redress them. As I rushed to pack, I remembered something Elena had said to me after I’d been detained at Geneva Airport that February. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Under EU law, anyone who’s been arrested must be presented with the charges in their native language.It’s a fear that Alexandre Dumas and Alfred Hitchcock tapped into to dramatic effect, but what is most troubling here is how acquiescent the western establishment has been to Russian crimes and lies. Browder – with incredible courage, resilience and grace, and always at great risk to his personal safety and freedom – continues to chase after Putin and his henchmen. In terms of western relations with Vladimir Putin, Bill Browder has performed the role of the canary in the coalmine – or perhaps goldmine would be more fitting. One of the most sobering aspects of Browder’s rollicking, dangerous adventure [is] that late-period Putin has found it so easy to manipulate our western democracies from the inside. By the glint in Prosecutor Grinda’s eye, I could see that he would take what I was telling him seriously.

Browder’s account of how he stood up to Putin in the face of danger, arrest warrants, and bullying is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the tactics of modern autocracy. I thought of my 10-year-old daughter, Veronica, whom I had promised a similar trip, but who might now have to wait a very long time. There’s something deeply offending to our sense of justice about an innocent man framed by powerful forces. Photograph: Mikhail Voskresenskiy/Reuters View image in fullscreen Mourners at the funeral of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Moscow, 2009.If this were a kidnapping, and I was starting to believe it was, I could picture what was in there: a bright-white office with a steel gurney, a little table with an assortment of syringes, and Russian men in cheap suits. I had to let him know what was going on, so I ducked behind the partition and cupped my hand over the phone.