WEBVTT - Bill Browder: Kremlin Critic 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:07.720 Hi, Brian. Hi Katie. So I'm gonna ask you to 0:00:07.760 --> 0:00:11.520 play the role of therapists today, Brian, which you often 0:00:11.560 --> 0:00:15.760 serve for me. My price is right good. I'm worried 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:21.159 about Russia. It seems clear, according to intelligence agencies and 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:26.080 Donald Trump himself, that somehow they did meddle in our 0:00:26.120 --> 0:00:32.320 electoral process. I'm worried about this reboot of our relationship, 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:34.519 which on the face of it doesn't sound like a 0:00:34.560 --> 0:00:37.640 bad idea, but it seems much more than a reboot. 0:00:37.640 --> 0:00:41.520 It seems like a rekindling. And I don't really understand 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:45.640 the pros and cons of a closer relationship with Russia. 0:00:46.040 --> 0:00:50.160 Now I'll be your therapist, Brian. Wouldn't be the first time. 0:00:50.560 --> 0:00:53.800 Are you worried about Russia? And how does that make 0:00:53.840 --> 0:00:57.720 you feel? You know? I am, because nowhere is the 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:03.200 change of administration more apparent than in our newfound coziness 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:06.880 with the Russians. Trump has brought in a lot of 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.560 Putin loyalists to his administration. Some of the Americans who 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:14.920 are the closest to Vladimir Putin and Russia at least 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:17.960 over the past ten years, has been a pretty bad 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:22.880 actor on the global stage, invading countries causing instability hurting 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:25.600 the United States, and so we really wanted to talk 0:01:25.640 --> 0:01:31.080 to somebody who understood the Russian people, the Russian government 0:01:31.440 --> 0:01:36.080 from the inside out, someone with a very interesting personal history. 0:01:36.240 --> 0:01:39.119 He's written a book called Red Notice, a true story 0:01:39.120 --> 0:01:42.360 of high finance, murder, and one man's fight for justice. 0:01:42.600 --> 0:01:47.319 Brian my friends have been raving about this book, and 0:01:47.480 --> 0:01:50.880 we thought Bill Browder would be a good person to 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:56.400 really start to unpack the perils and opportunities of a 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:01.920 closer relationship with Russia, and someone who really understands who 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:05.280 Vladimir Putin is and what he's all about. So if 0:02:05.280 --> 0:02:09.639 you're optimistic about a new and mutually beneficial US Russian relationship, 0:02:10.160 --> 0:02:15.160 listen to Bill Browder. First, Bill Browder, thanks so much 0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:17.519 for talking with us today. We're thrilled to have you. 0:02:18.320 --> 0:02:21.600 Great to be here. You have such a fascinating backstory, 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.160 to say the least, and we're going to share with 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:29.120 our listeners this story of intrigue and tragedy that you 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.840 have been immersed in for the last several years. But 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.480 Brian and I thought we would start by asking you 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:40.800 about Donald Trump's inauguration. He is now President of the 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:44.720 United States, and I just would like to get your 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:49.640 reaction to that very fact. Well, it's it's it's a 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:53.240 true mystery to me. What's actually going to happen them. 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:56.080 I've seen so many different people telling me so many 0:02:56.080 --> 0:03:00.280 different things. Um people saying, look at all the the 0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:02.880 smart people around him, everything is gonna be great, It's 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:06.120 gonna be fine. And then I read a tweet that 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:07.400 he has been written in the middle of the night, 0:03:07.440 --> 0:03:10.760 and I have panic, And I'm just waiting to see 0:03:10.919 --> 0:03:14.400 on the issues that I'm most sensitive to what he's 0:03:14.400 --> 0:03:17.639 gonna do, and that that really relates to Vladimir Putin 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:22.440 and Russia. But doesn't it seem like he's quite sympathetic 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:26.200 to Vladimir Putin, That Putin clearly made a choice going 0:03:26.240 --> 0:03:29.320 into election day that Trump was going to be his guy. 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:31.440 It seems that way. It certainly seems that way from 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:33.560 the Russian side. It's I was just at the World 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:37.520 Economic Forum in Davos, and the Russians were all they 0:03:37.520 --> 0:03:39.280 all had a bounce in their step, and they were 0:03:39.280 --> 0:03:42.760 all celebrating and smiling and planning for the lifting of 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:47.440 sanctions and looking for all sorts of gifts from Donald Trump. 0:03:48.320 --> 0:03:49.960 But we we we still don't know if that's actually 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.640 going to happen. I mean, this may be their own fantasy. 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:57.240 And he's you know, it's not clear what he's gonna do. 0:03:57.320 --> 0:04:01.000 He he claims to be a big dealmaker. UM, I 0:04:01.080 --> 0:04:02.880 don't know what deal he's going to do and whether 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:04.840 there's any deal to be done. I mean, if you 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:07.360 really look at it, the Russians are asking for lots 0:04:07.400 --> 0:04:11.120 of stuff, and um, Putin doesn't have much to offer 0:04:11.160 --> 0:04:13.600 in return. And so if Trump really is a deal 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:16.360 maker and a good businessman, um, maybe they're not going 0:04:16.400 --> 0:04:19.120 to get what they're asking for. Bill, you have a 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:23.360 very interesting relationship with Vladimir Putin, and for our listeners 0:04:23.360 --> 0:04:25.320 to understand that, I think we should start at the 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.839 very beginning. What was a nice guy like you doing 0:04:28.920 --> 0:04:32.719 in a place like Moscow. Well, I've got a funny, 0:04:32.760 --> 0:04:36.000 funny story, strange story. I come from this family of 0:04:36.200 --> 0:04:40.640 famous American communists. UM. I was born in nineteen sixty four, 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:43.800 and when I was going through my teenage rebellion, I 0:04:44.200 --> 0:04:45.760 looked around and I said, what's the best way that 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:49.520 I can rebel from this family of communists? And I 0:04:49.600 --> 0:04:51.479 figured out that the best best thing to do is 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:53.600 to put on a suit and time become a capitalist. 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:56.479 There was nothing I could do the cause my parents 0:04:56.520 --> 0:04:59.840 more pain than that, and so I became a capitalist. U. 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.119 I went to Stanford Business School and I graduated business 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.440 school in which was the year of the Berlin Wall 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:10.279 came down. And as I was looking around for UM, 0:05:10.600 --> 0:05:13.360 what to do with my life next, I had this epiphany, 0:05:13.400 --> 0:05:16.680 which was, if my grandfather was the biggest communist in 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:20.120 America and the Berlin Wall has just come down, I'm 0:05:20.120 --> 0:05:23.120 going to try to become the biggest capitalist in Russia. 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:25.400 And that's what I set out to do. I think 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:28.600 this thing started when you invested about two thousand dollars 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.960 and a handful of Polish companies in the early nineties. 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:34.520 You made ten times your money and you called at 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:39.880 the financial equivalent of crack cocaine. Where did that lead? Well, 0:05:39.920 --> 0:05:41.920 you have to really understand that if you ever make 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:44.919 ten times your money on investment, it releases a certain 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:47.480 chemical in your stomach. And that was my very first 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.440 investment in my life. And so I UM, I ended 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.200 up looking for um, what what can I do next? 0:05:53.800 --> 0:05:56.839 And UM I ended up with a job at Solomon 0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:00.920 Brothers at Solomon Brothers. UM I started to learn about 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:04.360 the Russian market, and what I discovered was that when 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:10.080 the communism ended and President Yelson became president, he decided 0:06:10.120 --> 0:06:13.920 he wanted to make Russia into a capitalist country, and 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:15.839 that the way that he wanted to make Russia into 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:19.840 a capitalist country was to basically give everything away for 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:23.800 free to the people. And they were basically giving away 0:06:23.839 --> 0:06:26.360 the whole country for free. And then after it had 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:30.040 been given away, it basically started trading at a at 0:06:30.080 --> 0:06:32.600 a at a slight premium to free which was still 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.159 at a like a ninety nine discount to everything else 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:38.440 in the world. And when I saw the prices of 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:42.560 Russian stocks at discount, I said to myself, God, we 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:45.039 should be investing in this stuff. And in fact, you 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:48.120 started on your own investing in this stuff as a 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:51.640 very young man. UM, how did that go? So? I I? UM. 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:53.920 I left Solomon Brothers and I set up my own 0:06:53.960 --> 0:06:58.080 company called Hermitage Capital. I moved out to Moscow, and 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:01.200 it just couldn't have gone better. In the first eighteen 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:05.280 months of our fund, it was it was the single 0:07:05.360 --> 0:07:10.560 best performing fund in the world. I ended up on 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:15.520 the cover of various newspapers and magazines. My clients for 0:07:15.640 --> 0:07:19.239 sending sending their private jets to entertain me on their yachts. 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:21.760 Are fund had grown from twenty five million to more 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.440 than a billion dollars of assets. And I was all 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:26.600 of I was all all of thirty one years old. 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:32.520 You were living large, weren't you, Bill Browner? Until it 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:38.240 all went wrong. What happened well at that point, and 0:07:38.360 --> 0:07:40.000 so I was all of thirty one years old. And 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:42.320 when all these big things are happening to you at 0:07:42.360 --> 0:07:45.160 that age, you don't have any perspective. But anyone looking 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:47.400 at it from afar would have said, Wow, that's the 0:07:47.400 --> 0:07:50.000 biggest cell signal there ever was. And of course I 0:07:50.040 --> 0:07:54.680 didn't sell. And this was now in Russia, and they, 0:07:55.640 --> 0:08:00.680 the Russian government um defaulted on their debt. They devalued 0:08:00.720 --> 0:08:05.400 the currency by and my billion dollars of assets went down. 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:09.280 I lost nine million dollars from my clients. It was 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:12.800 the However, many people were entertaining me on their yachts 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.560 on the way up. Sure weren't calling after I lost 0:08:15.640 --> 0:08:18.160 them of their money. It was a true and absolute 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:23.080 Those invitations dried up quickly. But you made a discovery 0:08:23.120 --> 0:08:27.200 about corruption in Russia as you were trying to rebuild 0:08:27.280 --> 0:08:30.840 from this hole you were in, and and what did 0:08:30.880 --> 0:08:33.680 that lead to? Well, so, so what what I discovered 0:08:33.760 --> 0:08:35.880 was that that there are these people called the oligarchs. 0:08:35.920 --> 0:08:37.959 I think most people in the world know what that means. 0:08:38.120 --> 0:08:41.760 That these like super rich Russian guys. And and prior 0:08:41.880 --> 0:08:45.080 to they had kind of behaved themselves because a lot 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.760 of fancy bankers from Wall Street were coming around and saying, hey, 0:08:48.760 --> 0:08:50.560 we can get you some free money on Wall Street. 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.320 But after the crash, those Wall Street guys had all 0:08:53.360 --> 0:08:56.280 been fired from their jobs for getting involved with Russia. 0:08:56.320 --> 0:08:58.360 So there was no more free money from Wall Street, 0:08:58.400 --> 0:09:02.000 from Wall Street for these Russian oligarchs. And they said, heck, 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:04.480 if there's no free money, there's no incentive to behave 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:07.840 why don't we just take everything? Because there's no laws 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:11.840 in Russia to prevent misbehavior. And so the oligarchs embarked 0:09:11.840 --> 0:09:14.800 on an orgy of stealing, which has been unprecedented in 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:19.840 the history of business. They were doing assets stripping, transfer pricing, embezzelment, delusions, 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.440 every possible way of stealing money. They were doing it. 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:24.439 And I was sitting there with the last ten cents 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:28.199 on the dollar of my client's money, and uh, there 0:09:28.320 --> 0:09:30.920 was you know, I wasn't gonna I wasn't gonna let 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:33.440 them steal this stuff for me, and so I ended 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:37.520 up starting to have wars with the oligarchs to stop 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.080 them from stealing. Not to sound like an idiot, but 0:09:40.160 --> 0:09:43.400 can you help me understand who these oligarchs are? You know, 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.560 I have the this vision of these guys with a 0:09:46.600 --> 0:09:49.800 lot of gold jewelry and fancy suits kind of you know, 0:09:49.840 --> 0:09:53.640 with toothpicks. I have no who are these oligarchs? Well, 0:09:53.800 --> 0:09:55.240 there's not that many of them. First of all, that 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.040 there were twenty two oligarchs that that sort of started 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:01.000 out this whole process in Russia, and they were basically 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:03.800 just guys with the sharp sharpest elbows and the most 0:10:04.640 --> 0:10:09.160 aggressive tactics of anybody in Russia. And what they did 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:11.880 was they effectively cornered the market on everything. And so 0:10:11.960 --> 0:10:13.920 instead of all the assets going to all the people 0:10:13.920 --> 0:10:16.120 of Russia, which is what it was intended, all the 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:18.640 assets ended up in the hands of these twenty two guys. 0:10:19.200 --> 0:10:23.800 And they're not nice guys. And you obviously became concerned 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:27.320 about the corruption. But you're in Russia, I mean, what 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:29.840 do you do. There's not really a better business bureau 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:32.120 to go to. How do you deal with it if 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:37.800 you want to expose corruption in Russia? Well, we tried everything. 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:39.480 You know, we went to the government, and we discovered 0:10:39.520 --> 0:10:41.520 that the government didn't care in fact, that people in 0:10:41.559 --> 0:10:43.199 the government were benefiting you know, they were on the 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:45.599 payroll of the oligarchs. Um. You can't go to the 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:47.960 police because they're not policing. You can't go to the 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:51.400 parliament because they aren't parliamenting, and um. And so the 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:53.520 one thing we figured out that we could do was 0:10:54.160 --> 0:10:58.960 naming and shaming to publicly embarrassed, exposed and humiliate these people. 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:01.440 And so we had great skills and doing the research 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:03.960 on how they were going about doing the stealing. And 0:11:04.000 --> 0:11:06.400 I knew a lot of foreign correspondence in Moscow and 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:08.480 so and these guys were always interested in a good 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:11.920 oligarchs story, and so they would write about it and um. 0:11:11.960 --> 0:11:13.880 And interestingly, when they wrote about it, then the Russian 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.440 press picked it up. And after the Russian press picked 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:18.719 it up, then politicians would start sort of being a 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:22.280 little embarrassed, maybe do something about it. And in a 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:24.960 number of companies that we invested in this naming and 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:28.400 shaming ended up leading to some of these bad practices 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.720 stopping and the share prices of the companies we invested 0:11:32.760 --> 0:11:36.120 in rising in some cases very very dramatically. And so 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.160 I developed in a sort of a new business model, 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:42.600 which was going into bad companies in Russia, um doing 0:11:42.600 --> 0:11:45.679 the research, exposing the bad things going on, and then 0:11:45.679 --> 0:11:48.760 watching the share price rise. And we went from a 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:52.959 hundred million dollars after the crash up to four and 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:56.040 a half billion dollars after a few years of doing 0:11:56.080 --> 0:11:59.160 these these expose a s and I thought I was 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:02.160 had perfect job that anyone could ever have, where I 0:12:02.200 --> 0:12:04.960 was making money hand over fist for my clients and 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:07.679 myself and and we were also going out and getting 0:12:07.679 --> 0:12:09.200 the bad guys at the same time. And there was 0:12:09.200 --> 0:12:12.160 nothing more gratifying than that. And Bill, one of the 0:12:12.200 --> 0:12:17.200 allies that you UH discovered in your naming and shaming campaign, 0:12:17.240 --> 0:12:21.079 at least early on against the oigarchs was Vladimir Putin. 0:12:21.200 --> 0:12:24.120 Can you can you describe who Putin was at that 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.760 point and kind of why you saw him as as 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:31.000 being on your side? Well, yes, so Vladimir Putin. So 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.280 when we first first started doing this was just around 0:12:33.320 --> 0:12:35.680 the time slightly earlier, but just around the time that 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:38.280 Putin had come to power. And when he first came 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.000 to power, he wasn't really the President of Russia, even 0:12:42.000 --> 0:12:43.600 though that was his title. He was sort of the 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:46.920 president of the Presidential Administration of Russia because, um, that's 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:49.400 all he really controlled. The rest of Russia was controlled 0:12:49.400 --> 0:12:52.360 by these oligarchs, these these twenty two guys I was 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:55.640 telling you about. So so Putin, Um, he wanted to 0:12:55.679 --> 0:12:57.720 become president of the whole country, not just of his 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:01.280 own administration, and so he was looking at ways in 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:04.720 which to stop these oligarchs from stealing power from him. 0:13:04.960 --> 0:13:08.280 So Putin liked you for a while because you were 0:13:08.320 --> 0:13:11.760 taking power from the oligarchs, and that's what he wanted. 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:15.520 But then suddenly he didn't like you that much. Why 0:13:15.679 --> 0:13:18.959 how did why did things change suddenly? Well, this was 0:13:19.000 --> 0:13:21.560 the interesting thing. So he was at war with the oligarchs, 0:13:21.679 --> 0:13:24.280 he was fighting them, but at some point in in 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:26.440 his war he decided he wanted to make one big 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:30.800 drastic move. And so what he did is, this was 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:33.520 in late two thousand and three. There was the biggest 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.480 oligarch in Russia. His name was Michael Hordakowski. He was 0:13:36.520 --> 0:13:39.280 the owner of a big oil company called Yukos, and 0:13:39.320 --> 0:13:41.640 he was considered to be the richest man in Russia, 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.600 and he had been a pain to Putin. And so 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.240 one day this guy was on his private jet in 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.720 Siberia at the airport, and Putin ordered his his secret 0:13:51.720 --> 0:13:54.280 police to stop the jet at the airport, and then 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.240 they raided the jet, grabbed the guy, arrested him and 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:03.120 then put him in jail. Um. And and then they 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.640 put him on trial. And by the way, in Russia, 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:09.160 when you go on trial, UM, there's no presumption of 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:11.800 innocence like you have in America, and so and there's 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:14.800 like a ninety seven percent conviction rate, and so that 0:14:14.840 --> 0:14:16.680 when you go on trial, they stick you in a 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:20.200 cage and so um and they and on this particular 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.600 occasion they allowed the television cameras into the courtroom, so 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:27.120 that um, they filmed the richest man in Russia sitting 0:14:27.120 --> 0:14:30.360 in a cage. And so, one by one by one, um, 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:32.000 these oligarchs. At the end of the summer in two 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:35.880 thousand and four, they went to Putin and they said, Vladimir, 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:37.640 what do we have to do so we don't sit 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:41.160 in that cage, and he said, oh, it's very straightforward. 0:14:43.640 --> 0:14:46.240 And when and when I say, this wasn't for the 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.680 Russian government or for the presidential administration of Russia. This 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.640 is for Vladimir Putin. And at that moment in time, 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:57.360 Putin became the richest man in the world. How much 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.280 is Putin worth, Well, everyone's got a different tim In 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:02.800 and it's hard to prove because the money never is 0:15:02.840 --> 0:15:04.320 in his own name, is in the name of the 0:15:04.320 --> 0:15:07.560 these oligarchs. But my estimate is he's worth around two 0:15:07.880 --> 0:15:10.080 billion dollars, which make would make him the richest private 0:15:10.080 --> 0:15:12.880 individual in the world. Well, when we come back, we're 0:15:12.880 --> 0:15:16.240 going to talk more about the current state of affairs 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:20.080 between Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Russia and the United States, 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:26.680 and also why you are still so embroiled in Russian affairs, 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.720 and that has to do with your former lawyer who 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.240 is now dead. We'll be back with Bill Browder right 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:44.240 after this. We're back with Bill Browder, who is the 0:15:44.280 --> 0:15:47.320 author of Red Notice, a true story of high finance, 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:51.560 murder and one man's fight for justice. A real expert 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:56.000 on Russia who can help us understand the pitfalls and 0:15:56.160 --> 0:16:01.560 perils and perhaps even benefits of a close relationship with Russia, 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:04.160 which is in the news these days. But before we 0:16:04.280 --> 0:16:07.960 tackle that bill. In two thousand five, you were detained 0:16:08.000 --> 0:16:10.480 at an airport in Moscow. You were declared a threat 0:16:10.520 --> 0:16:15.680 to national security and we're banned from the country. Um. 0:16:15.760 --> 0:16:19.000 That must have been pretty terrifying, was it. That was 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:22.280 terrifying for sure, when when you get some expelled from 0:16:22.280 --> 0:16:24.120 a country that you've lived in for ten years and 0:16:24.120 --> 0:16:28.680 where you're the largest foreign investor. Um, that's a big shock. 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.840 But I knew that that's that's a minor sanction compared 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:35.040 to what they could have done. The Russians turn on you, 0:16:35.080 --> 0:16:38.360 they tend to do so with extreme prejudice. When you 0:16:38.400 --> 0:16:42.840 say extreme prejudice, is that a euphemism for like your toast, 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:46.600 you're dead. Well, there there's sort of three levels of 0:16:46.600 --> 0:16:48.560 of what could have happened to me. They could have 0:16:48.680 --> 0:16:52.120 killed me. They could have taken me hostage and put 0:16:52.160 --> 0:16:55.640 me in prison, or they could have expelled me. And 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.120 in the in that little continuum, being expelled as hardly 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.400 a sa ancition compared to the other two options. After 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:07.800 you left Russia, you hired a local lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:10.920 to represent your interests as you were winding down your 0:17:11.119 --> 0:17:14.840 investment fund. There what happened to him, Well, so what 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:18.600 happened was about eighteen months after I was expelled from Russia, 0:17:19.280 --> 0:17:22.919 twenty five police officers rated my office in Moscow and 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:26.679 they seized all of our corporate documents, our stamps and 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.359 seals and certificates for running our companies. And so I 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:31.760 went out and I hired the smartest lawyer I knew 0:17:31.760 --> 0:17:34.320 in Russia was at the time a thirty five year 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:37.120 old lawyer named Sergey Magnitsky. He worked for an American 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:40.919 law firm in Moscow. I hired Sergey to help me 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:44.240 investigate what these people were up to and to try 0:17:44.240 --> 0:17:48.080 to stop whatever they're doing. So Sergey goes and investigates, 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:51.760 and he comes back about six months later and he says, 0:17:51.760 --> 0:17:55.000 I figured it out, and it's not pretty. And basically, 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:58.760 what Sergey had discovered was that after we had sold 0:17:58.800 --> 0:18:01.000 all of our stock in Russia got all the money out, 0:18:01.440 --> 0:18:03.560 we had a big profit. We had a billion dollars 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:07.480 of profits, and we paid two thirty million dollars of 0:18:07.520 --> 0:18:11.760 taxes to the Russian government. And when Serge had discovered 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:16.080 was that the people who had rated our offices used 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:19.160 those documents to steal our companies. And then they used 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.000 are stolen companies to go back to the tax authorities 0:18:22.720 --> 0:18:25.760 and they and to say, all those taxes paid last year, 0:18:26.200 --> 0:18:29.919 that was a mistake, we'd like the money back. They 0:18:29.960 --> 0:18:33.920 applied for a two thirty million dollar illegal tax refund 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:38.080 and the very next day it was approved and paid out. 0:18:38.920 --> 0:18:43.280 So essentially, government officials used your investment fund to steal 0:18:43.400 --> 0:18:47.159 two thirty million dollars for themselves and then and they 0:18:47.160 --> 0:18:49.320 were stealing it from their own government. They weren't stealing 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:51.000 from me. There was this money we already paid to 0:18:51.000 --> 0:18:53.320 the Russian governments. They were stealing it from themselves. But 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:55.760 it wasn't like the government from one pocket of the 0:18:55.760 --> 0:18:57.560 government to the other. This is from the government to 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:01.000 a bunch of corrupt officials. What happened when Serge tried 0:19:01.040 --> 0:19:05.919 to expose this though, so when Sergey testified against these guys, 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:08.479 he was waiting for the bad guys to get arrested. 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:11.600 Instead are the bad guys being arrested. About six weeks 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:14.600 after he testified, they came to his home at eight 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.200 in the morning, um from his wife and two children, 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:21.040 searched his apartment and then arrested him. They put him 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:24.800 in pre trial detention, where he was then tortured to 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.359 get him to withdraw his testimony. They put him in 0:19:28.400 --> 0:19:32.080 cells with fourteen inmates and eight beds and left the 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.199 lights on twenty four hours a day to impose sleep deprivation. 0:19:35.920 --> 0:19:38.320 They put him in cells with no heat and no 0:19:38.440 --> 0:19:42.080 window panes in December and Moscow, so he nearly froze 0:19:42.119 --> 0:19:44.920 to death. They put him in cells with no toilet, 0:19:45.520 --> 0:19:47.240 just a hole in the floor where the sewage would 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:49.639 bubble up. And they were doing all of this to 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:53.040 try to get him to retract his testimony against the 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:55.640 police officers. And they wanted to get him to sign 0:19:55.640 --> 0:19:57.840 a false confession to say that he stole the two 0:19:58.200 --> 0:20:01.680 thirty million dollars. So how on was he imprisoned and 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.200 when did you learn of his fate? Um After about 0:20:05.200 --> 0:20:08.760 six months, he got sick. He lost forty pounds, He 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:10.760 got terrible pains in his stomach, and he was diagnosed 0:20:10.800 --> 0:20:15.040 having pancreatitis and gallstones and needing an operation. He and 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:18.160 his lawyers wrote twenty different requests to every different branch 0:20:18.160 --> 0:20:21.240 of the justice system in Russia, begging for medical attention. 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:24.840 All of his requests were either ignored or denied, and 0:20:24.840 --> 0:20:27.160 then on the night of November sixteenth, two thousand nine, 0:20:27.240 --> 0:20:29.159 a year after he had been arrested, or nearly a 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:31.960 year after he had been arrested, he went into critical condition, 0:20:32.320 --> 0:20:34.840 and so they put him in an ambulance, sent him 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.879 over to a different prison facility. But instead of when 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:39.479 he gets to the new place, instead of putting him 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.240 in the emergency room, they put him in an isolation cell. 0:20:42.280 --> 0:20:44.600 They chained him to a bed, and then eight riot 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:48.320 guards with rubber baton's beat him until he died at 0:20:48.320 --> 0:20:51.440 the age of thirty seven, leaving a wife and two children. 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:57.160 Just hearing of his experience is horrifying, and it must 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.320 have been devastating for you to feel so power list 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:04.800 in this situation. I got the news the very next morning, 0:21:05.400 --> 0:21:10.240 and it was the most traumatic, heartbreaking, life changing news 0:21:10.320 --> 0:21:13.280 I could have ever gotten. The surge Magnitsky was killed 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:16.879 because he was my lawyer. If he hadn't been my lawyer, 0:21:16.880 --> 0:21:19.880 he would have still been alive. And after getting over 0:21:19.960 --> 0:21:23.800 the absolute sort of shock of the whole situation, when 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:26.679 I had enough composure to think about it. Clearly it 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.240 was obvious that I only had one choice in life 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:32.159 going forward, which was to put aside everything else I 0:21:32.240 --> 0:21:37.239 was doing, um and get justice for Sergey. And and 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:40.680 just to provide people the kind of the background. While 0:21:40.760 --> 0:21:44.320 you were beginning your effort to get justice for Sergey, 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.720 the US under President Obama in two thousand nine, was 0:21:47.720 --> 0:21:51.280 embarking on the famous Russian Reset. So there wasn't a 0:21:51.320 --> 0:21:54.800 lot of interest in the administration at the time to 0:21:55.600 --> 0:21:59.600 go after the Russians, right, Yeah, So we said to ourselves, well, 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:01.399 we're not gonna be able to get justice for murder 0:22:01.440 --> 0:22:03.680 in Russia, but we could certainly try to stop these 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.960 people from using traveling to the West and using the 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:09.399 banking system and buying assets and so and so forth. 0:22:10.000 --> 0:22:12.480 And that's when I went to Washington to tell the story. 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:15.760 And and that's when I encountered, um, what you just 0:22:15.800 --> 0:22:19.760 described before called the Obama Reset, where Obama had come 0:22:19.760 --> 0:22:24.960 into as president and he wanted to quote reset relations 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:28.239