Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Said Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is author, investor Russia expert Bill Browner. Bill,
Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. Agree to be here.
Speaker 1: Can you please explain what the Magnitsky Act is? So,
Speaker 1: the Magnisky Act is a piece of legislation that was
Speaker 1: passed in two thousand twelve. It's named after my lawyer,
Speaker 1: Sergei Magnitsky. Serge was killed in a Russian prison in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine after he exposed a massive government corruption
Speaker 1: scheme and he testified against the officials involved, and in
Speaker 1: in retaliation, they had arrested him, put him in jail,
Speaker 1: tortured him for three or fifty eight days, and as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, they killed him on November six nine. I
Speaker 1: then went after the the Russian government and all of
Speaker 1: their officials who were involved in his murder. And the
Speaker 1: result of my efforts was this piece of legislation, which
Speaker 1: was past four and Congress in the Senate and the
Speaker 1: House of Representatives and signed into law on December four,
Speaker 1: two thousand and twelve by President Obama. Okay, now, are
Speaker 1: there Magnetsky Acts in other countries around the world. Indeed,
Speaker 1: after the US past the Magnetsky Act, Vladimir Putin went
Speaker 1: out of his mind and he banned the adoption of
Speaker 1: Russian orphans by American families. Um he made it his
Speaker 1: single largest foreign policy priority to repeal the Magnetskay Act.
Speaker 1: And it was clear that we had hit the Achilles
Speaker 1: heel of the Putin regime. So I then went out
Speaker 1: and tried to get it past in all other countries
Speaker 1: that I could. And so there's Magnetskay Act in Canada,
Speaker 1: there's one in Britain where I live. There's one in
Speaker 1: the European Union. Twenty seven members of the EU have
Speaker 1: Magnetsky Acts. When in Australia, one in Norway, one in Montenegro,
Speaker 1: when in Kosovo. We even have it in the all
Speaker 1: the British off overseas and offshore territories like the British
Speaker 1: Virsion Islands and the Cayman Islands and Jersey and Gibraltar,
Speaker 1: which may sound insignificant, but that's where a lot of
Speaker 1: the a lot of the bad guys stash their loot.
Speaker 1: As a practical matter, hottest Magnitsky Act work. Well, what
Speaker 1: happens is if somebody has done uh torture, murder like
Speaker 1: the what they've done to Serge magnitsky Um and the government,
Speaker 1: you can prove it to the government to a high
Speaker 1: standard of evidence, then they put that person on the
Speaker 1: Magnitsky List, and the Magniski Act will then freeze their assets,
Speaker 1: banned their visas, and publicly name their names. And it's
Speaker 1: quite devastating because anybody who gets put on the Magnisky
Speaker 1: List effectively can't open a bank account anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1: If you're on the U. S. Sanctions list, nobody wants
Speaker 1: to mess with you, as government makes it almost impossible
Speaker 1: for these people to get visas anymore. And in my mind,
Speaker 1: probably the best part about the whole thing is that
Speaker 1: all these regimes eventually crumble at one point or another,
Speaker 1: and all these people then can't go and flee to
Speaker 1: a civilized country when Russia gets taken over by the
Speaker 1: next guy, because all the civilized countries are gonna say,
Speaker 1: wait a second, you're on the Magniscy list, you're a
Speaker 1: human rights biler. We don't want you. So how often
Speaker 1: is someone on the list where it's just the fact
Speaker 1: that it exists a disincentive to try to go to
Speaker 1: another country. Well, I think that that it's it's a
Speaker 1: disincentive the moment that they get put on the list
Speaker 1: to try to go to another country because they know
Speaker 1: that they won't be welcomed. I mean, there's another interesting
Speaker 1: angle to the whole thing, which is that if somebody
Speaker 1: is put on the Magniscy list, there's probably a hundred
Speaker 1: other people who are terrified that they're going to be
Speaker 1: put on the Magniscy List. And so it creates almost
Speaker 1: like a reign of terror on all these bad guys
Speaker 1: in these dictatorships because they're all worried abou this is
Speaker 1: going to happen to them. Now, how much let's just
Speaker 1: call the illegal Russian assets are in the US? Can
Speaker 1: that be quantified? Can that be reached in light of
Speaker 1: the war going on in Ukraine? Should the US government
Speaker 1: attach and seize those assets? Well, the answer is absolutely yes. Um,
Speaker 1: the US government is trying. It's um, it's a tough
Speaker 1: it's a tough tough thing for them to do because
Speaker 1: the Russians who have m accumulated all these assets, has
Speaker 1: spent years, if not decades, preparing for this moment. So
Speaker 1: all these assets are held in the names of shell
Speaker 1: companies and trust companies and shell companies owning trust companies,
Speaker 1: and then trust companies looking after nominee arrangements and so
Speaker 1: on and and so forth. And so there's a whole layer
Speaker 1: and layer and layer of stuff that needs to be
Speaker 1: gone through. And so I think we're just getting started
Speaker 1: in this whole process right now. But that' the objective
Speaker 1: is to is to freeze the assets and seize the
Speaker 1: assets of these oligarchs and people close to Laderma and Putin,
Speaker 1: and they have a lot of assets. These people are
Speaker 1: extremely rich. The kleptocracy was really revealed to the general
Speaker 1: person in ten with all the graft and other expenses
Speaker 1: with the socio Olympics. So what don't we know Putin
Speaker 1: took power, he has a dominimous salary, yet he's considered
Speaker 1: to be the wealthiest person in the world. Explain how
Speaker 1: this works, how he and his cronies get the money,
Speaker 1: how he distributed to the understandings that it's his money,
Speaker 1: even though in name it may not be. So. The
Speaker 1: way it works is this. When you go into government
Speaker 1: in Russia, um, nobody does it to serve the public.
Speaker 1: If you if you're an American and you go into government,
Speaker 1: you want to do it to serve the people. In Russia,
Speaker 1: the only reason a person goes into government is to
Speaker 1: steal money. Um And the more the higher you are
Speaker 1: in the government, the more money you can steal. And
Speaker 1: the person who gets to steal the most money is
Speaker 1: the most powerful person, which is the President of Russia.
Speaker 1: And so over a long period of time, Vladimir Putin
Speaker 1: has stolen an enormous amount of money. I estimate these
Speaker 1: worth well north of two billion dollars personally. And if
Speaker 1: we had to quantify the amount of money that's been
Speaker 1: stolen in his twenty two years in power, he and
Speaker 1: all the people around him, the thousand or so other
Speaker 1: people who are involved in this thing, I would estimate
Speaker 1: they've stolen a trillion dollars a thousand billion dollars from
Speaker 1: the Russian state, from the Russian people. That's money that
Speaker 1: should have gone to how build hospitals and schools and
Speaker 1: phil potholes in the road, but instead it's gone to
Speaker 1: uh pay for villas and yachts and Swiss bank accounts
Speaker 1: and private jets. And and that's really the sort of
Speaker 1: tragedy of the whole thing, is that it's the definitely
Speaker 1: lots of victims of this crime, which are the people
Speaker 1: of Russia. Now we hear that these oligarchs who are
Speaker 1: named in the papers and other news media are really
Speaker 1: holding Putent money and trust it's really not their money,
Speaker 1: or most of it is not. Is that true? That's
Speaker 1: exactly right. And so the way it works is that
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as an independently wealthy person in Russia.
Speaker 1: Anybody who's wealthy is dependently wealthy, and they're dependent on
Speaker 1: Vladimir Putin and so um there. Their their whole arrangement
Speaker 1: with him is that he allows them to keep some
Speaker 1: of the money that they have stolen from wherever as
Speaker 1: long as they give him a cut. And I I
Speaker 1: estimate that he's a fifty shareholder and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: So when you see an oligarch who's worth billion dollars
Speaker 1: on paper, the reality is that he's only worth ten
Speaker 1: because the other ten belongs to Vladimir Putin. And and
Speaker 1: that's how the whole system works, is that these oligarchs,
Speaker 1: when you when you see them all out there and
Speaker 1: you want to go after Putin's money, you go after
Speaker 1: the oligarch's money. So drilled down a little bit deeper.
Speaker 1: Exactly how do they steal the money? Well, do we
Speaker 1: have about twelve hours, because I can tell you twelve
Speaker 1: hours worth of ways in which they steal the money.
Speaker 1: But let me give you a couple of good examples.
Speaker 1: There's the example of what Sergei Magniski discovered and what
Speaker 1: he was killed over. My company paid two million dollars
Speaker 1: of taxes to the Russian government and we were then
Speaker 1: my offices were then rated by the police, who then
Speaker 1: seized all of our corporate documents and those documents were
Speaker 1: then used to fraudulently reregister my companies that have paid
Speaker 1: the taxes. And then they went and applied for a
Speaker 1: illegal to thirty million dollar tax refund and it was
Speaker 1: approved by the tax authorities overnight and paid out the
Speaker 1: next day, and it was the largest tax refund in
Speaker 1: the history of Russia. UH. As one example, so you
Speaker 1: know complex scheme, and it's it's actually ten times more
Speaker 1: complicated than I've just explained it. Um. But that's one way.
Speaker 1: And then I mean I could give you so for
Speaker 1: example another one. UH they build a pipeline, an oil
Speaker 1: pipeline from Russia to Turkey. Normally, if you go out
Speaker 1: to a contractor and say how much does it cost
Speaker 1: to build a pipeline? That contractor will say a million
Speaker 1: dollars per kilometer, and of course the contractor is probably
Speaker 1: even giving you a high price so they can make
Speaker 1: a big margin. And then you look on the on
Speaker 1: the balance sheet of gas prom and they've spent ten
Speaker 1: million dollars per kilometer to build a pipeline, so they
Speaker 1: spent ten times the real the cost to the contractor
Speaker 1: um so nine million dollars per kilometer then goes as
Speaker 1: kickbacks to the people who organized the construction project for
Speaker 1: State Gas company. How do you get in on the action?
Speaker 1: The only way you can get in on the action
Speaker 1: is to be part of the criminal enterprise. And so
Speaker 1: it's like, how do you become a member of the
Speaker 1: New York mafia. You know, you have to be a
Speaker 1: made man. There's some special ways that people have become
Speaker 1: made men there, but the main ways you you work
Speaker 1: in government, and generally you work in part the part
Speaker 1: of the government that's the has the power to arrest people,
Speaker 1: to take people hostage. So you work in one of
Speaker 1: the security services, you work in the FSB, which is
Speaker 1: their secret police, or you work in the Interior ministry
Speaker 1: or which is the regular police, or you work in
Speaker 1: the prosecutor's office. And then what you do once you're
Speaker 1: in those places is you go around and arresting people
Speaker 1: until they hand over stuff to you, until they become
Speaker 1: a sort of client. And and so there's many many
Speaker 1: people in jail who shouldn't be in jail and Russia
Speaker 1: who are they put there so that all these crimes
Speaker 1: could be committed without any questions being asked? So what
Speaker 1: is the head space of the average Russian citizen? Are
Speaker 1: they aware of this? Do they go along? We have
Speaker 1: Nivali who's resisting, But generally what's the mindset? The mindset
Speaker 1: is this happens at every level of Russian society. It
Speaker 1: happens down to the local mayor and the local policeman
Speaker 1: right up to the President of Russia. Everybody accepts it.
Speaker 1: They know it happens, and they only think in wish
Speaker 1: that they could be so lucky as to be involved
Speaker 1: in this. And so it's a it's a weird cynical,
Speaker 1: almost defeatist attitude. And of course people at the same
Speaker 1: time are pretty piste off by it, because you know
Speaker 1: that somebody is getting something that they're not, and so
Speaker 1: that they they they wish they had it, but it's
Speaker 1: not like they're morally outraged. There's outraged that they're not,
Speaker 1: you know, the recipients when somebody else is what is
Speaker 1: the average quality of life in Russia? We have gross
Speaker 1: incommittee quality. In the United States, there's somewhat of the
Speaker 1: social safety net. What's the situation in Russia. It's just dramatic,
Speaker 1: worse than than any any place in the world in
Speaker 1: terms of incoming inequality. There's a thousand people that control
Speaker 1: like and I don't know the exact number, but like
Speaker 1: more than of all the assets in the country, and
Speaker 1: everybody else lives and lives in destitute poverty. It means
Speaker 1: a very very small middle class. And the average Russian
Speaker 1: is like, you know, living in a in a shack
Speaker 1: on an unpaved dirt road and they have to use
Speaker 1: an outhouse. I mean, it's just horrible. If we were
Speaker 1: to quiz these people were old enough to remember, would
Speaker 1: they say things were better or worse under communism? I
Speaker 1: think the average Russian would say that things were better
Speaker 1: under communism because at least in that period of time,
Speaker 1: there wasn't this whole sort of criminal regime running the country.
Speaker 1: It was you know, the people who are running the
Speaker 1: country were dictators and oppressive and and not not agreeing
Speaker 1: to freedom of speech and freedom of the press. But
Speaker 1: but it wasn't a criminal organization where they were taking
Speaker 1: all the money and spending on on on santrope villas.
Speaker 1: So how did you personally decide to move to Russian
Speaker 1: invest in Russian companies? So that's an interesting story. My
Speaker 1: grandfather was the general secretary of the American Communist Party
Speaker 1: between ninety and and so my family sort of followed
Speaker 1: in his footsteps. And we're extremely before you go there,
Speaker 1: where was he originally born? Was he American? Were there
Speaker 1: any roots here? So my grandfather was from Wichita, Kansas.
Speaker 1: He was a labor union organizer. In n seven, he
Speaker 1: was spotted by the Communists in the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: they said, if you if you like labor unionism, you're
Speaker 1: gonna love communism when you come over here and check
Speaker 1: it out. So my grandfather moved to Moscow and he
Speaker 1: did what most other single, red blooded American men do
Speaker 1: when they get to Moscow. He found a Russian girl
Speaker 1: who became my grandmother. They had three sons, My father
Speaker 1: was one of them, who was born in Moscow, and
Speaker 1: then he returned to America to Yonkers, New York, and
Speaker 1: he became head of the American Communist Party. He ran
Speaker 1: for president against Roosevelt in nineteen thirty six and nineteen
Speaker 1: forty on the Communist ticket. He was actually imprisoned by
Speaker 1: Roosevelt in nine and then pardon in nineteen two. Eventually
Speaker 1: kicked out of the Communist Party in ninety five for
Speaker 1: being too much of a capitalist, and then persecuted viciously
Speaker 1: during the McCarthy era in the nineteen fifties. And so
Speaker 1: this was my family legacy. I was born in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four, fifty eight years old, and when I was
Speaker 1: going through my teenage rebellion, I tried to come up
Speaker 1: with a good way of rebelling from this family of communists,
Speaker 1: and I tried several things out. I grew my hair
Speaker 1: along can't you can't tell because we're in a podcast,
Speaker 1: but actually don't have any hair anymore. But it grew
Speaker 1: into an afro um. But that, strangely, that didn't upset
Speaker 1: my family. I followed the grateful dead around for a
Speaker 1: couple of months. That didn't upset my family. Then I
Speaker 1: came up with a perfect way of upsetting my family,
Speaker 1: which was to put on a student tie and become
Speaker 1: a capitalist, and that really upset them very much. So
Speaker 1: I became a capitalist. I went to Stanford Business School.
Speaker 1: I graduated business school in nine which is the year
Speaker 1: of the Berlin Wall came down. And as I was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what to do with my life,
Speaker 1: I had this epiphany one day, which is that of
Speaker 1: my grandfather was the biggest communist in America, and the
Speaker 1: Berlin Wall has just come down. I'm gonna try to
Speaker 1: become the biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe. And that's what
Speaker 1: I set out to do. And I originally moved to London,
Speaker 1: and then I moved to Moscow and I set up
Speaker 1: an investment fund called the Hermitans. A little bit slower.
Speaker 1: You graduated from Stanford, Is this your first employment situation?
Speaker 1: What are the companies you work for before you become
Speaker 1: a dependent? So at first I went to the Boston
Speaker 1: Consulting Group. I was the My first job was in
Speaker 1: the East European practice of the Boston Consulting Group in London,
Speaker 1: and my very first assignment was to go out to Poland.
Speaker 1: They sent me out to a bus company, a failing
Speaker 1: bus company on the Polish Ukrainian border in a little
Speaker 1: town called Sanak, And the only there was a very
Speaker 1: low paying assignment. The World Bank was paying the fees
Speaker 1: and they could only afford to send out a first
Speaker 1: year associate like myself. So I go out to this
Speaker 1: little town, um and this bus factory is just in
Speaker 1: a horrific condition. The main problem was that the state company,
Speaker 1: state bus company that buys the buses from the factory,
Speaker 1: stopped their orders and they were responsible from their sales,
Speaker 1: and so all of a sudden they were down. And
Speaker 1: so it was kind of painful assignment because the main, uh,
Speaker 1: the obvious thing to do. If you've lost your sales,
Speaker 1: you've got to cut your costs, and that meant firing
Speaker 1: a lot of people in a town, which was effectively
Speaker 1: in one company town. So it was very depressing assignment.
Speaker 1: But while I was walking around sort of making lists
Speaker 1: of people that probably should be fired, I had this translator.
Speaker 1: His name was Lesk, and I noticed, and he was
Speaker 1: always following me around and translating wherever I need to be,
Speaker 1: wherever I need a translation, And he had this newspaper
Speaker 1: under his arm, and I noticed that all these financial
Speaker 1: figures on his newspaper and I I asked him what
Speaker 1: are those and he said, ah, these are the very
Speaker 1: first privatizations. I thought that that kind of piqued my interest,
Speaker 1: and I said, can you explain them to me? And
Speaker 1: so we went into a conference room and he laid
Speaker 1: out the paper on the table and I said, what's
Speaker 1: this number and he said, that's the number of shares
Speaker 1: outstanding of the company. And I said what's this number?
Speaker 1: He said, that's the the share price that the government's
Speaker 1: selling the shares. And I'm multiply the two numbers together
Speaker 1: and it got got to eighty million dollars, which is
Speaker 1: the value of the company. And then I said, what's
Speaker 1: this number, the one right below that? Uh? And he
Speaker 1: said this is the net income of the company, the earnings.
Speaker 1: I said, no, no, no, that that that must not
Speaker 1: be right. He said, I said, just read it, read
Speaker 1: it word for word, and it's like net income of company.
Speaker 1: And that number was a hundred and sixty million dollars.
Speaker 1: So you don't have to be a Stanford NBA or
Speaker 1: even a financial professional to understand that if you can
Speaker 1: buy a company for eighty million dollars and it earned
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty million dollars in the previous year. Um.
Speaker 1: Then basically all you have to do is hold the
Speaker 1: shares for half a year and you've already got your
Speaker 1: money back. And so and this was this was not
Speaker 1: the bus company we're working at. It was another company.
Speaker 1: And so I said, well, how do we buy shares
Speaker 1: of it? And he said, oh, it's very easy. We
Speaker 1: we we can go to the post office and and
Speaker 1: fill out an application form. And I thought, God, this
Speaker 1: is like crazy. I I mean, I was very young,
Speaker 1: I didn't have much money, but I had I think
Speaker 1: I had like two thousand dollars of savings total life savings.
Speaker 1: And I converted my two thousand dollars of life savings
Speaker 1: to Polish lotty. UM. I went down to the post
Speaker 1: office with Leschek and I subscribed to the very first
Speaker 1: privatizations and and over the next year I made ten
Speaker 1: times my money. And there's this uh, weird chemical that
Speaker 1: gets released in your stomach when you make ten times
Speaker 1: your money on an investment. It's like crack cocaine. You
Speaker 1: want to you want to have, you want to do
Speaker 1: it again and again and again, And that was the
Speaker 1: moment I just I didn't. I didn't. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be a consultant anymore. I wanted to be an
Speaker 1: investor in all this stuff. So what was the next step?
Speaker 1: Fast forward a little bit. UM. I ended up at
Speaker 1: Solomon Brothers. Solomon Brothers um is used to be one
Speaker 1: of the big investment banks made made famous by liars poker.
Speaker 1: You have a Michael Lewis book exactly. So I joined
Speaker 1: the East European investment banking team at Solomon Brothers. And
Speaker 1: my very first assignment at Solomon Brothers was to advise
Speaker 1: a fishing fleet called the Mermants Trawler Fleet located in
Speaker 1: mermantsk which is a hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 1: I think it's the furthest north population center in the world.
Speaker 1: So I go up to murmansk Um to advise this
Speaker 1: management of this fishing fleet. And I get up there
Speaker 1: and the head of the fishing fleet meets me at
Speaker 1: the airport and he says, before we have our business meetings,
Speaker 1: so I just want to take you on a little
Speaker 1: tour so you can see what one of our trawlers
Speaker 1: looks like. So we go down to the docks, and
Speaker 1: in front of me is this enormous vessel. It's like
Speaker 1: four or five feet long and on the and it's
Speaker 1: on all multiple decks, and on the top deck there's
Speaker 1: this uh nets to catch the fish, and then the
Speaker 1: next level there's they separate the fish. Then the next
Speaker 1: level they treat the fish, and all the way down
Speaker 1: to the to the lowest level where they have these
Speaker 1: canning machines which they put the fish into cans. And
Speaker 1: so this wasn't just a fishing vessel. This was like
Speaker 1: an ocean going factory, ocean going fish factory. And I
Speaker 1: am I asked the guy, the management, the manager, the
Speaker 1: CEO of this of this fleet. I said, how much
Speaker 1: is one of these things cost? And he says twenty
Speaker 1: million dollars new? And then I say, how many do
Speaker 1: you have in your fleet? A hundred, So twenty million
Speaker 1: dollars times a hundred, because he has two billion dollars.
Speaker 1: And I said, what's the average age of your ships?
Speaker 1: He is his seven years. Now. I don't know anything
Speaker 1: about ships for fishing, but I figured that makes them
Speaker 1: maybe half depreciate it. So billion dollars with the ships,
Speaker 1: and the reason that this guy had hired me was
Speaker 1: to um advise him, revise him and his management team
Speaker 1: on whether to exercise their legitimate right under the privatization
Speaker 1: program of Russia to buy of the shares of this company.
Speaker 1: And so I asked him, at what price is the
Speaker 1: government selling you? And he said two and a half
Speaker 1: million dollars. So let me just repeat the math. So
Speaker 1: there's a billion dollars with the ships, and you can
Speaker 1: buy for two and a half million dollars. So I
Speaker 1: got that feeling in my stomach, you know, the one
Speaker 1: I had from the ten bagger in Poland. And I'm
Speaker 1: thinking to myself, I don't want to be advising on
Speaker 1: this stuff. I want I want to uh, I want
Speaker 1: to own this stuff. And so instead of going back
Speaker 1: to London, which was where I lived, I am flew
Speaker 1: to Moscow and I got a I bought a very
Speaker 1: thin English language yellow page directory that they sell at
Speaker 1: the airport, and I went to my hotel room at
Speaker 1: the Metropol Hotel and I started cold calling people in
Speaker 1: the yellow pages to see whether someone could explain to
Speaker 1: me how the Russian privatization program worked. And so I
Speaker 1: started having these meetings and over the course of a week,
Speaker 1: I had forty or so meetings, and from those four
Speaker 1: or so meetings, I figured out that the Russian privatization
Speaker 1: program was and always will be the single most compelling
Speaker 1: investment opportunity that's ever existed in the history of financial markets.
Speaker 1: And what I had learned was that the main way
Speaker 1: in which the Russian government was privatizing everything was through
Speaker 1: something called the mass privatization program, and the mass privatization
Speaker 1: program they gave away a physical certificate, a voucher they
Speaker 1: called them, to every person in the country. So they
Speaker 1: spread these vouchers out for free to everybody in the country.
Speaker 1: And these vouchers were tradeable, sellable, givable, takeable, whatever you
Speaker 1: wanted to do with your voucher. You could do whatever
Speaker 1: you want, there's no restriction. And as a result, a
Speaker 1: secondary market emerged for these vouchers. And again, to do
Speaker 1: a simple math, they traded for about twenty dollars each
Speaker 1: dred and fifty million of them in circulation because that
Speaker 1: was the population of Russia. So multiply twenty times a
Speaker 1: d fifty million, that gets to three billion dollars worth
Speaker 1: of vouchers that were in circulation. And those three billion
Speaker 1: dollars with vouchers were exchangeable for the shares of every
Speaker 1: single Russian company. So what that meant was that the
Speaker 1: total value of the entire country of Russia was ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars. Now that's for the whole country. This is
Speaker 1: a country with thirty five of the world's natural gas,
Speaker 1: ten percent of the world's oil, ten percent of the
Speaker 1: world steel, ten percent of the world's aluminum. There's fertilizer companies,
Speaker 1: car companies, and telephone companies, you name it, they had it.
Speaker 1: I means it's a full economy all For ten billion dollars.
Speaker 1: You couldn't buy it like one midsized Oklahoma oil company.
Speaker 1: For ten billion dollars, you could buy the entire country
Speaker 1: of Russia. And so I just got crazy with with excitement.
Speaker 1: This was just the best thing I had ever seen.
Speaker 1: I go back to Solomon Brothers and I try to
Speaker 1: convince them that we should invest in Russia. And it
Speaker 1: took a while before I was able to overcome all
Speaker 1: the doubt, but I eventually got twenty five million dollars
Speaker 1: put that money to work, and about six months after
Speaker 1: I invested that million dollars, the Economist magazine wrote an
Speaker 1: article called Sale of the century where they just went
Speaker 1: through the same math that I've shared with you. And
Speaker 1: on the back of that article, a whole bunch of people,
Speaker 1: big investors, billionaires, hedge fund managers, etcetera, all wanted to
Speaker 1: get in on the action. And it was a tiny, little,
Speaker 1: thinly traded, a liquid stock market, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all these big eighteen pound guerrillas um start filtering in
Speaker 1: in a tiny through a tiny little door, and over
Speaker 1: a three week period, the stock market went up and
Speaker 1: our million dollars turned into five million dollars, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden everyone wanted to know me. They started
Speaker 1: taking me around to all the big investors on Wall Street,
Speaker 1: and one of them, a man named Edmund saffra Uh,
Speaker 1: said he would give me tillion dollars to start my
Speaker 1: own fund. And so I moved to Moscow. And this
Speaker 1: is no set up. A company called Hermitage Capital Management
Speaker 1: started a fund called the Hermitage Fund with dollars from
Speaker 1: saffra and it was just an incredible launch. Over the
Speaker 1: next eighteen months we were up eight Okay, you were
Speaker 1: an individual, and now after this Economist article, everybody is in.
Speaker 1: Was everybody doing that well or was something you knew
Speaker 1: that nobody else did. And what accounts for that huge increase. Well,
Speaker 1: what happened was that all the other investors were sitting
Speaker 1: in New York, in London and Geneva and other places,
Speaker 1: and I was on the ground in Moscow. And there's
Speaker 1: an expression in the Land of the Blind, the one
Speaker 1: eyed man as king, and and so it's one of
Speaker 1: these weird things where like you could get the most
Speaker 1: unbelievable information just by showing up. So all the guys
Speaker 1: in in New York, we're having to rely on other
Speaker 1: people to tell them what was going on, And so
Speaker 1: they would tell them about one oil company called Luke
Speaker 1: Oil that's a famous Russian oil company. And they did
Speaker 1: a lot of research on Luke Oil because there was
Speaker 1: a lot of shares trading, and they get big commissions
Speaker 1: the brokers. And I'm thinking, okay, yeah, that's interesting, But
Speaker 1: what about this other oil company. It's almost as big
Speaker 1: as Luke Oil, and it trades it about a discount
Speaker 1: of Luke Oil because nobody has bothered to show up
Speaker 1: and ask a few questions at the company, which I did.
Speaker 1: So I'd buy shares of the of the one that
Speaker 1: was much cheaper and and so I ended up doing
Speaker 1: phenomenally well for a period of time. Did you speak
Speaker 1: Russian not a word? Did you go into a brilitche
Speaker 1: program or you just said I'm never gonna know it.
Speaker 1: I tried to learn it, but the things we're moving
Speaker 1: so fast in the business world that I just, you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't take two hours out of my day to
Speaker 1: do it. I mean, I just I didn't even have
Speaker 1: a minute to to rest or, to think or do anything.
Speaker 1: I was It was like riding a dirt bike. You
Speaker 1: just had to keep your hands on the handlebar the
Speaker 1: whole time or else you get thrown off. So I
Speaker 1: didn't speak Russian. I had some good Russians working for me.
Speaker 1: I ended up marrying a Russian who spoke perfect English,
Speaker 1: and so somehow I was able to manage without speaking
Speaker 1: the language amazingly. Okay, how many Bill Browders were there
Speaker 1: in that era? Just one Bill Browder? Me? Really, no
Speaker 1: one else followed your half? Well, how do there were?
Speaker 1: There are a few guys who are trying to but
Speaker 1: nobody ever could pull it off. It was I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, there was like there was one, you know,
Speaker 1: one couple of guys that were like, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of nipping at my heels and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: but for the most part, I was like sort of
Speaker 1: you know, there was it was an incredible, um you know,
Speaker 1: incredible to be the sort of king of this little sandbox. Now.
Speaker 1: Needlet's say you went to business school and you're sophisticated,
Speaker 1: but everybody is. And if you take this twenty five
Speaker 1: million dollars and you invested, it is not your money,
Speaker 1: Mr Saffros, how much of that do you get? Well,
Speaker 1: what happens is if it goes up, I got and
Speaker 1: so um as things started going up, I started making
Speaker 1: a lot of money. And did you keep that money?
Speaker 1: In Russia? It's like, you know, when your company is
Speaker 1: going up in silicon value, most people take some money
Speaker 1: off the table just in case it crashes, or did
Speaker 1: you keep all your money in the game. What what
Speaker 1: happened was eventually started to piss off the Russian government
Speaker 1: by complaining about corruption because all the companies. I discovered
Speaker 1: that all the companies I was invested in were corrupt,
Speaker 1: and and I would do these naming and shaming campaigns
Speaker 1: where I had researched the corruption and then expose it,
Speaker 1: which were very successful. These campaigns. But eventually they got
Speaker 1: angry with me and they expelled me from the country.
Speaker 1: And when they expelled me from the country, I sold everything.
Speaker 1: And when I sold everything, I crystallized my profits. And
Speaker 1: so there's an expression better lucky than smart um. But
Speaker 1: they kicked me out like ten percent below the top
Speaker 1: of the market, and I was able to crystallize the
Speaker 1: profits from my clients and take my own money off
Speaker 1: the table. And so it was an extraordinary um sort
Speaker 1: of turn of events, which I don't think anyone intended
Speaker 1: it to be the way it was, but worked out
Speaker 1: financially very well for me. Now this late date, Hermitage
Speaker 1: Capital still exists. What does it invest in? Hermage Capital
Speaker 1: doesn't invest in anything. I gave up investing a long
Speaker 1: time ago after Sergaymagnitsky was killed. I still have a
Speaker 1: website and a business card and a and a company
Speaker 1: formation that's called Hermitage Capital. But basically what I do
Speaker 1: day in, day out now is is a fight for
Speaker 1: justice for my murdered lawyer, s Gaymagnitsky. Okay, but you
Speaker 1: do have employees, what are they doing? They're helping me
Speaker 1: find out who's committed what crimes, where help me do
Speaker 1: the research into the money laundering connected to the Magnitsky murder.
Speaker 1: It's like a It's like a sort of h Batman
Speaker 1: type of operation where we have ah an operation to
Speaker 1: go after the bad guys. And who is managing your
Speaker 1: money and how actively today? I've managed my money as
Speaker 1: sort of an afterthought and not very actively at all. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back, and as I say, Americans tend to
Speaker 1: be unsophisticated, even about their own country. So tell us
Speaker 1: what is happening in Russian history and Russian government concomitant
Speaker 1: ly with your enterprise when you moved there, et cetera.
Speaker 1: When I moved to Russia in it was total chaos.
Speaker 1: It was Yelson was the president of Russia. Um he
Speaker 1: had done a deal with the oligarchs where basically he
Speaker 1: allowed them to steal forty pc of the country. There's
Speaker 1: twenty two of these guys in exchange, they would use
Speaker 1: all of their resources to support him and make sure
Speaker 1: he stayed in power. As a results of this massive
Speaker 1: theft and compromise that Yelson made, the life expectancy of
Speaker 1: a male in Russia was like fifty seven years. Just
Speaker 1: a terrible place to live. Everything didn't work. It was
Speaker 1: just horrific and humiliating and horrible. And then at the
Speaker 1: as Jelson was looking particularly frail and and like he
Speaker 1: was going to die of a heart attack or some
Speaker 1: other thing, he decided to put in his successor, and
Speaker 1: his successor ultimately was Vladimir Putin. Let's stop there for
Speaker 1: a second. Some people say that Yelsen was impressed with
Speaker 1: how Putin got another criminal. I think it was a
Speaker 1: mayor out of the country, and he put Putin in
Speaker 1: with the understanding that he would make sure he wasn't prosecuted.
Speaker 1: Is that true? To what degree is that known by
Speaker 1: the public. Untrue, That's very true. It's the crux of
Speaker 1: the whole situation. Well, let me back up. Yelson needed
Speaker 1: to have somebody who would pardon him as the first
Speaker 1: act of being the new president of Russia. Um, why
Speaker 1: did Yelson need that? Because he had done so many
Speaker 1: compromises and the illegal things that he was worried about
Speaker 1: being indicted so and he was also knowing for sure
Speaker 1: that he couldn't last being president that much longer. So
Speaker 1: his goal was to find somebody who was strong enough
Speaker 1: to be to become president, stay as president, not lose
Speaker 1: it so that the pardon with stick, and he actually
Speaker 1: went through three other candidates who became prime minister. They
Speaker 1: had three different prime ministers who, for one reason or
Speaker 1: another he chose badly didn't work out, and so he
Speaker 1: would fire one and replace them with another. And so
Speaker 1: Putin was actually Yelson's fourth choice, so and and and
Speaker 1: it was almost like you know, when you're kind of
Speaker 1: like running out of options, and and what everybody thought
Speaker 1: Putin would be good for was that he was very
Speaker 1: sober um, sort of kept his cards close to the chest,
Speaker 1: but it seemed like a technocrat, and it was extremely loyal.
Speaker 1: And you mentioned his story about how his boss who
Speaker 1: was the mayor, he was the deputy mayor of St. Petersburg.
Speaker 1: Putin was and his boss kind named Subcheck was the
Speaker 1: mayor and there was some corruption scandal and he got
Speaker 1: Subcheck out of the country um and put him in
Speaker 1: a like hospital in Paris or something like that where
Speaker 1: they couldn't get get hold of him. And so that
Speaker 1: was a good sign for Yelson. And so when he
Speaker 1: finally picked his fourth choice Putin, he did so on
Speaker 1: that basis and and uh, probably a few other criteria
Speaker 1: as well. Now being in the country. Obviously it's corrupt.
Speaker 1: Could you feel a difference with the transition of power? Now,
Speaker 1: supposedly they jinned up a war crisis to help the transition,
Speaker 1: But what was like for you and the people during
Speaker 1: this transition? So the transition, well, it wasn't clear how
Speaker 1: this transition was going to work because the big problem
Speaker 1: with Putin so he seemed you know, not and not,
Speaker 1: he wasn't drunk and all that kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: the problem, um is that nobody had ever heard of
Speaker 1: this guy. He was a total enigma. And um that
Speaker 1: Putin had to be elected president. So what happened was
Speaker 1: they appointed him Prime Minister. Yelson resigns as president. Putin
Speaker 1: becomes acting president, but he has to be in three
Speaker 1: months time, there's gonna be an election and he has
Speaker 1: to be elected president. And this was back in the
Speaker 1: days when democracy still existed in Russia. So what did
Speaker 1: Putin do? Putin, Um, he had this organization under him
Speaker 1: called the FSB, which used to be called the KGB,
Speaker 1: the secret police, and the secret police started planting apartment
Speaker 1: bombs inside Moscow and then blowing up apartment buildings with
Speaker 1: people inside of them. And I was there at the time,
Speaker 1: and so one building would blow up, and and everybody
Speaker 1: in the entire city of Moscow would be horrified. And
Speaker 1: you see these pictures and the mangled bodies and the
Speaker 1: destroyed buildings, And then the next couple of days, another
Speaker 1: building would blow up, more mangled bodies, and and like,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a single person in Moscow, including myself, that
Speaker 1: could sleep peacefully through the night because you're all thinking.
Speaker 1: Everyone thought they were going to be in an apartment
Speaker 1: that blows up. And eventually um Putin and his guys
Speaker 1: planted a bomb in in a in a provincial city
Speaker 1: outside of Moscow. Uh, but the local police, who weren't
Speaker 1: in on the scam, caught them in on the act,
Speaker 1: and uh, and it became obvious that this was not uh,
Speaker 1: so it was Putin doing the bombs. But Putin blamed
Speaker 1: the whole thing on Chechens. Chechen. The Chechens are a
Speaker 1: group of people that live in southern Russia. They look
Speaker 1: darker than the average Russian and they were kind of
Speaker 1: blamed for all Russia's problems, and so Putin blamed it
Speaker 1: on the Chechens. And and everybody was so angry and
Speaker 1: upset and insecure because of all this U all these
Speaker 1: apartment bombs going off and thinking they'd be in them.
Speaker 1: Everyone wanted revenge and blood and reaction and something somebody tough,
Speaker 1: and so Putin then says, it's the Chechens who did this.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bomb them wherever they are, even in the
Speaker 1: ship house. He said. That was a famous quote from Putin,
Speaker 1: and all the Russians cheered. Putin started the war against
Speaker 1: Czechnia and literally flattened Grozni, which is their capital, to
Speaker 1: the ground. There wasn't like a building left standing, killing
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of Chechens. And guess what his approval
Speaker 1: ratings went through the roof. And so Putin learned at
Speaker 1: that moment in time how valuable wars were in solidifying
Speaker 1: his support. And that's not a lesson that was lost
Speaker 1: on him, because he's fought a few more wars at
Speaker 1: times when he was feeling insecure. Okay, you're using your
Speaker 1: American values in Russia, you're fighting corruption. Do you ever
Speaker 1: think I'm a fish out of water here? This is
Speaker 1: gonna end, There's gonna be trouble or were you so
Speaker 1: caught up in your capitalistic ways that you felt no, no,
Speaker 1: this is numbers. This is gonna work. Well, it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a lot of things. So in order to
Speaker 1: go to Russia, a normal person wouldn't have gone to Russia.
Speaker 1: A normal person would have said, this is crazy. They're
Speaker 1: killing people in the streets, They're doing all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1: So in order to go to Russia, you kind of
Speaker 1: have to have your risk sensors sanded down. In the
Speaker 1: first place. You can't be thinking all these bad things
Speaker 1: are gonna happen to you, because there's too many bad
Speaker 1: things that you can think about that might happen to you.
Speaker 1: And so let's say that my risk sensors were sanded down.
Speaker 1: And then when I got there, I started small and
Speaker 1: started making money for my clients. For myself, I started
Speaker 1: making more money, and after a while I had a
Speaker 1: big business there, and so I had a lot to
Speaker 1: lose if I ever were to like leave. And then
Speaker 1: the first rip offs started to happen. And the first
Speaker 1: big rip off was was a guy named Vladimir Batannan.
Speaker 1: He's a famous oligarch. Tried to steal my shares in
Speaker 1: an oil company called Sedanco A little bit slower. What
Speaker 1: year resist and how did he try to steal them?
Speaker 1: So this was in nineteen I think I owned two
Speaker 1: percent of Sedanko, and Sedanco was an oil company that
Speaker 1: was um trading at a huge discount to the other
Speaker 1: big oil companies, and I brought into it, and this guy,
Speaker 1: Vladimer Britanon owned and I can't remember the exact numbers,
Speaker 1: but but I am. I think I paid twelve million
Speaker 1: dollars for my two percent, and about a year later,
Speaker 1: Vladimir Britannon sold ten percent of his to British Petroleum
Speaker 1: at a price that would have valued my hat like
Speaker 1: a twenty million. So I had made like ten times
Speaker 1: my money, and I was feeling just like the best
Speaker 1: guy in the world. I mean that was I was.
Speaker 1: I would think I was barely even thirty years old,
Speaker 1: and I just made this enormous fortune for my clients.
Speaker 1: Remember I got of that myself, and so I'm feeling
Speaker 1: just the king of the world. And then Batanon comes along,
Speaker 1: and this is a really interesting Russian phenomenon where he
Speaker 1: wasn't celebrating the fact that he owned forty times more
Speaker 1: shares of Sedanco and he was immensely rich based on
Speaker 1: this BP transaction. Somehow it bothered him. It really bothered him.
Speaker 1: That that I made money on this deal, Like, why
Speaker 1: was I allowed to make the money? Somehow, he felt
Speaker 1: like that was just wrong, and so he organized a
Speaker 1: machination where he would sell himself in his cronies more
Speaker 1: shares of the company at a huge discount to the
Speaker 1: normal price and not allow me to invest, which meant
Speaker 1: meant basically that they were going to steal. I think
Speaker 1: they were gonna try to steal the equivalent of seventy
Speaker 1: million dollars from me in terms of this machination. And
Speaker 1: so at this point I had a lot to lose,
Speaker 1: and so uh, I decided to fight him. And nobody
Speaker 1: had ever fought an oligarch before in Russia. It's certainly
Speaker 1: not some guy from the south side of Chicago. And
Speaker 1: so I fight him. And the way that I fought
Speaker 1: with him was first, first I went to him, it's
Speaker 1: just asked him to stop it. Of course he laughed
Speaker 1: at me. I didn't go to him personally. I went
Speaker 1: to one of his representatives. Uh. Then I went to
Speaker 1: all the other Western investors who had done business with
Speaker 1: him and showed them what they did, what he had done.
Speaker 1: Then I went to the newspapers and went public with
Speaker 1: the whole thing. And then I eventually went to an
Speaker 1: obscure government official was involved in securities regulation and immense
Speaker 1: amazingly and this has rarely ever happened in Russia before
Speaker 1: or after this regulator canceled this this financial uh uh
Speaker 1: scam that he was organizing, and I was brought back
Speaker 1: to normal. And and my success in this for crisis,
Speaker 1: this first approach and first stealing thing, um gave me
Speaker 1: such confidence that I decided to do it again. And
Speaker 1: I did it at the national gas company gas BROM
Speaker 1: and then I did it again at the National Savings
Speaker 1: Bank Spare Bank, and and then at one of the
Speaker 1: oil company is called Circo deft to Gas. And I
Speaker 1: was just doing this over and over and over again
Speaker 1: and and and the thing about it is sort of
Speaker 1: it's all incremental. You start these fights and then you
Speaker 1: do another one, and and so you ask like, why
Speaker 1: was I doing it? Wasn't it was it wasn't crazy.
Speaker 1: And I had just gotten such a sense of confidence
Speaker 1: and somehow I could get away with it that I
Speaker 1: just kept on doing it. And of course anyone who
Speaker 1: google's my name will know that that didn't turn out
Speaker 1: so well. So what was the triggered exile. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a good question, one that there's no definitive answer. It
Speaker 1: was either going after gas Prom, which is the largest
Speaker 1: company in Russia, or going after this company called Sir
Speaker 1: good neft to gas which is a very murky and
Speaker 1: criminalized oil company. Either way. Um, In November of two
Speaker 1: thousand five, as I was flying back to Russia from
Speaker 1: a business trip abroad from London, I was stopped at
Speaker 1: the border. I was arrested, I was put in the
Speaker 1: airport detention center. I was kept there for fifteen hours,
Speaker 1: and then I was deported back to London and declared
Speaker 1: a threat to national security. Okay, if you read the
Speaker 1: second book, especially Freezing Order, which is relatively new book
Speaker 1: came out two months ago, the case is made that
Speaker 1: Putin literally knows who you are, and it's after you
Speaker 1: as an individual. You know that doesn't happen in America
Speaker 1: to that degree. What's going on? Hey? Is that true?
Speaker 1: Would be? What's the backstory? It's true? Um? And UM?
Speaker 1: I can prove it by by showing you a clip
Speaker 1: of the Putin Trump summit in Helsinki where you can
Speaker 1: hear Putin uttering my name and asking Trump to hand
Speaker 1: me over and in response, you can hear Trump saying,
Speaker 1: I think that's a great idea. But the backstory to
Speaker 1: that is that after I was expelled ah from Russia, UM,
Speaker 1: my offices were rated and the police seized all of
Speaker 1: my documents corporate documents for investment holding companies, and those
Speaker 1: documents UM were then used to fraudulently reregister our investment
Speaker 1: holding companies out of our name into the name of
Speaker 1: a guy who had been convicted of manslaughter and let
Speaker 1: out of jail. Early at this point I hired the
Speaker 1: smartest lawyer I knew in Russia, a young man named
Speaker 1: Sergey Magnitsky. I asked Sergey to investigate. Serge went and investigated,
Speaker 1: and he came back and he said, the reason that
Speaker 1: they stole your companies was to steal twoty million dollars
Speaker 1: of taxes that you paid to the Russian government in
Speaker 1: the previous year. They came up with a very complicated
Speaker 1: machination to do that. And when we discovered this, Serge
Speaker 1: was particularly shocked because he thought that Putin was a
Speaker 1: nationalist and that he wouldn't have allowed nearly a quarter
Speaker 1: of a billion dollars of government money to be stolen,
Speaker 1: and he figured, if we just wrote complaints to the
Speaker 1: highest level of the Russian government, then the good guys
Speaker 1: will get the bad guys and that would be the
Speaker 1: end of the story. And so Serge wrote criminal complaints
Speaker 1: to every different branch of Russian law enforcement. I went
Speaker 1: to the TV radio newspapers highlighted the story, and then
Speaker 1: Surge gave swegn testimony to the Russian State Investigative Committee,
Speaker 1: which is their version of the FBI. And then we
Speaker 1: sat back and we waited for the good guys to
Speaker 1: get the bad guys. Well, it turns out, then Vladimir
Speaker 1: Putin's Russia, there's no good guys about uh. Five weeks
Speaker 1: after Surge testified, the same police officers he testified against
Speaker 1: came to his home on November two eight and they
Speaker 1: arrested him. They put him in pre trial detention and
Speaker 1: then they tortured him to get him to withdraw his testimony.
Speaker 1: They put him in cells with fourteen inmates and eight beds,
Speaker 1: left lights on twenty four hours a day to impose
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation. They put him in cells with no heat
Speaker 1: and no window panes. In December and Moscow, so he
Speaker 1: newly froze to death. They put him in cells with
Speaker 1: no toilet, just a hole in the floor where the
Speaker 1: sewage would bubble up. They moved him from cell to
Speaker 1: cell to cell in the middle of the night. And
Speaker 1: the purpose of all this was to get him to
Speaker 1: withdraw his testimony against the corrupt police officers and again
Speaker 1: him to sign his false confession, to say that he's
Speaker 1: told the two thirty million dollars. And he did so
Speaker 1: on my instruction. And Sergey was a man of such
Speaker 1: incredible integrity and principle that for him the idea of
Speaker 1: perjuring himself and bearing false witness it was more awful
Speaker 1: than the physical pain they were subjecting him to. And
Speaker 1: he refused, and in retaliation they then up to the
Speaker 1: torture and went after him even further. And after about
Speaker 1: six months of this, his health started to digterior. He
Speaker 1: got terrible pains in his stomach. He lost forty pounds,
Speaker 1: and he was diagnosed as having pancreatitis and gallstones and
Speaker 1: needing an operation, which was scheduled for the first of
Speaker 1: August two thousand nine. A week before the operation, they
Speaker 1: came to him again again uh asked him again. He
Speaker 1: refused to do the false confession, and in response, they
Speaker 1: moved him to a maximum security prison called Boutyrka, which
Speaker 1: is considered to be one of the most horrible prisons
Speaker 1: in Russia, and most significantly for Sergey, there was no
Speaker 1: medical facilities there. At Boucherka's health completely broke down. He
Speaker 1: went into constant, agonizing, ear piercing pain. He and his
Speaker 1: lawyers wrote twenty different desperate requests for medical attention to
Speaker 1: every different branch of the criminal justice system, and every
Speaker 1: one of those letters was either ignored or denied in writing,
Speaker 1: and on the night of November six thousand nine, Sergey
Speaker 1: Magnisky went into critical condition. On that night, the Butcherka
Speaker 1: authorities didn't want to have responsibility for him anymore. They
Speaker 1: put him in an ambulance sent him to a different
Speaker 1: prison across town that had a medical wing. When he
Speaker 1: arrived there, instead of putting him in the emergency room,
Speaker 1: they put him in an isolation cell. They changed him
Speaker 1: to a bed, and eight riot guards with rubber baton's
Speaker 1: beat him until he died. He was thirty seven years old.
Speaker 1: He left a wife and two children. Since that moment,
Speaker 1: I've been on a mission to go after the people
Speaker 1: who killed him. To make sure they faced justice. And
Speaker 1: for the last twelve years, that's what I've been doing.
Speaker 1: And it's that mission of getting justice for Surgey, which
Speaker 1: is what's caused Putin to get so mad at me. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's stay with Putin, Let's pull the lens back. Is
Speaker 1: Putent the strong man anomaly? Or is he a harben
Speaker 1: jur for what's going to happen in the rest of
Speaker 1: the world. I don't think anyone could be as horrible
Speaker 1: as Vladimir Putin's. He sits in a class by himself
Speaker 1: of depravity, of evil, of of he's really as he's
Speaker 1: a psycho psycho killer. And you have a lot of
Speaker 1: people that are authoritarians in different parts of the world,
Speaker 1: a lot of people that ignore a rule of law,
Speaker 1: but nobody is as sort of sadistic and unbelievably mass
Speaker 1: murdering as Putin is right now. Um, And so I
Speaker 1: would I would like to think that he's special and
Speaker 1: that we don't have a lot of other Vladimir Putin's
Speaker 1: percolating and and get gathering their strength to do what
Speaker 1: he's doing. I think that he's he's unique. What do
Speaker 1: you believe his motivation for the invasion of Ukraine was well.
Speaker 1: A lot of learned political scientists and others have all
Speaker 1: sorts of fancy h and analysis which which where they
Speaker 1: suggest that he wants to recreate the Russian Empire or
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. UH. Some people say that Putin was
Speaker 1: humiliated by the by the fact that we added other
Speaker 1: countries to NATO. UM. There's some people that are saying
Speaker 1: that he's mad because Ukraine want to join the European Union.
Speaker 1: I actually don't believe any of those theories. I think
Speaker 1: the main theory of why he's done what he's done
Speaker 1: is that he's stolen a trillion dollars he and the
Speaker 1: people around him in the last twenty two years. And
Speaker 1: Russia's supposed to be a democracy, and at some point
Speaker 1: people start getting angry that they have bad lives and
Speaker 1: a few, very small number of people have really good lives,
Speaker 1: and that's all taken from the from the other, from
Speaker 1: the population, and so I believe that this is a
Speaker 1: war of distraction. I think the war is purely to
Speaker 1: be at war so he can get all the people
Speaker 1: rebbed up into a flurry of of UH nationalism and
Speaker 1: patriotic fervor, and by the way, you know, whatever disasters
Speaker 1: are going on in Ukraine right now for the Russian military,
Speaker 1: the one big success for Putin is that his approval
Speaker 1: rating skyrocketed. To what degree do you believe those rating
Speaker 1: skyrocketed because of a crackdown on contrary news. I think
Speaker 1: that the crackdown on contrary news actually came after the skyrocketing,
Speaker 1: not before. I think that Scott rocketed literally the day
Speaker 1: he went in. And of course he's always delivering misinformation
Speaker 1: and fake news and all this kind of stuff. But
Speaker 1: but I believe that that this is kind of a
Speaker 1: genuine feeling. Of course, you're right and your question that
Speaker 1: you imply that if people knew the truth, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be so supportive, and I think that's true. But there's
Speaker 1: something weird going on there where where people almost stopped
Speaker 1: stop ignoring, start they start to ignore the facts, stop
Speaker 1: paying attention to what's true, and they kind of just become, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of their guy is Putin and the
Speaker 1: enemy is the other guy. It almost doesn't matter what
Speaker 1: their guy did anymore. Okay, But on the other side,
Speaker 1: you have Navalni, you have his YouTube videos. Is he
Speaker 1: just appealing to a minority or a growing minority. Alexei
Speaker 1: Navolney started out by appealing to just the young group
Speaker 1: of YouTube users and instagrammers and and Twitter followers and
Speaker 1: so on. But and he did so by by exposing
Speaker 1: corruption of Putin and his cronies, which was very interesting
Speaker 1: and very attractive. But it's it's one of these interesting
Speaker 1: things that that Navalny has risen well beyond that. And
Speaker 1: and the way he rose well beyond that was by
Speaker 1: getting by by basically being victimized when Putin tried to
Speaker 1: kill him with with Nova Chalk in Siberia. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the whole world and all people in Russia
Speaker 1: were paying attention and the fact that he survived, and
Speaker 1: everyone loves an underdog, and so he survived the killing attempt.
Speaker 1: He's an a coma for a month, he comes out
Speaker 1: of a coma, he rehabilitates himself back to life, and
Speaker 1: then he returns to Russia, even though they told him
Speaker 1: he would be arrested if he returned to Russia, and
Speaker 1: that elevated him to a presidential level. That the fact
Speaker 1: that a guy would risk his life and his freedom
Speaker 1: for his country put him on par with Putin. And
Speaker 1: so there's a chance. I wouldn't put it too high
Speaker 1: a chance, but there's a chance that if Putin missteps
Speaker 1: badly enough and the whole thing goes up in flames
Speaker 1: and everyone is looking for who should lead Russia next,
Speaker 1: Alexie volney Is is the perfect person who has the profile,
Speaker 1: who could do it. He's like the Russian version of
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela. Forget the war. If the war wasn't happening,
Speaker 1: would Putin's government ultimately implode or would ultimately pass the
Speaker 1: baton to someone else in the cleptocracy would continue? Well,
Speaker 1: of course, the main objective of everybody who is part
Speaker 1: of the cleptocracy the status quo, to keep it going.
Speaker 1: And that's their game plan. If Putin were to die
Speaker 1: of a stroke tonight, uh, they'd want to get the
Speaker 1: head of the KGB or the head of the g
Speaker 1: r U or some other sort of strong man to
Speaker 1: step in and do the same thing. That's there perfect plan.
Speaker 1: But the trouble with with a place like Russia, it's
Speaker 1: a big country, there's a lot of people, a lot
Speaker 1: of different things can happen. It's very difficult to control.
Speaker 1: And that's one of the reasons that that Putin has
Speaker 1: been so successful as he's figured out the levers of control.
Speaker 1: When it is a successful I means successful and staying
Speaker 1: in power, And so nobody really knows what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: There's some chance that it could be a you know,
Speaker 1: a widespread popular uprising and then navalny comes in. There's
Speaker 1: some chance that it could be a palace coup um
Speaker 1: and some new KGB guy comes in. Um. The most
Speaker 1: likely thing I think is more of the same, as
Speaker 1: that Vladimir Putin doesn't leave power and that he sticks
Speaker 1: around for a very long time. Let's go back to
Speaker 1: the war. How does the war end? If it ends, well,
Speaker 1: there's three ways the work and end well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know there's two ways to work and end and
Speaker 1: one much more probable outcome, so that they're either Ukraine
Speaker 1: wins the war and that you know, if we had
Speaker 1: talked about this eight weeks ago, nine weeks ago, um,
Speaker 1: nobody everyone would have laughed at that idea. But I
Speaker 1: think there's a not insignificant chance that Ukraine could win
Speaker 1: this war. How do they win the war? Because they
Speaker 1: have now very good equipment coming from the West, Stinger
Speaker 1: Javelin missiles, they've got drones, Turkish drones. Um, they've got
Speaker 1: surface to air missiles, they've got all sorts of interesting
Speaker 1: stuff to help them win the war, and and they're
Speaker 1: doing pretty well. They're killing a lot of Russian soldiers,
Speaker 1: and they're driving Russia back from a lot of places
Speaker 1: that Russia thought they had absolutely nailed down. If for
Speaker 1: some reason, Ukraine succeeds and wins the war, that's the
Speaker 1: one scenario where I think Putin wouldn't last. The Russians,
Speaker 1: I don't think, have a great deal of sympathy for
Speaker 1: human rights victims and in all the terrible things that
Speaker 1: we respond to so so emotionally. But the Russians really
Speaker 1: don't like a loser. They don't like a weak loser.
Speaker 1: And if Putin were to lose this war, one that
Speaker 1: he should absolutely should have won in his mind and
Speaker 1: the mind of the Russian people, they would get rid
Speaker 1: of him. The problem is that even though this this
Speaker 1: scenario um as a chance, it's not a huge chance.
Speaker 1: It's like the other way this war could end is
Speaker 1: something really horrible and unthinkable, which is that Putin wins
Speaker 1: in Ukraine and then he moves on to Moldova or
Speaker 1: more likely Estonia, lat Via, Poland, and he goes to
Speaker 1: these countries and he points his guns at the countries,
Speaker 1: and he points a couple of nukes at Washington and
Speaker 1: Lynn in London and he says, Okay, do you really
Speaker 1: want to have a war with me? And and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, the pundits on MSNBC and Fox
Speaker 1: News are all saying, wait a second, why would we
Speaker 1: risk losing twenty million people for the sake of a
Speaker 1: country that most people can't locate on a map. And
Speaker 1: and even worse, um uh, why why do we even
Speaker 1: care about this whole NATO thing? And if Putin were
Speaker 1: to achieve that feeling, then he ends up getting some
Speaker 1: huge peace treaty with a whole bunch of countries that
Speaker 1: never were part of the you know that that have
Speaker 1: been free for the last thirty years, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they come under Russia's orbit. That's the that's
Speaker 1: his sort of good case scenario. I put a fift
Speaker 1: chance on that one. So that's that's rough to so far,
Speaker 1: the most likely thing. The scenario. It's just more of
Speaker 1: the same. You know, the Russians don't back down, and
Speaker 1: the Ukrainians don't back down, and they just keep at it.
Speaker 1: But theoretically, could Putin say oh I took part of
Speaker 1: Ukraine and declare victory and in the war. Theoretically yes,
Speaker 1: but probably no, because the remember Putin is at war
Speaker 1: because he wants his approval ratings to be high. If
Speaker 1: he does peace, his approval ratings go back down. I
Speaker 1: think that the whole purpose of this war is for
Speaker 1: him to stay in power. So in terms of the
Speaker 1: death rate the economic cost, you believe that the public
Speaker 1: is so behind Putin that those are ultimately irrelevant. I
Speaker 1: think I think that's that's the case. What do Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson and the other people on the right not understand
Speaker 1: that they're either supportive of Putin or they say it's
Speaker 1: not our battle to fight. Well, I have no idea
Speaker 1: what's in the head of Tucker Carlson. Um. I think
Speaker 1: that sometimes people say stuff, outrageous stuff, just so they
Speaker 1: get noticed. And I have no idea why Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: would say these things. And um uh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's very offensive to hear him saying it. But but
Speaker 1: there's absolutely no basis for any anybody in America who
Speaker 1: knows the facts to support Vladimir Putin. So needless to say, misinformation, disinformation.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get the truth and people facts are fungible.
Speaker 1: Could this happen in America? Could we have a strong
Speaker 1: man in America? How closer far we away from this?
Speaker 1: We had a strong man from two thousands sixteen to
Speaker 1: two thousand twenty in the form of Donald Trump, and
Speaker 1: he tried to do a whole bunch of stuff. But
Speaker 1: in America, the institutions held. And that's the difference between
Speaker 1: American and Russia's. We have institutions, we have courts that
Speaker 1: still function, we have a free press, we have a
Speaker 1: democratic process. And when when that stuff was challenged, it
Speaker 1: didn't it didn't break. However, in the ensuing four years
Speaker 1: and the loss of Donald Trump at the Supreme court level,
Speaker 1: the judge level, the right side agitation, it's unclear whether
Speaker 1: those institutions would hold in the future. That's true. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, there wasn't a single journalist arrested
Speaker 1: for challenging Trump. Nobody, no political opponents were killed, Um,
Speaker 1: nobody was poisoned. Uh. You know, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: a long way to go before we have a world
Speaker 1: like the one that I know in Russia. Is there
Speaker 1: a tipping point? Where are people boiled in hot water
Speaker 1: like a lobster or frog? I don't know the answer
Speaker 1: to that question. I don't think anyone knows the answer
Speaker 1: to that question. UM. I think that it's uh. We've
Speaker 1: seen the frog scenario play. It's out out in Russia.
Speaker 1: I mean it didn't start this way. It got worse
Speaker 1: and worse and worse. The same thing in Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: You know, the Chinese slowly turned up the temperature. And
Speaker 1: so hard to say what's going to happen in America?
Speaker 1: Now you live in London, which was certainly the European
Speaker 1: financial at center, and Brexit happened. Many people believe online misinformation,
Speaker 1: disinformation from Russia swung that election. Do you believe that
Speaker 1: hogwash too or possible? Well? So what I what I
Speaker 1: know for a fact is that Vladimir Putin, UM, he
Speaker 1: didn't want this. Um. He doesn't like the European Union.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like the European Union because he likes to
Speaker 1: pick off one country versus another. And so when he
Speaker 1: saw the British arguing UH to get rid of the
Speaker 1: European to get out of the European Union, he loved
Speaker 1: that and he loved that, and surely he participated using
Speaker 1: trolls and bots and all that kind of stuff to
Speaker 1: make this thing happened. Did was that enough to tip
Speaker 1: the balance or was it just on the margin. I
Speaker 1: don't know the answer. A number of people have called
Speaker 1: for a Mueller type of investigation here, not that Mueller
Speaker 1: actually succeeded in doing anything in America. Um, but that
Speaker 1: never happened. And so to this day we have no
Speaker 1: no definitive facts about whether, ah, whether it was the
Speaker 1: Russians maturely affected the outcome of this, of this referendum.
Speaker 1: And what I can say, and I know this very
Speaker 1: clearly living here, is that there are some people that
Speaker 1: are very passionate about wanting to leave that had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with Russia. They just didn't like the European Union. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is you know, there are all sorts of issue
Speaker 1: just today with Northern Ireland and visas also related to
Speaker 1: the Ukraine crisis. Does the UK ultimately find its feet
Speaker 1: and clear sailing or is this the beginning of the
Speaker 1: large decline? Well, I'm I don't write off any of
Speaker 1: our great democracies. Um. I mean, there's all sorts of
Speaker 1: problems in in the UK, there's problems in the United States,
Speaker 1: problems in France, problems in all sorts of places. But um,
Speaker 1: I'm so far away from writing off the idea that
Speaker 1: we have. Um, you know that that are that are
Speaker 1: systems are all gonna break down and implode. I think
Speaker 1: that there's there's ugliness, but at the same time, UM,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff that still works pretty well. Now,
Speaker 1: there are many commentators say that economically, despite the posing
Speaker 1: of Putin, it is a very small country that ultimately
Speaker 1: has problems paying bills. Now we have the sanctions. Will
Speaker 1: these economic pressures affect Russia and possibly lead to the
Speaker 1: downfall of Putin? Or is the fact that he has
Speaker 1: such a grip on the government it could never happen. Well,
Speaker 1: it becomes a much more brittle situation. And the way
Speaker 1: he's managed in so I believe that that you know,
Speaker 1: he's a specialist in avoiding coups, he's a specialist in
Speaker 1: in repressing his society and more likely than not his
Speaker 1: skills that staying in power will succeed. Having said that,
Speaker 1: the situation that he's created with this invasion, with the sanctions,
Speaker 1: with the economic collapse, it's like being in a in
Speaker 1: a forest after a really hot summer, and there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of dry leaves on the ground, and at any point,
Speaker 1: you know, if if a match hits the right place,
Speaker 1: the whole forest could go up in flames. And I
Speaker 1: think that that's the situation he's facing right now, and
Speaker 1: he's hoping that doesn't happen and taking all sorts of
Speaker 1: precautions trying to prevent it from happening. But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, it's hard to predict. And he's created,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of fuel to
Speaker 1: burn um with all this unhappiness and hardship that he's
Speaker 1: that's coming from all that his his terrible behavior. They
Speaker 1: just mentioned the economy and the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: We think we know what's going on. The Thirteen Times
Speaker 1: owns that this and that. What does the rest of
Speaker 1: the world not understand about Russia and putin Well, the
Speaker 1: main thing that people don't understand is that he is
Speaker 1: a criminal. This is not the actions of a of
Speaker 1: a leader of a sovereign state. Too many people treat
Speaker 1: him like he's got some kind of national interests, that
Speaker 1: he's he that he somehow is doing this for some
Speaker 1: pride or legacy. He has no interest in pride or legacy.
Speaker 1: All he is trying to do is keep his money,
Speaker 1: stay out of jail, and stay alive. And the best
Speaker 1: way to do that is by distracting people. And the
Speaker 1: best way of distracting people is by being in war.
Speaker 1: Not just starting a war, but being in a war.
Speaker 1: You've listening to Bill Browder, author of Red Notice and
Speaker 1: Freezing Order. I highly recommend those books. They're riveting in
Speaker 1: their own right, never mind being so timely in light
Speaker 1: of what's going on in Russia and Ukraine. Girl, I
Speaker 1: want to thank you for taking the time speak to
Speaker 1: my audience today. Thank you until next time. This is
Speaker 1: Bob Leftstads