Putin Has ‘Vendetta Against Me’, Architect of Sanctions Regime Says

Bill Browder claims Russian President is targeting him over 'Magnitsky Act'

Financier, author, and human rights campaigner Bill Browder during an interview with NTD's British Thought Leaders programme. (NTD)

A UK-based financier claims Russian President Vladimir Putin has “a personal Vendetta” against him over his role in the global sanctioning of oligarchs.

Bill Browder, a U.S. born financier who later became a UK citizen, is best known for successfully pushing for a piece of U.S. legislation known as the “Magnitsky Act,” which allowed the sanctioning of Russian officials involved in the imprisonment and death of Browder’s corruption-exposing lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in Russia.

The United States later expanded the tool into a Global Magnitsky Act to impose visa bans and asset freezes on human rights offenders from other countries.

Speaking to NTD’s “British Thought Leaders” programme, Browder said Magnitsky-style sanctioning regimes now exist in 35 countries and it’s “one of the most feared tools that dictators look at when they when they’re dealing with the West.”

But even since the first Magnitsky Act was passed into law in 2012, Putin has “gone on a personal vendetta against me to try to destroy me,” he said.

Brower’s Hermitage Capital Management was one of the biggest investors in Russia in the nineties and noughties. In 2005, Russia deported him back to the UK and banned him from re-entering, claiming he was a threat to national security.

Browder said Russian officials had also raided his office in Moscow and eventually arrested Magnitsky, all because they were exposing Russian oligarchs.

“... in the process, as I was investing, I discovered that many of the companies that I was investing in were being robbed blind by the Russian oligarchs and friends of Putin,” he said. “And so I started to expose the corruption. I started to give information to the international media about the crimes of the oligarchs.”

According to Browder’s estimates, “Putin and about 1,000 people around him in a 23-year period have stolen a trillion dollars from the Russian state.”

After Magnitsky died in prison in 2009 under questionable circumstances, Browder began his mission to prosecute those who were responsible outside of Russia after learning “there was no chance of getting justice inside” the country. The effort culminated in the Magnitsky Act.

Named By Putin

In July 2018, Putin mentioned Browder by name during a press conference with then-U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing Browder’s “business associates” of tax evasion in Russia and donating part of the money to Trump’s campaign rival Hillary Clinton.

The name drop came immediately after Putin offered to let U.S. officials including special counsel Robert Mueller observe the interrogation of 12 Russian officers accused of interfering with the 2016 U.S. Presidential election if Trump allowed Russian police to be present at the questioning of U.S. suspects.

Trump said it was “an incredible offer” during the press conference, before then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders clarified three days later that Trump disagreed to it.

Asked what he felt when watching the footage, Browder said, “not good.”

“Putin has hated me from the moment that the Magnitsky Act passed in 2012. He was so upset with the Magnitsky Act,” he said. “... for him, the idea that his entire international wealth can be frozen is just infuriating beyond belief.”

According to Browder, Russia has also issued eight Interpol arrest warrants against him, one of which led to his brief arrest in Spain.

The campaigner believes he had managed to avoid at least six months to detention in Spain, if not worse, by sending two Twitter posts about the arrest that attracted media attention.

UK ‘Needs To’ Sanction More People

Asked if the laws can be made more effective, Browder said one of the things that could be changed is adding kleptocracy as part of the offences besides human rights in the EU version of the laws.

Another thing is “you have not that many people sanctioned here in the UK,” he said, calling on the government to use its new-found power “much, much more liberally” can coordinate with other countries.

“The other thing is that you can have one person sanction by one country, like say, by the United States and not the UK, or Canada, and not the EU. And so we need to harmonize these sanctions so that everybody does it all together,” he said, adding that he believes these changes will come in time.

The UK first used its post-Brexit independent sanctioning powers in July 2020 against 25 Russian nationals over the mistreatment and death of Magnitsky and 20 Saudi nationals held to be involved in the death of journalist Kamal Khashoggi.

To date, The UK has sanctioned 85 individuals and 6 entities under the Global Human Rights regime and 35 individuals under the Global Anti-Corruption regime. Most people on the list are Russians and Saudis, with four Chinese nationals and a number of individuals from countries including Belarus, Burma, Pakistan, Venezuela, and Gambia.

After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the UK government also sanctioned 1,562 individuals and 184 entities under a separate Russia Regime.

But the government has been criticised by parliamentarians for being slow to sanction more human rights abusers from China and elsewhere, such as former Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam, former Xinjiang Chinese Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo and other officials in Hong Kong and Xinjiang who have been sanctioned by the United States.

The Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, which previously maintained it doesn’t comment on future sanctions, didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.