Red Notice: The Full Bill Browder Interview
In this eye-opening discussion to kick off the Gaslit Nation Summer Reading Series: Essential Conversations with Leading Experts on How to Protect Our Democracy, running mid-July to mid-August, Bill Browder discusses the ongoing threat of Putin’s aggression and what to do about it. We ran an excerpt of our interview with Browder in May. This is the full interview.
Show Notes for This Episode Are Available Here
Sarah Kendzior:
I am Sarah Kendzior, the author of the best-selling books, The View From Flyover Country and Hiding In Plain Sight.
Andrea Chalupa:
I am Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the journalistic thriller, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is Gaslit Nation, a podcast covering corruption in the United States and rising autocracy around the world.
Andrea Chalupa:
Today, we are talking to Bill Browder, the author of the must-read book, Red Notice. Bill is joining Gaslit Nation for an important conversation as part of our Gaslit Nation summer reading series. First, Bill Browder's bio from his website, I'll read from that now: “Bill Browder is the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, which was the investment advisor to the largest foreign investment fund in Russia until 2005, when Bill was denied entry to the country and declared a ‘threat to national security’ as a result of his battle against corporate corruption.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“Following his expulsion, the Russian authorities raided his offices, seized Hermitage funds and investment companies, and used them to steal $230 million of taxes that the companies had previously paid. When Browder's lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, investigated the crime, he was threatened by the same officers he implicated, tortured for 358 days, and killed in custody at the age of 37 in November 2009.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“Since then, Browder has spent years fighting for justice for Mr. Magnitsky. The Russian government exonerated and even promoted some of the officials involved so Browder took the case to America, where his campaigning led to the US Congress adopting the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act in 2012, which imposed visa sanctions and asset freezes on those involved in the detention, ill treatment, and death of Sergei Magnitsky, as well as in other human rights abuses.”
Andrea Chalupa:
“This law was the first time the US sanctioned Russia in 35 years and became the model for all subsequent US sanctions against Russia. Browder is currently working to have similar legislation passed in Magnitsky's name across the European Union and elsewhere.”
Andrea Chalupa:
We want to just get to the news. So, what does the hijacking of a dissident from Belarus on a flight traveling between the EU countries, what does that mean now?
Bill Browder:
I think it's like a whole new ball game in terms of dictators doing brazen and bad stuff. I mean, it's on the level of brazenness of the murder of Jamal Khashoggi by Mohammed bin Salman where they basically used an embassy to conduct a murder and mutilation.
Bill Browder:
Thankfully, Roman Protasevich is still alive but bringing a commercial jet down with a fighter plane to grab an enemy of a dictator is crossing all sorts of boundaries, redlines, everything. If there is not a really harsh and punishing reaction to this, it's just going to send a message to other dictators that this is now a new tool that can be used, and there's a lot of other dictators who would probably like to bring planes down. I'm sure the Chinese and the Iranians and the Russians, and all sorts of other people, will look at this and are all watching very carefully right now.
Sarah Kendzior:
What kind of reaction or repercussions do you think would be appropriate for this situation?
Bill Browder:
Well, the repercussions that really matter and the only ones that really work well are when you go after the money of the dictators and those close to them and those who support them. The EU has announced no more flights over Belarus and no more Belarusian flights in Europe and various things like that, and even sanctions, but if the sanctions just apply to the deputy minister of transport who made the order, that's not going to do anything.
Bill Browder:
However, if the sanctions go after the Russian oligarch who has been funding the Belarusian regime— funding Lukashenko—that will have some impact. By the way, there's no mystery to who these people are. The Belarusian opposition has got a list, as do the Russian opposition, of who the money men are for these dictators. But you have to go after the money. If you go after anything else, they just look at it and carry on.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right. It's just symbolic. So, as you mentioned, the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny, provided helpfully a list of people for the Biden administration to sanction who are helping prop up Putin's corruption. Why do you think the US generally and the EU are reluctant to go after the money people?
Bill Browder:
On the EU side, it's really easy because in the EU there's 27 member states and they have to have unanimity in order to make any decisions. So, you have veto rights for little countries like Hungary, which is run by a junior varsity Putin, Viktor Orban, or Cyprus or Malta. These are corrupted countries where they will do the bidding of Russia and water down the list.
Bill Browder:
One of the big problems with Biden is that in his efforts to turn over a new page from Trump, he now wants to be intensely multi-lateral. He doesn't want to be unilateral. And so, he wants to coordinate with the Europeans who are all getting vetoed by ... I mean, the US foreign policy is being dictated by the Hungarians, and so you end up with this really watered down, lowest common denominator foreign policy because of these dysfunctions in the way that decisions are getting made.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's sort of how the US government is currently operating with Mitch McConnell in Congress and others, and Joe Manchin and others blocking a lot of much-needed legislation and a commission for January 6th and so forth.
Bill Browder:
You have all sorts of dysfunctions in this particular case, and then you also have Biden, who is doing a lot of good stuff in foreign policy, but he's also a bit cautious. I mean, he just announced a summit with Putin. Putin shouldn't be rewarded with this kind of recognition. He should be ignored. He should be ignored and contained, not engaged and feted, which is effectively what a US-Russia summit is all about.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. Just so our listeners are clear on what's happening, a summit has been announced for June 16th in Switzerland. We're going to air this clip before that so that your opinions get through ... So, you believe Biden should not be having this meeting. If he does go through with it anyway, what goals should he have? What should this accomplish? What should Biden watch out for from Putin?
Bill Browder:
By having the summit, Putin already accomplished 80% of what he needs, which is being put on the same stage as the most important, powerful world leader. I mean, just remember, Russia is a country with an economy the size of the state of New York, a military budget 90% less than the US military budget. It's really a regional player. The only thing that they have is nuclear weapons, but we're in a world of mutually-assured destruction and so there's not going to be any use of nuclear weapons. And so it seems like a really bad idea to even have this summit because all that's going to happen is Putin is going to use it to his advantage in terms of raising his own stature.
Bill Browder:
What Putin has done recently ... I mean, he has hacked the US election. He's invaded Crimea. He's shot down passenger planes. He's cheated in the Olympics. He's got all sorts of fugitives holed up in his country that he won't extradite to other countries. He's poisoned his rival. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. He doesn't deserve any type of engagement and there's no way that Biden can have a meeting with him without giving him the gift of recognition.
Sarah Kendzior:
Well then why do you think Biden is doing it?
Bill Browder:
Because the people surrounding Biden are in this old world school of, “We must engage Russia.” It's like the people who still use IBM PCs, this old historic way of statecraft, that, “They have nuclear weapons, we have nuclear weapons, we must engage with them, we want to avoid nuclear holocaust, we must talk to each other,” and Putin views this as just sort of craven weakness.
Bill Browder:
Every president—"every US president—has done the same thing. You had George W. Bush, who met with Putin, “looked into his eyes, saw his soul,” and then things got really horrible between Bush and Putin. Then you had Obama, who wanted to do a reset. Then you had Trump, who says, “We're going to get along, wouldn't it be great if we got along?” They all have different words for it and different styles about it but it's all the same thing. Now you have Biden who wants to have a summit with this guy. I have objected just as strongly as when Trump was having his summit with the guy. Putin doesn't deserve this type of recognition.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. It seems incredibly reckless just given all of the things that you listed in terms of attacks that Russia has carried out on the US over the last few years, and I would add to that all of the cyber attacks, including the ones that took place during the Obama administration on various governmental institutions, as well the one launched in 2020, which is the worst cyber attack on the United States in its history.
Sarah Kendzior:
I'm just trying to figure out ... While you're right that there's this continuum of people being unable to see Russia clearly for the threat that it is, we did have an unusual situation, to say the least, with Trump as the president, Trump as a Kremlin asset who was bolstered into the position by Putin, by oligarchs, by Kremlin operatives. Why has the Biden administration not failed to learn from that? Because we're definitely not dealing in hypotheticals anymore here.
Bill Browder:
There's no hypotheticals at all. I mean, look, the Russians were paying Afghan mercenaries to kill American troops. It just goes on and on. I don't know why Biden is making these decisions. All I can say is that it's the wrong decision. Either he's got the wrong instincts or the people advising him have the wrong instincts and he shouldn't be having the summit. When he does have the summit, it's really hard to have a summit and say, "We're going to tie you up in knots and sanction you and punish you for all these terrible things you do" because that's not what you do in a summit.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. I want to point out, you mentioned the Kremlin putting bounties on the heads of US soldiers in Afghanistan, which led to real casualties. That reporting has all been confirmed. There was some noise that came out recently that the NSA wasn't as confident as the CIA but the point is that the US government acknowledged that this was happening and it led to real casualties. The New York Times did some great reporting on it.
Bill Browder:
You could take that off the list, there's like 50 other things on the list. There's just so much bad stuff. This guy is a menace to the world and there's no question in his objective. He's used Novichok to poison his political opponent. He used Novichok to poison people in Salisbury. He used polonium to kill Litvinenko. I mean, people have been killed in Berlin and Vienna. He's a criminal of the first order running a state. For us to give him any kind of recognition as a world leader is just the wrong thing to do.
[begin advertisement]
Sarah Kendzior:
This Gaslit Nation episode is sponsored by Ground News. The media landscape is fundamentally broken. The press is financially incentivized to push divisive content to generate clicks. Social media further divides people into information silos, fanning the flames of polarization.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is one of the biggest issues of our time. Ground News is working to solve it. Ground New is a news comparison app designed to rebuild a shared sense of reality. Founded by a former NASA engineer, the app shows readers how a single story is being covered across the political spectrum, giving you more context and a comprehensive view of the issue.
Sarah Kendzior:
Ground has an immense library of sources, featuring over 50,000 outlets from across the world and the political spectrum so you can see every side and draw your own conclusions. Ground is shedding light on the present in order to create a better future. It's easy to use, well rounded, and consistent no matter your politics. Try it for yourself by clicking on the link in the description to download the free Ground News app.
[end advertisement]
Andrea Chalupa:
Do you think that Biden is acting out of a hostage situation? Do you think that because Putin's shown again and again that he's willing to be ruthless and trample over all these norms, do you think that Biden—who is right now trying to end the pandemic and economic crisis that has come with it—that Biden is essentially buying his time with Putin and doing these gestures to try to lower the temperature between them? Putin, as we saw with the ransomware attack of Russian hackers, which are certainly operating under the knowledge of the Russian criminal state, just attacked, disrupted a major pipeline in the US.
Andrea Chalupa:
Do you think that there's a bit of a hostage situation? That the US is in a weaker position and it's stuck catering to or giving Putin what they want, at least, in the short-term?
Bill Browder:
Well, I mean, I would argue that Biden is trying to appease Putin and Putin ... First of all, appeasement has proven not to work with any type of dictator and it certainly has proven not to work with Putin and so Putin will just use this to his advantage.
Bill Browder:
The only thing that Putin understands is hard, vicious consequences for stuff that he does. It's not as if the United States doesn't have the capacity to inflict those on Russia, and they should be inflicted on Russia. I mean, it's ridiculous. Putin is engaging ... He's effectively declared a hybrid, asymmetric, plausibly deniable war against us and we're not responding.
Andrea Chalupa:
Essentially, just to recap, because this is really important for people to understand: the United States, especially under Biden, who wants to bring back global leadership where we're all together in this strong western alliance, Biden can't go it alone and take these measures alone. There has to be some European support. And the EU can't go along because states like Hungary, which are dictatorships on their own, have veto power over what the EU does. So that's essentially what we're up against.
Bill Browder:
Yeah, but there's absolutely no reason why the United States can't take decisions in its own national interests whether Europe goes along with us or not. It's completely ... It would be nice to do it and it would be better to do it when you can. Should the US let pipelines be obstructed because of Hungary? No, of course not.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right. And the US took down FIFA, and soccer or football is known as sacred in Europe so the US had no problem doing that apparently.
Bill Browder:
And the US has done lots of things that have been unilateral, which have been very helpful in terms of ending conflicts or punishing bad guys in different places. It's great when we can do these things multi-laterally and one should strive to do that when it's possible. When it's not, the US should act firmly and consistently with its position in the world and its national interest.
Andrea Chalupa:
There was reporting recently on Axios that the Biden administration was planning on waiving sanctions on Nord Stream 2 so that project could, in effect, move forward. Could you talk a little bit about why Nord Stream 2 matters and what you think the Biden administration should do in regards to it?
Bill Browder:
Well, so at the moment, there's one pipeline that Russia uses to export its gas and that pipeline goes through Ukraine and Poland and various other countries. As a result of that, Russia can't be as horrible and dangerous and murderous and expansive against Ukraine as it could otherwise, because Ukraine has one huge piece of leverage which is stopping the flow of gas if Russia were to invade their country, for example.
Bill Browder:
Putin has understood that this is ... He doesn't like for anyone to have that type of leverage against him, so he's built a second pipeline which is called Nord Stream 2. Nord Stream 2 goes through the Baltic Sea. It avoids all these pesky countries that Putin doesn't like and it goes straight into Germany.
Bill Browder:
In order to make sure that this happened properly, he ended up paying a bunch of highly influential Germans, including the former chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schröder, to run around Germany and sort of grease the wheels and make sure the whole thing worked. As a result of that, Germany agreed to have this pipeline, help finance this pipeline, and what this pipeline does, which is really horrific from a geopolitical perspective, is it makes Germany—and I guess the rest of Europe—more dependent on Russian gas.
Bill Browder:
So not only does Russia win this geopolitical point of avoiding Ukraine, but they also end up getting Germany more hooked on their gas. What happens when Germany is more hooked on their gas? If they do something horrific like take a plane down, or kill Alexei Navalny, or something like that, there will be all sorts of internal discussions in Germany to say, "Wow. That's terrible. That's outrageous. We condemn it but we can't do anything about it because we're dependent on their gas."
Bill Browder:
It's a total sort of slam dunk win for Putin. And the US had the right attitude about this whole thing, which was to say, "No. We're not going to allow that. We're going to sanction anybody involved." That was all good and consistent.
Bill Browder:
Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, the sanction is going to be lifted off the main company and off the main guy who is involved in that by the Biden administration. It's really sort of perplexing and infuriating for anybody who understands the situation and it raises a lot of questions.
Andrea Chalupa:
What's really strange is the Biden administration keeps coming out with a position that they want to have a “predictable” relationship with Russia. They keep using that word, they want to have a “predictable” relationship with Russia. Russia has been really predictable. If there's one thing that's helpful that they do is you just imagine the most ruthless thing they can do, the leverage they can wield, and they'll take it.
Andrea Chalupa:
So, it's really strange that the Biden administration keeps beating that on. What advice do you have for them to sort of wake up and understand that there is no negotiating with terrorists when it comes to Putin's regime?
Bill Browder:
Well, there can be a very predictable relationship, which is that we will come down like a ton of bricks on you every time you do anything that we don't like.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right
Bill Browder:
That's predictable. Nothing unpredictable about that. Very simple. The message should be clear. To use this idea that we want to have a predictable relationship, which means we're not going to get mad at you when you do terrible stuff, that's called appeasement. We all know where that leads.
Andrea Chalupa:
Yeah. Without question. It's really disturbing because there are some people who are held up as really strong, renowned Russia experts. Fiona Hill is one, but then Fiona Hill came out with an infuriating position where she and others, I believe, published a letter in Politico, or it was picked up by Politico, saying that we have to do business with Putin, we need to work with Russia where we can work with Russia, we need to have a reset.
Andrea Chalupa:
There was that haunting ominous word again, “reset”. There was a Russian reset and then Russia went on to invade Ukraine and deliberately bomb civilians in Syria and so forth. And, of course, attack our democracy in 2016.
Andrea Chalupa:
It seems like a lot of respectable folks inside the beltway are very much part of this problem. Who are some of the folks that you think should be listened to, should have a seat at the table, that Biden should be leaning on to get a real pragmatic view on who Putin is and how to contain his aggression?
Bill Browder:
Well, first of all, just because somebody is smart and wonderful and respectable doesn't mean that every idea they have is a good idea. We live in a pluralistic world where people can disagree, and that's just a bad idea, to reset. I mean, there's no question about it, as we've discussed. It doesn't mean that Fiona Hill is bad. She's a wonderful person who has had a lot of great ideas but in this particular area, that's a bad idea.
Bill Browder:
In terms of who the right people are, I don't run the head hunting operation at the National Security Council. I can tell you who is a terrible idea. They were considering a guy named Matt Rojanksy, who was like the ultimate Russia appeasement resetting guy, who they were thinking about, and there was such a storm of outrage when his name came up that they nixed him off the list.
Bill Browder:
I guess part of the problem we have here is that the Biden administration is using the same well that the Obama administration used, of people. It's like a lot of Obama retreads coming back and trying out the same stuff that they were doing during the Obama administration. Obama may have done a lot of good things in a lot of areas but he had a pretty terrible policy when it came to Russia and I had to fight him at every step of the way to get the Magnitsky Act passed because he didn't want to do it.
Andrea Chalupa:
Why didn't Obama want the Magnitsky Act passed?
Bill Browder:
Because he wanted to reset his relations with Russia and he thought that challenging them on human rights and kleptocracy wouldn't be a good way to do that. This was not a Democrat/Republican thing. On both sides of the political aisle in Congress, they thought that it was a really good idea to have a Magnitsky Act and it passed the Senate 92-4. It passed the House of Representatives with 89% and Obama couldn't do anything about it. He had to sign it into law. He did so unwillingly and annoyed that his hand was forced on that issue.
Sarah Kendzior:
This is interesting because this was in 2012, right? December 2012 when the Magnitsky Act was passed in the Senate?
Bill Browder:
Yes.
Sarah Kendzior:
Okay. Because that's not that long after Mueller gave this famous speech about the Iron Triangles, which is basically the coordination of state corruption, traditional organized crime, and corporate corruption and the nexus of that, he said in the speech, was Semion Mogilevich's operation. It was the Russian mafia. Mueller, as FBI head at the time, said that the Russian mafia was one of the greatest threats facing western democracies and said, specifically, that kleptocracies forming—that are very difficult to prosecute, analyze, keep up with—posed a threat.
Sarah Kendzior:
Given that this was all kind of out in the open, what accounts for the reluctance of not just Obama but other officials to really get on top of this and prevent these kinds of attacks on our democracy? Ultimately, it is that. It is an attack.
Bill Browder:
Well, I don't think that Russia was really prioritized as a major issue. I think that Obama was looking at domestic policies and he kind of thought of the whole issue with Russia as something he had to deal with but didn't really want to deal with and just wanted to sweep it under the carpet. That's how we ended up in this situation where he basically gave Putin a pass to sort of do whatever he wanted to do, and Putin knew that Obama wouldn't do anything. After the whole redline in Syria not being enforced, it became clear to Putin and lots of other people that you could do what you want and America is not going to get involved. As a result, Putin felt like he had carte blanche to go into Ukraine, which he did. Then he had carte blanche to hack the US elections, which he did, and we ended up with Donald Trump as a result.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. One of the many things that concerns me about that result is we know that at the end of Trump's administration, at the end of his term, he pardoned a lot of the key players that were involved in that 2016 election interference and were involved directly with the Kremlin, people like Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn and Roger Stone and then, of course, you still see Trump and others in that circle running around.
Sarah Kendzior:
They now have access to all US state secrets as a result of inhabiting the executive branch for four years, yet they display very little loyalty to the United States. What are the national security implications of that?
Bill Browder:
Well, I can speak from my own personal experience of security implications from Trump and his affection for Putin because at the 2018 summit, after Mueller had just indicted the 12 GRU officers who hacked the election, Trump went to meet with Putin in Helsinki and one of the journalists asked Putin, "Are you going to hand over the 12 GRU agents?" Putin said, "Well, I'll do that if America hands over Bill Browder." They went to Trump and said, "What do you think?" He said, "I think it's a great idea. An incredible offer," he said.
Bill Browder:
You know, putting aside all this theoretical stuff, Trump was ready to hand me over to Putin so that's about as bad as you can get.
Sarah Kendzior:
What was your reaction?
Bill Browder:
My reaction was utter shock to think that the President of the United States would be ready to hand me over ... By the way, the next day Putin then added 11 other people to the list who were all the Americans involved in helping with the Magnitsky Act; Mike McFaul, a former ambassador to Russia, Kyle Parker, the person who wrote the Magnitsky Act, a bunch of people from the Department of Homeland Security who prosecuted the Prevezon case, which was Russian money laundering in New York connected to the Magnitsky case, and various others.
Bill Browder:
Trump was still willing to hand these people over and it took four days and a vote in the Senate, 98 to zero, before he backed off.
Andrea Chalupa:
That's incredible. It's just this feeling when these dictators are emboldened that there's nowhere to hide in the world, that they can get you anywhere, even when you were living in London and hearing the President of the United States agreeing to hand you over to a dictator who has wanted you for quite some time now. Could you describe what that's like, essentially being hunted by one of the most ruthless mafia states?
Bill Browder:
I actually wasn't in London at the time. If I had been in London at the time, he wouldn't have been able to do anything but I was actually in America at the time. I was in Aspen, Colorado at the time. It was terrifying because, I mean, we look at what Lukashenko did taking down an airplane flying over but I kind of pictured Trump sending around the Department of Homeland Security to arrest me and then extradite me back to Russia. By the way, if I get sent back to Russia, I'll be killed. It’s as simple as that. I felt like I was risking my life being in America with Trump as president.
Andrea Chalupa:
Oh my gosh. Yeah. A lot of us felt that way during that time. This is a good place to talk about your story. How did you end up in ... I know you’ve told this story many times. I think it's fascinating so I want to hear it. In my own research into Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, I've come across your father who was an outspoken communist. He very much was part of that movement that I touched on in my film Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland, a movement of people in the west—Americans, Brits—who saw hope in communism and what the Soviet Union was doing, certainly as a counter to the power of the United States. Could you talk a little bit about your background and how you ended up in Russia in the first place?
Bill Browder:
Yeah. It's my grandfather, not my father.
Andrea Chalupa:
Oh, your grandfather, excuse me.
Bill Browder:
My grandfather, Earl Browder, was a labor union organizer from Wichita, Kansas and he was really good at union organization. He was spotted by the communists in 1927 and they invited him to Moscow where he went to live and learned about communism.
Bill Browder:
He met my grandmother there. My father was born in Moscow. Then, five years later, he was sent back to America in 1932 to become the general secretary of the American Communist Party. He ran for president in 1936 and 1940 against Roosevelt. He was arrested and imprisoned by Roosevelt in 1941. He was then pardoned in 1942.
Bill Browder:
Then he was eventually kicked out of the Communist Party in 1945 for being too much of a capitalist. Then he was viciously persecuted during the 1950s during the McCarthy Era for being a communist. This was my family legacy. I was born in 1964.
Bill Browder:
When I was going through my teenage rebellion, I was trying to figure out this way of rebelling from this family of communists and I came up with this perfect rebellion, which was to put on a suit and tie and become a capitalist. I did that and it really ... It was a perfect rebellion. It really upset my family.
Bill Browder:
I went to Stanford Business School in 1987 and graduated in 1989, which was the year that the Berlin Wall came down. As I was trying to figure out what to do post-business school, I had this epiphany, which was if my grandfather was the biggest communist in America and the Berlin Wall has just come down, I'm going to try to become the biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe and that's what I set out to do.
Bill Browder:
I ended up moving to Russia. I set up an investment fund in Russia called the Hermitage Fund, went from zero to where I became the largest foreign investor in the country with $4.5 billion of western capital invested there.
Bill Browder:
Then I discovered the major fundamental, overriding flaw of Russia, which was that they created capitalism but they forgot to create rules. It's like building a house without electricity and plumbing and in Russia, the electricity and plumbing was the rule of law property rights and a government that served the people.
Bill Browder:
As a result of that, all these companies I was investing in were being robbed blind by the oligarchs and crooked senior Russian government officials. I tried to stop the corruption in the companies I invested in by researching and exposing it and in doing so, I ended up infuriating Putin, who expelled me from the country in 2005, declared me a threat to national security. After that, my offices were raided. I had a lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky that investigated the office raids and discovered that the purpose of the raids were to concoct a highly sophisticated fraud where they stole $230 million of taxes that my firm paid to the Russian government.
Bill Browder:
Sergei exposed it and he was subsequently arrested, tortured for 358 days, and murdered on November 16th, 2009 in custody at the age of 37. Since then, I've been on a mission to get justice for Sergei, which has led to the passage of the Magnitsky Act, which sanctioned the people who killed Sergei and sanctions people who commit similar human rights abuses anywhere in the world. There are now 31 countries that have Magnitsky Acts around the world. There's more than 500 people who have been sanctioned and it's become the new tool to go after dictators and their cronies. It's something that Vladimir Putin hates me for, which is why he's been chasing me around the world, trying to have me arrested, trying to have me killed, trying to have me illegally rendered back to Russia.
Bill Browder:
I've probably succeeded in pissing him off more than just about anybody else out there and I take great pleasure in that.
Andrea Chalupa:
So where do you think this rampant corruption in Russia comes from? Was it just that the Soviet Union was, essentially, Animal Farm, the corruption already existed, Putin was living large, they were already stealing and protecting their cronies and so when communism fell, that system basically got hyper-charged with capitalism? Where do you think it all came from?
Bill Browder:
Well, it comes from lots of things. Corruption has been around for hundreds of years. In Russia, it's always been part of life there. During the communist era, there was an expression that if you weren't stealing from the state, you were stealing from your family. You add onto that the fact that there was no religion in the country, from communism, so there's no right and wrong and there's no heaven and hell. It becomes very nihilistic, and then you layer on top of that the fact that there are no rules, no laws, no law enforcement and you end up with this sort of perfect scenario where all the planets have lined up to make it the most corrupt place on the planet. And it has become the most corrupt place on the planet.
Bill Browder:
These people who are running Russia now are literally ready to do anything to anybody who gets in their way. It's truly a mafia state. People use those words lightly, but you have a president of a country who is ordering the poisoning, the beheading of his enemies for financial reasons. It's just shocking and remarkable.
Andrea Chalupa:
What does Putin want?
Bill Browder:
Well, Putin has started his whole exercise of being head of state for money. He likes money and there's a lot of money in Russia. It's a resource-rich country where if you're corrupt and there's no rules, you can take a lot of money. I would guess that over a 20-year period, Putin has stolen $200 billion from the Russian people, and the people around him have probably stolen another $800 billion, so there's a trillion dollars that has been stolen over 20 years.
Bill Browder:
That was his first objective, but then he discovered that he can really never step down because if he were ever to step down, the money would be taken away from him, he'd go to jail and he might even be killed. So, his second objective then is to keep his money and stay in power. He needs to stay in power.
Bill Browder:
Now, how do you stay in power when you're in a situation where you're supposed to be in a democracy and you have stolen all of the people's money? Well, you have to do all sorts of really nasty stuff, like start wars to distract people's aggression towards you and make it towards other people. You've got to totally clamp down and repress your population. You have to kill your political opponents. You have to cheat in every possible way. That's how it's gone. He's riding a bronco where he could be thrown off at any moment and if he does get thrown off, then he risks everything, so he's just holding on for dear life, one week after another. He doesn't know exactly the Russia people, what they're going to do, how they're going to behave. He's scared of any threats. He's trying to eliminate them wherever possible.
Bill Browder:
The more time goes on, the riskier it gets, and the less he cares about what people think about what he does.
Andrea Chalupa:
Putin engineered a referendum so that he can change Russia's constitution and die in power. After Putin's gone, what will replace him? Do you think it will be more of the same?
Bill Browder:
I think there's a trillion dollars of incentive to keep it the same among the elite, so they'll do everything possible to try to keep it the same. Then you have a lot of Russian people—there's 141 million Russian people—that are really angry about the whole thing. It's a toxic brew, which is unpredictable. It may be possible to repress the Russian people but if they ever decide to rise up in unison, there's nothing that this small group of criminals can do to stop them.
Andrea Chalupa:
But the reason why they don't, as Agnieszka Holland told me from her own experiences in Prague in 1968 with the Czechoslovakian invasion, she witnessed firsthand how popular uprising was so quickly oppressed because fear spreads so quickly. Is that what's happening with the Russian people right now? It's just the fear is so great and the repression has been growing, especially in recent weeks with Navalny coming back and Putin really trying to clamp down on all these young kids that grew up with the internet. They've been the ones who have been showing such incredible courage in coming out. Is it just a matter of a small number of criminals at the top holding the rest hostage in a terror regime?
Bill Browder:
Well, the simple mathematical formula for whether a revolution will succeed is does the anger overcome the fear? Or if it won't succeed, does the fear overcome the anger? I mean, I've highly oversimplified it.
Bill Browder:
Putin can't control the anger because the anger is coming from destitution and poverty and he's stolen all the money, unless he wants to give it back, which he is not planning on doing. The only thing he can do is control the fear, and he can ratchet up that fear higher and higher and as you just pointed out, he has.
Bill Browder:
Now the trouble with that is that it's unpredictable how people will react to the ratcheting up of the fear, of the clamp down. At some point, people may just say enough is enough. I mean, who could have predicted that a fruit seller in Tunisia setting himself on fire would lead to the change of regime in many Middle Eastern countries? Nobody would have been able to predict that.
Bill Browder:
It's impossible to predict at what point, if at any point, the people of Russia have said, “Enough is enough” and the anger overcomes the fear. Now, that's not the case. As you pointed out, the one thing that Putin can control is how much more fear he can create. He can make life really terrifying for his people and those are the tools that he has to work with.
Andrea Chalupa:
Russia is a gas station dictatorship. We want to hope for a big push with democracies around the world, with the Paris Agreement, and researchers are talking about transitioning to a post-oil planet. Obviously, that can't happen soon enough. As somebody, especially with your business view of everything, what's going to happen to Russia eventually when alternative energy sources take off in a really big way? The party can't last forever. It's an oil-based budget there. So what do you envision there? That transition being for Russia as the world weans itself off fossil fuels?
Bill Browder:
Well, it doesn't bode well for Russia, as you said. Nor does it bode well for a lot of other dictatorships like Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, et cetera. Russia is, as you say, a gas station with nukes. They have nukes there, which is definitely the one sort of saving grace. They can always blackmail people with their nukes. It doesn't have a good prospect. You have a declining population. You have a culture which punishes any type of entrepreneurship and so there's no small and medium sized businesses.
Bill Browder:
Then, as you say, you have this whole fossil fuel being replaced and it doesn't bode well. They're not playing for the long-term. The Chinese are playing for the next 100 years. Vladimir Putin is just playing from week to week. All he wants to do is think about how he's going to get through this week and keep his enemies at bay. He's not thinking about the long-term.
Andrea Chalupa:
When you see Trump and also Republicans like Senator Ron Johnson, who spent Fourth of July in Moscow and has been spouting Kremlin talking points in the Senate, and all these Republicans who have ... And even Trump supporters wearing Putin t-shirts at rallies. It's just been so surreal. We thought that Dana Rohrabacher was our only problem and now they've suddenly multiplied, all these Dana Rohrabachers now.
Andrea Chalupa:
Then, of course, you have Koch Industries, Charles Koch, funding a program at the Atlantic Council and then the Atlantic Council comes out with a really disturbing controversial piece basically saying “leave Putin alone, we've got to work with Putin, forget human rights,” essentially.
Andrea Chalupa:
How do you think Putin views the Republican Party today, the Trump movement, Charles Koch and others? Wouldn't you say that those elements in America present a national security threat to us?
Bill Browder:
Well, you know, it's so strange because when I was working on the Magnitsky Act, the Republicans were more hawkish and clear-eyed about Russia than the Democrats were, back in 2012, led by John McCain who was a true American patriot. I find it really unpleasant and horrible and inexplicable how anyone can take a different view on that.
Bill Browder:
I don't know how widely it goes. I continue to work very closely with a number of Republican senators who are very much on my side as far as all this kind of stuff goes. I don't think it's a Republican Party thing. I think it's still an outlier thing. It's not consistent with the Republican Party but, yes, some of these people like Dana Rohrabacher, what a complete monster he was, and I'm just so delighted that Dana Rohrabacher was defeated in his district in Orange County. He was the worst. I haven't dealt with some of the other characters that you mentioned but I'm perplexed and outraged when any of these people start supporting Putin.
Andrea Chalupa:
Even in failing to hold Trump accountable, not voting to remove him from office or hold him accountable in both impeachment hearings, Lindsay Graham was someone who worked with McCain. I went to a Just Track symposium on fighting corruption in Ukraine that Lindsay Graham's office, I believe, was really supportive of, made sure it got funded, I believe.
Andrea Chalupa:
It's this weird thing where Lindsay Graham is by Trump's side—or was, obviously, even at the very end. When Trump was trying to stay in power and pressure officials in Georgia, Lindsay Graham was there contributing in that effort.
Andrea Chalupa:
It seems really dark. It seems just the fact that they didn't have the spine to remove Trump from power when they had the chance and they didn't have the spine to separate themselves from Trump. Certainly, the second impeachment, that could have been a clean break from him. There has been speculation in the reporting around all the Kremlin dark money that's been traveling to the GOP that the Kremlin, of course, hacked both parties, including the Republicans at the RNC and that material hasn't been weaponized like it was against the Democrats.
Andrea Chalupa:
Do you have any thoughts on what the larger hold might be over the Republican Party, of so many in the Republican Party? Why did they not stand up to Trump when they had so many chances to?
Bill Browder:
It's very simple. It's pretty demoralizing and disgusting that you have people who, basically for their own career protection, are ready to sacrifice national security for their jobs, effectively. I mean, what I find so horrible about it is that the US has an enormous Armed Forces where people join the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines with the full intention that they may have to go into harm's way and lose their life or lose their limbs to defend their country and are ready to do that and then you've got a bunch of people on Capitol Hill that are not even ready to risk their job for their country. I find that really upsetting and demoralizing.
Sarah Kendzior:
What accounts for this change? I mean, why would it not hurt their careers anymore to sacrifice US national security? It seems like that should be a very big deal if you're an elected official who has sworn a constitutional oath to protect the United States.
Bill Browder:
The story of Liz Cheney tells you everything. She has lost her position in the Republican Party because she is swearing her oath to the Constitution. It says it all, right?
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. I mean, it just feels like, as Andrea was saying, we've been hijacked from within. We know that this happened with Trump, but in the beginning, at least, it felt like an imposition from above. It was one that Republicans—at least initially—were resisting, like the partnership of McCain and Lindsay Graham in the beginning opening the investigation into the coordination of Trump and Russia.
Sarah Kendzior:
As the years went by, that became pardoned. It then became normalized and there are a number of people to blame here. One, of course, is the Republican Party itself and their consistent involvement in these dirty politics and these treasonous politics but there's also been a lack of pushback from the Democrats to just call this out in the most straightforward terms, to treat it like a crisis.
Sarah Kendzior:
I’ve often heard—and I live in Missouri, a so-called red state—a feeling of disbelief from people in my state that Russia actually had this much influence over our politics. They would say to me, "If that were true, people would be arrested or there would be impeachment hearings early or they'd kick those people out of office or the Democrats would be giving speeches or Obama would say something" or so on and so forth.
Sarah Kendzior:
What do you think of that? Of the positions people have taken, the reaction to this kind of internal invasion of our body politic, or the lack of reaction?
Bill Browder:
Well, I grew up in America and left 30 years ago to move to the UK and I've been living in the UK for 30 years. It doesn't look like the same country that I lived in 30 years ago. That's what it feels like.
Sarah Kendzior:
How about in the UK? Because they experienced a similar problem with Brexit, the same year, with a lot of the same players behind it. Have you noticed that change on the ground there?
Bill Browder:
You know, Brexit is over and it's much less of a culture war here than it is in America. It was really very ugly during Brexit and people wouldn't even talk to each other if you're on one side or the other, but it doesn't sort of identify you one way or another, being pro-Brexit ... I mean, there were pro-Brexit Labor, there was pro-Brexit Conservatives, and there was anti-Brexit Labor and anti-Brexit Conservatives. They don't have the same type of ... There was not the same type of ...
Andrea Chalupa:
It wasn't mask wearers versus those who don't wear masks?
Bill Browder:
Right. Nobody was laying out on party lines, on cultural lines, on whatever lines. You don't have to tiptoe around the issue. No one is going to get mad at you if you were against it or for it. You can still have the same people over for dinner now and it's okay, whereas in America, it doesn't feel like that.
Andrea Chalupa:
Do you think that Deripaska’s money, Roman Abramovich—the owner of Chelsea, and a Russian oligarch who is reportedly like a son to Putin—do you think that their money has influenced the UK's position on holding Kremlin aggression accountable, certainly, with all the assassinations that have happened on British soil by the Russians? Do you have any thoughts on that?
Bill Browder:
Yeah. There is a major, major problem here of dirty Russian money corrupting the political process directly here, so much so that they did a Russia investigation here where they gathered evidence. It's remarkable. I participated and contributed to the investigation and we found members of the House of Lords—which is the equivalent of the US Senate, it's the upper chamber of Parliament—were being paid money, openly, out in the open, by Russians to lobby against Magnitsky sanctions. I mean it’s… [laughs] Nobody has gone to jail, nobody has even lost their position. It just happened.
Bill Browder:
In a certain way, Russia has, because of oligarchs spreading their money around here—and politicians here are much cheaper to buy, I'm sure that they're more expensive in America—the Russians have really firmly gotten in here. I mean, check this out. Alexander Lebedev, who is a former KGB officer, his son ... He's a billionaire and former KGB officer. His son came to the UK, became a British citizen, and was elevated to the House of Lords. He's now Lord Lebedev of Siberia.
Andrea Chalupa:
Wow. It seems like Londongrad has a much larger problem in terms of Kremlin dark money than the US has currently.
Bill Browder:
Well, it's not dark money. It's not dark.
Andrea Chalupa:
Right. Sorry. You're right. I'm so used to using that word, dark money. Yes. Absolutely. Blavatnik, I believe now has his name on the Tate?
Bill Browder:
He's got his name on all sorts of stuff. There's the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford.
Andrea Chalupa:
Oh my gosh. That sums it up perfectly, doesn't it?
Sarah Kendzior:
Well, he used to have it on the Kleptocracy Initiative, an anti-kleptocracy group, until they had to remove it when they realized that a kleptocrat was funding their activity. Anyway, you two go on.
Andrea Chalupa:
How much influence do these Russian oligarchs have? They’re essentially Putin's court of oligarchs. These guys may live abroad but Putin keeps close track of them. He's close with them. How much influence do they really have? How concerned should we be?
Bill Browder:
I think that the oligarchs are the key fundamental connection between Putin and his money. They're the ones who hold his money for him and so, therefore, they're the key to everything. At the same time, they're also the people who do a lot of his foreign policy in terms of corrupting systems and so on.
Bill Browder:
Unless the US and the European Union and the UK seriously up their game in terms of containing Putin, a lot more really bad stuff is going to happen. It may make the things that we've already witnessed appear to be small potatoes in terms of the types of crises and problems we have in the future.
Bill Browder:
We need to employ a policy of hardcore containment, like we did during the Cold War, if we ever have any hope of preventing Putin from spreading his malice and his criminality around the world. From my perspective, the single most important thing that politicians and, sadly, every time there's a new administration, they always revert back to the same bad place of appeasement and resetting, which is exactly the wrong direction to go in.
Andrea Chalupa:
Well, thank you so much, Bill Browder, for being on the show. You're welcome back any time. This timing was really ideal because we had so many questions for you and we appreciate all of your time, always.
Sarah Kendzior:
Yeah. Thank you.
Bill Browder:
Thank you.
Andrea Chalupa:
Our discussion continues and you can get access to that by signing up on our Patreon at the Truth Teller level or higher.
Sarah Kendzior:
We want to encourage you to donate to your local food bank, which is experiencing a spike in demand. We also encourage you to donate to Oil Change International, an advocacy group supported with the generous donation from the Greta Thunberg Foundation that exposes the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitates the ongoing transition to clean energy.
Andrea Chalupa:
We also encourage you to donate to the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian relief organization helping refugees from Syria. Donate at Rescue.org. If you want to help critically endangered orangutans already under pressure from the palm oil industry, donate to the Orangutan Project at the OrangutanProject.org. If you want to confirm the fact that orangutan is pronounced correctly, go to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation is produced by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. If you like what we do, leave us a review on iTunes, it helps us reach more listeners. And check out our Patreon, it keeps us going. You can also subscribe to us on YouTube.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our production managers are Nicholas Torres and Karlyn Daigle. Our episodes are edited by Nicholas Torres and our Patreon exclusive content is edited by Karlyn Daigle.
Andrea Chalupa:
Original music in Gaslit Nation is produced by David Whitehead, Martin Bissenberg, Nik Farr, Demien Arriaga, and Karlyn Daigle.
Sarah Kendzior:
Our logo design was donated to us by Hamish Smyth of the New York-based firm Order. Thank you so much, Hamish.
Andrea Chalupa:
Gaslit Nation would like to thank our supporters at the Producer level on Patreon and higher...