Putin Murders Another Lawyer
This past summer, William Browder had an epiphany. Writing in the Financial Times, he revealed it:
Russia is not a “state” as we understand it. Government institutions have been taken over as conduits for private interests, some of them criminal. Foreign investors get ripped off all the time in many countries. What makes this story unique is the state officials working together to steal $230m from the Russian state itself. The sharks have started to feed on their own blood.
From 1996 to 2005, Browder’s firm Hermitage Capital controlled a $4 billion foreign investment portfolio in Russia, the largest in the world. He was one of Vladimir Putin’s most enthusiastic boosters, calling him Hermitage’s “biggest ally” in expanding foreign investment. He proudly touted his family connections to Russia. (His grandfather Earl, a leading figure in the Communist Party USA., had lived in Russia in the 1920s and taken a Russian bride.) William repudiated his American citizenship and became a British subject. He declared: “I had a lot of my family in me, and tried to find a way of connecting my past to my future.”
Then Browder made a literally fatal error. He started speaking out about the negative consequences for his investors of Russia’s horrific social and political corruption. The most recent survey by Transparency International found that of 180 world nations studied, only 31 were more corrupt than Putin’s Russia. Uninterested in reform, the Kremlin turned on him. In November 2005, Browder’s Russian visa was revoked.
When he still did not pipe down, in June 2007 his company’s offices in Moscow were raided by the state, and his attorney Sergei Magnitsky was arrested. Soon, Browder himself was the target of a criminal probe, just as Mikhail Khodorkovsky had become when he tried to challenge pandemic Russian corruption.
The pattern of prosecuting lawyers had held for Khodorkovsky as well, when the Kremlin jailed his lead counsel Svetlana Bakhmina. Likewise, Mikhail Trepashkin, the lawyer who represented the committee of human rights activists that was investigating the Moscow apartment bombings used as a pretext for Putin’s invasion of Chechnya soon after he took power, was jailed. In Vladimir Putin’s Russia, lawyers — like journalists — are an endangered species.
A few days ago, Magnitsky died in Kremlin custody. It’s believed that the Kremlin was pressuring him to give evidence against Browder, and was using torture in the form of withheld medical treatment. Voice of America reported:
Magnitsky developed problems with his pancreas and gall bladder as a result of what his American business associate, Jamison Firestone, described to VOA as filthy prison conditions. They included a tiny cell with two other people, no hot water, a shower once a week, and a kitchen above a hole in the floor that served as a toilet.
Sounds like the current American Fairness Doctrine gone horribly awry… but what else can we expect from Putin and his Soviet predecessors, and Hitler, Mussolini, and others, including (to the utter dismay of a quickly growing host of Americans) a fiercely prominent American political party, some of whose adherents are staunch devoteès of those same Soviet predecessors?
“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy….I was able to get a sense of his soul.” —George W. Bush, after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, June 16, 2001
““I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy….I was able to get a sense of his soul.” —George W. Bush, after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin, June 16, 2001″
Putin became acting President on December 31, 1999, and was elected President in 2000. Isn’t it just possible that in June 2001, Putin’s full program had not been revealed. depradations had not yet reached the West, or even the Russiana S.
Kim, in yesterday’s Edmonton Journal, I saw a story about a priest that was shot. Do you have anything that links that shooting with this one you describe?
What an informative article! Thank you for this information. I remember years ago when the West was pouring billions into the “new” Russia I told a few people not to bother. It looked like a ruse to me. Pretend to welcome foreign investment and when you get enough of it, start to destroy and steal. I was looked upon like a nutcase and the only reason why I believed what I thought was because of THE CULTURE of the country. In fact I think much was made of Perstroika that did not exist. The Soviet Union went through periods of “thawing” long enough to steal and hoodwink so they could continue their old tricks. The people in charge have been doing what they do for generations. Who really thought they would wake up one day and say, gee, I think I’ll start acting moral today. As for Browder, it seems he really did connect with his past, didn’t he? The DNA chain must be quite an ugly site. He renounced his American citizenship for that of a British subject? But the coward should have gone all the way and become a serf of Russia. He thought he could stoke his vanity and preen about his wonderful self and his background. He betrayed many and had a circumstantial hand in murder. No doubt he still thinks he’s “special”. Glad America is rid of the quisling.
Anonymous @ 3
No. I remember when Bush made that statement about Putin, lots of people had a WTF? moment. We already knew plenty enough about Putin and his KGB background, associates, and things he had done or overseen.
Bush’s statement, it was obvious to many many of us, went beyond diplomatic niceties and revealed something seriously wrong in Bush.
Maybe few would agree with me, but I think one of Bush’s biggest flaws was he was too trusting and too willing to give the benefit of the doubt, to Putin, to Gen. Casey whom he left in charge in Iraq 2 years too long, or Rumsfeld whom he should have sacked BEFORE rather than after the 2006 election, or Mike Brown his FEMA guy for Katrina, or how he kept complimenting Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton even as they savaged him, and many many more.
ok…1) To a Russian the status of one’s “soul” is a non-negligible issue. Hillary! made some slighting remark about Putin’s soul or lack thereof and got quite a bit of flak back. Meanwhile, GWB got a certain amount of cooperation from Russia in the Afghan theater, that maybe he wouldn’t have if he called Putin a meanie and a poopy head.
Diplomacy is saying “nice doggie” till you can find a rock, not pulling the dog’s tail for no reason. Stupid Bush understood that, but many on the left don’t, nor some rightist hawks whose hearts are in the right place (indeed, Putin is a meanie and a poopy head, and worse) but who are not accountable for results. Let’s grow up. The duty of the POTUS is not to “speak truth to power,” it is to serve the interests of the USA.
“There-there but for an accident of geography, stands a corpse!”
Actually Schactman was more correct than he realized. I read either in one of the Haynes/Klehr books Brents book on Stalin that Browder sr, was ‘invited’ back to Russia circa 1950, but Browder sniffed the wind and refused to go. The Browders as a family seem to be brilliant, but not necessarily scrupulous. Earl had three children, all first rate mathematicians. At least one of them, when chairmen of the department was famous for spending the entire dept. entertainment budget on entertaining his (mathematical friends).
I trust Putin to the same level I trust Obama (nada/zilch/zero). It’s sort of funny to be wishing that a big ass asteroid smacks a joint session of Congress but can’t say I’d have any regret if that should happen.
Putin is but the acceptable face of the Siloviki. Bush thought common interests like oil and an anti Islamist political position would be enough, he didn’t count on what would
be considered neo-czarist nationalism
Narciso,
I think your right. I remember Bush making that statement about trusting Putin and blanching myself.
Like Valerie, I remember that statement of Bush’s too. A Strange New Respect began to be accorded Bush afterward by elements of the NY Times and WasPo axis but it was later withdrawn in a storm of childish Lefty “Ooh! Did’ja hear that? Bush said ‘soul’” tittering.
I believe it was Senator McCain who said “I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw three letters, KGB.”
In fact, here is McCain’s statement on You Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAVlaIJWP-Q
McCain is a tool…his positions on Russia were bought and paid for by George Soros and the anti-Russia lobby (the same group incidentally that throws crumbs at “Kim Zigfeld”, a pseudonymous personage Glenn Reynolds and others treat like a real person with a real name). He had Randy Scheunemann, a lobbyist for Mikhail Sakaashvili the tie eater on his staff until just a few months before the Georgians started the Ossetia War. Not to mention the Sorosians influenced him on “campaign finance reform” which only empowered 529s like MoveOn…when the “conservatives” here at PJM will wake up and realize that just because someone loathes Russia does not makes them a defender of liberty…
We’ve seen this story before, Russia gets all of a sudden concerned over the fate of the poor South Ossetians and Abkhazians, 1799, and 1921, and then nothing. Really are you going to compare the Georgian lobbying efforts to the Russians.
My goodness, Mr. X, what a screed! Well, I’m no fan of McCain’s, but everything else in your post was sort of beside any points being made here.
Putin IS vicious, and he IS an accomplished and powerful KGB agent.
McCain and Soros and many others may all be the garbage bags you say they are, but right now we’re establishing that Putin is a KGB killer.
Do you deny that?
Watch video on Magnitsky here:
http://lawandorderinrussia.org/2009/hermitage-youtube/
Well we just need a “Reset” button, don’t we? Why don’t we just yuck it up together? It’s nothing but Amateur Hour with this administration and foreign affairs.
Narciso “Really are you going to compare the Georgian lobbying efforts to the Russians.” No, but I merely pointed out that it’s preposterous to claim that Georgia, a tiny country with an average pension of $70 a month, can possibly afford $100 million for Patriot missiles or to pay Scheunemann a cool mil for eighteen months work without YOU, the American taxpayer, coughing up something. Even Soros knows a losing bet when he sees one which is why he’s hung Saako and Yuschenko out to dry.
And Sicamore – the latest in an undead army of virtual Zigfeld spawn from the bowels of the Jamestown Foundation – I do deny your guilty until proven innocent view of Vladimir Putin. And while you’re constantly harping about Putin’s KGB status, do you care to apply the ‘once a chekist, always a chekist’ standard to your favorite, Paul Goble, who keeps plugging away for Eurasia whatever with no obvious means of support besides his CIA/State Dept. pension in Talinn?
Ziggy, I think you just started attacking Soros because he has obviously hung Saako and Yuschenko out to dry. Even he knows a losing horse when he sees one and even he cannot outbid the Chinese or the EU for buying Moldova and Belarus, respectively.
But IF indeed the ‘left’ wing of the Washington anti-Russia lobby is at odds with the ‘right wing’ that pays you, then congrats to the boys in Moskva for finally getting smart in their PR efforts. It’s about time the military industrial complex/Americanski siloviki are told to wake up and realize that America is broke and that China and Russia now own a sizeable chunks of our national debt and our total dollars in their hands. Obama is not bowing and scraping to them because he hates America, but because our country CAN’T afford military bases in 120 countries and funding the NGO-revolutions in a box complex anymore AND have hope and changey health care for all AND bail out the banks. It’s impossible.
Dear Leader reads this article, says:
“Hey Michelle, what do you think? Should we up our time-table on opening the re-education centers?”