Following the New York Times bestseller ‘Red Notice’, Bill Browder returns with another gripping thriller chronicling how he became Vladimir Putin’s enemy by exposing Putin’s campaign to steal and launder hundreds of billions of dollars and kill anyone who stands in his way.

When Bill Browder’s Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step of that mission was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime.

As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of the top lawyers and politicians in America to bring him down.

The Henry Jackson Society welcomes Bill Browder to hear more about his new book and his tireless campaign against Putin and the financial crimes that drive his tyrannical empire.

Bill Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country and declared “a threat to national security” for exposing corruption in Russian state-owned companies. In 2008, Mr. Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a massive fraud committed by Russian government officials that involved the theft of US $230 million of state taxes. Sergei testified against state officials involved in this fraud and was subsequently arrested, imprisoned without trial and systematically tortured. He spent a year in prison under horrific detention conditions, was repeatedly denied medical treatment, and died in prison on November 16, 2009, leaving behind a wife and two children. Since then, Mr. Browder has sought justice outside of Russia and started a global campaign for governments around the world to impose targeted visa bans and asset freezes on human rights abusers and highly corrupt officials.

Dr Stepan Stepanenko received his BA (Hons) and MA by research from the University of York and went on to complete a PhD at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes of Paris Sciences et Lettres with a focus on Ukraine. In his academic career Stepan presented at a multitude of academic conferences and authored publications in peer reviewed journals, individually and in collaboration. He is also currently an Associate Member of the CNRS UMR 8167.

In British politics, Stepan has worked with the Conservative Party, running for election in the London Borough of Barnet in 2014 and co-founding the Conservative Friends of Ukraine in 2021. He continues to work on cross party humanitarian projects with a focus on Ukraine.

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EVENT SUMMARY

The Henry Jackson Society was pleased to welcome Bill Browder for the launch of his book Freezing Order. Dr Stepan Stepanenko began the discussion by introducing the speaker. Bill Browder then outlined the extraordinary series of events that have led to his becoming a bestselling author, leading anticorruption and human rights campaigner and prime target of Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian regime. He recounted how, as Russia’s largest overseas investor, he and his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky’s efforts to expose corrupt practices in Russia led to Magnitsky’s murder and how this horrific event drove him to spearhead the passage of Magnitsky Acts around the world that would freeze the assets of human rights violators. Dr Stepan Stepanenko then asked Browder to recount examples from the book of evidence of Russian corruption, as in the case of the cellist Sergei Roldugin, and of personal targeting by the Russian state. Bill Browder proceeded to update the audience on the progress of the passage of Magnitsky Acts around the world, which Dr Stepan Stepanenko followed up by asking whether similar legislation could be used to support Ukrainians in their war effort. Finally, Bill Browder answered questions from the audience on Donald Trump’s attitude towards Russia, the Lukashenko regime in Belarus, the failure of European countries to stop buying Russian gas before the invasion of Ukraine, and the difficulties of convincing Western countries to take stronger stances towards Russia.

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