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Bill Browder

For the mathematician, see William Browder (mathematician).

Bill Browder
William F. Browder - World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2011 (cropped).jpg
Browder in 2011
Born
William Felix Browder

(1964-04-23) April 23, 1964 (age 59)[1]
Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Colorado, Boulder
University of Chicago (BSc)
Stanford University (MBA)
Occupation(s)CEO, Hermitage Capital Management
SpouseElena Molokova[2]
Children3
Parent
RelativesEarl Browder (grandfather)
William Browder (uncle)
Andrew Browder (uncle)

William Felix Browder (born April 23, 1964)[1] is an American-born British financier and political activist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisor to the Hermitage Fund, which at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia.[3][4][5] The Hermitage Fund was founded in partnership with Republic National Bank, with $25 million in seed capital. The fund, and associated accounts, eventually grew to $4.5 billion of assets under management. In 1997, the Hermitage Fund was the best-performing fund in the world, up by 238%.[6] The primary investment strategy of Browder was shareholder rights activism. Browder took on large Russian companies such as Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, Unified Energy Systems, and Sidanco.[7] In retaliation, on November 13, 2005, Browder was refused entry to Russia, deported to the UK, and declared a threat to Russian national security.[8]

Eighteen months after Browder was deported, on June 4, 2007, Hermitage Capital's offices in Moscow were raided by twenty-five officers of Russia's Interior Ministry. Twenty-five more officers raided the Moscow office of Browder's American law firm, Firestone Duncan, seizing the corporate registration documents for Hermitage's investment holding companies. Browder assigned Sergei Magnitsky, head of the tax practice at Firestone Duncan, to investigate the purpose of the raid. Magnitsky discovered that while those documents were in the custody of the police, they had been used to fraudulently re-register Hermitage's holding companies to the name of an ex-convict.[9] Magnitsky was subsequently arrested by Russian authorities and died in prison, having been denied proper medical treatment.

The reregistration of the Hermitage holding companies was an intermediate step before the perpetrators used those companies to apply for a fraudulent $230 million tax refund, awarded on December 24, 2007.[10]

After Magnitsky's death, Browder lobbied for Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a law to punish Russian human rights violators, which was signed into law in 2012 by President Barack Obama.[11] In 2013, both Magnitsky and Browder were tried in absentia in Russia for tax fraud.[12] Both men—Magnitsky had died four years prior—were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. Interpol rejected Russian requests to arrest Browder, saying the case was political.[13] In 2014, the European Parliament voted for sanctions against 30 Russians believed complicit in the Magnitsky case; this was the first time it had taken such action.

On October 21, 2017, the Russian government attempted to place Browder on Interpol's arrest list of criminal fugitives, the fifth such request, which Interpol eventually rejected on October 26, 2017.[14][15] After the initial request, Browder's visa waiver for the United States was automatically suspended. After a bipartisan protest by U.S. Congressional leaders, his visa waiver was restored the following day.[14] While visiting Spain in May 2018, Browder was arrested by Spanish authorities on a new Russian Interpol warrant and transferred to an undisclosed Spanish police station.[16] He was released two hours later, after Interpol confirmed that this was a political case.[17]

  1. ^ a b Nordlinger, Jay (January 22, 2018). "A Family in History". National Review. Archived from the original on August 23, 2018. Retrieved March 10, 2018.
  2. ^ Red Notice by Bill Browder, p.168.
  3. ^ Kaminski, Matthew (May 9, 2014). "The Weekend Interview: The Man Who Stood Up to Putin". The Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on February 23, 2017.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference TreasuryIRScitizenshipRenounced was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference CBSNews11072012 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Crowney, Paul (September 1, 2002). "Seeing Red". Institutional Investor. Archived from the original on October 13, 2019. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  7. ^ Arvedlund, Erin E. (March 14, 2004). "Private Sector; An Investor and Gadfly in Russia". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 13, 2019. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  8. ^ "Inside Bill Browder's blood money battle with Vladimir Putin". Wired. January 10, 2019. Archived from the original on January 23, 2019. Retrieved January 14, 2019.
  9. ^ Levy, Clifford J. (July 24, 2008). "An Investment Gets Trapped in Kremlin's Vise". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 13, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  10. ^ "Crime and Punishment in Putin's Russia". Barron's. April 16, 2011. Archived from the original on July 12, 2019. Retrieved October 14, 2019.
  11. ^ Weisberg, Jacob (July 21, 2017). "Why Exactly Does Putin Hate the Magnitsky Act?". Slate. Archived from the original on August 12, 2017. Retrieved August 12, 2017.
  12. ^ Herszenhorn, David M. (July 11, 2013). "Dead Lawyer, a Kremlin Critic, Is Found Guilty of Tax Evasion". The New York Times. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  13. ^ Herszenhorn, David M. (May 25, 2013). "Interpol Rebuffs Russia in Its Hunt for a Kremlin Critic". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 23, 2019. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  14. ^ a b Kramer, Andrew E. (October 23, 2017). "U.S. Clears Bill Browder to Enter, Rebuking Russia". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 3, 2020. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  15. ^ Baker, Stephanie (October 26, 2017). "Interpol Blocks Russia Request to Arrest Hermitage's Browder". Bloomberg. Archived from the original on August 1, 2019. Retrieved June 10, 2020.
  16. ^ "Bill Browder arrested in Spain on Russian warrant". BBC News. May 30, 2018. Archived from the original on May 30, 2018. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
  17. ^ "Detenido durante dos horas en España el financiero Bill Browder, crítico con Putin". El País (in Spanish). May 30, 2018. Archived from the original on June 12, 2018. Retrieved May 30, 2018.
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