Bill Browder (58), born in America, grew up with what he calls “the greatest Communist in the United States”: his grandfather Earl Browder, who led the American Communist Party in the United States in the 1930s.
– I replied that I wanted to be a super capitalist, and has been for a while, Browder tells Dagbladet Bok.
On Monday this week, he was in Oslo in connection with the fact that his latest book, “Cold money. A true story of surviving Putin’s wrath“is published in Norwegian.
Robbed without shame
The book is about a crazy story from reality. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the self-proclaimed super capitalist saw great opportunities in Russia and moved there in 1996. Here he founded the hedge fund Hermitage Fund and managed, according to him, $ 4.5 billion in Russian securities, a more.
“Managing this fund was not child’s play. The companies we invested in were shamelessly robbed by Russian oligarchs and corrupt public officials, “he writes in the book.
– The corruption was so bad that I decided to fight it. We investigated how the money was stolen, how the thefts happened, and who pocketed the stolen money, says Browder.
In late 2005, Putin labeled fund manager Browder as a threat to Russian security and expelled him from Russia.
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Putin’s prison justice
Judging Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchs turned out to be a deadly affair.
– Personally, I’m in grave danger. Resisting Putin … It’s a huge crime. Then you show that you don’t respect it, and that’s the worst thing for Vladimir Putin. For Putin it is prison justice that matters to him, says Browder and continues:
– If you are not respected, you die. So the fact that I don’t respect Putin is such an unforgivable crime that he has spent the last thirteen years chasing me around the world with arrest warrants, Interpol searches, death threats and the like, he says.
Stop the money
For years, Browder has been referred to, and defined himself, as Putin’s number one enemy. Where is he on the list now?
– Now Zelenskii is number one, Alexei Navalny (Putin’s angriest opposition politician journ.anm) is number two, so I probably fell to third place. Not that it reduces my risk. Look at Salman Rushdie, they hunted him 33 years later, says Browder.
But how can Vladimir Putin, a man everyone knows has stolen, killed and intimidated all his enemies for decades after decades, still be in power?
– Because it is so brutal and destroys everyone who gets in its way. Putin is very good in the dictatorship. At the same time, I believe that 80 percent of his power relates to our perception that we have that power. 20 percent is power itself, says Browder.
UNERED: Despite Interpol’s death threats, arrests and investigations: the financier and human rights activist Bill Browder refuses to give up the fight against Putin. Now his book on the fight to survive Putin’s wrath has been published in Norwegian. Photo: Kristin Svorte / Dagbladet
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Where is Putin’s hell?
He believes Putin can be stopped the day the world sees his bluff.
– When Finland and Sweden wanted to join NATO, Putin said all hell would break loose. I’m almost in now – and where is the hell? When we wanted to impose SWIFT sanctions, Putin said there will be a nuclear war. What happened? Nothing, says Browder.
He adds that Putin is a “very dangerous and violent boy”.
– But his power depends a lot on how much power we allow him to have. Now we need to help Ukraine get Russian troops out of Ukraine. Furthermore, we must stop all financial flows, so that Putin has no more money to continue fighting this war, says Browder.
– Norway is a coward, like a small child
Brutal murder
In 2009, Browder’s tax lawyer and friend Sergei Magnitsky was killed and tortured in a Russian prison. That it happened, the Russians probably repented countless times.
– If the brutal murder hadn’t happened and if they hadn’t used so many resources to hide the murder, yes, then Putin wouldn’t have had all the problems with me, says the 58-year-old and continues:
– If I hadn’t continued to work for justice for Sergej, I would have been poisoned from within. Many people probably would have given up, but I would have felt like a coward and couldn’t have looked at myself in the mirror, he says.
