The gift of knowledge--a really great story, a history, or
the biography of an amazing person--a book is the best present ever! For a
graduation, birthday, Chanukah, Christmas, or your special holiday, you can’t
go wrong with a book.
When it comes to gift giving, I do believe it is the thought
behind the gift that counts. I want to give gifts that are memorable, but
finding a memorable gift can be a challenge. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One
Man's Fight for Justice, by Bill Browder,
is a memorable book.
Bill Browder was the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital
Management the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005. Red Notice is
autobiographical. Bowder was born and raised in the US. In rebellion to his
family’s communist and socialist ideals, as a student he sets his sights on
becoming a great capitalist.
The book starts with Browder, the founder of Hermitage
Capital Management and investment adviser to the largest foreign investment
fund in Russia, sitting in a Russian airport waiting to be passed through
passport security. In 2005 he was denied entry to the country and declared a
“threat to national security” as a result of his battle against corporate
corruption.
He holds a BA in economics from the University of Chicago
and an MBA from Stanford Business School. Before founding Hermitage, Browder
was vice president at Salomon Brothers. As the founder of The Hermitage Fund,
he made, then lost, and made a second fortune investing in Russia. Red Notice
is the shocking truth of what it is like to do business in Moscow.
According to Browder’s website: Browder was once the largest
foreign investor in Russia, making his investors piles of money, but if he had
to do it all over again, he never would have entered the country in the first
place. "I now understand how completely naive I was to think that as a
foreigner I was somehow immune to the barbarity of the Russian system,"
says Browder.
Browder tells the story of his friend, Russian lawyer Sergei
Magnitsky, who was murdered in prison in 2009. Magnitsky uncovered a $230
million fraud committed by Russian government officials. Russian authorities
raided and seized Hermitage Fund’s investment companies and used the Fund to
steal $230 million of taxes.
Following Browder’s expulsion, the Fund’s lawyer, Sergei
Magnitsky choose to investigate the tax fraud and the officials who perpetrated
it. Magnitsky was arrested by the same officials who he implicated in the
fraud. In prison he was tortured for 358 days and ultimately killed in custody
at the age of 37. Browder began a campaign to expose Russia’s endemic
corruption and human rights abuses and to exact justice for Magnitsky.
Browder began a fight for justice in the Magnitsky case.
However, in Russia the government officials responsible for the lawyer’s death
had been exonerated and some even promoted. Browder took his campaign to
America where the US Congress adopted the ‘Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law
Accountability Act’ in 2012. This act imposed visa sanctions and asset freezes
on the corrupt official’s responsible for the detention, ill treatment and
death of Sergei Magnitsky.
This law was the first time the US sanctioned Russia in 35
years. It has become the model for all subsequent US sanctions against Russia.
This act has become a model, worldwide, for dealing with oligarchs and those
who abuse “human rights.” This has angered Russia’s President Putin.
Luke Harding, The Guardian online news UK, 2015, interviewed
Browder in London. Browder said, “Unlike
in communist times, ….the west isn’t dealing with a hostile ideology.
[Browder’s] thesis – which I share – is that Putin and his law enforcement and
spy agencies are in effect running Russia as a “criminal enterprise” for their
own financial gain. Anyone who stands up to them – such as Magnitsky – faces
being shot, arrested or penalized.”
Harding tells us, “Browder says his problem isn’t with
Russia as such but with the powerful clique of ex-KGB spies who have grabbed
the state.”
Russian readers may download a free copy of the Russian edition
of Red Notice off the Internet at Bill Browder’s website.
http://www.amazon.com/Red-Notice-Finance-Murder-Justice/
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