Russia Files New Charges Against Browder, Accuses Him of Murder

In a press conference held yesterday, it was revealed Russian government officials have filed new criminal charges against UK financier and Hermitage Capital founder, Bill Browder.  This is hardly the first time that Russia has gone after him.  He’s been convicted twice in absentia; once in 2013 for tax fraud and once in 2017 for “tax evasion and deliberate bankruptcy.”  

With Browder facing new charges, Russia has pledged to once again seek an international arrest warrant for the Londoner but, as the Financial Times pointed out, Browder has “fought off seven attempts by Russia to have him extradited,” all of which were rejected by Interpol. Regardless, Browder should have seen the writing on the wall earlier this year after Putin’s statements at the Helsinki Summit:

[W]e can bring up Mr. Browder in this particular case.  Business associates of Browder have earned over one and half billion dollars in Russia, they never paid any taxes neither in Russia nor the United States and yet the money escaped the country.  They were transferred to the United States.

They sent huge amounts of money, four hundred million as contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton…It might have been legal, the contribution itself, but the way the money was earned was illegal.  So, we have a solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transaction so we have an interest of questioning them.

The latest allegations coming out of Moscow, however, go well beyond any illegalities Browder or the Ziff brothers took part in with regards to these unpaid taxes on illegal Gazprom shares.  Russia is now accusing him of leading an international crime syndicate and ordering the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, the same accountant Browder uses to boost his international prestige as a human rights activist and to influence U.S. foreign policy.

According to Nikolai Atmonyev, an advisor to Russia’s General Prosecutor, Browder’s criminal organization was established in Russia in 1997, and it “aims to carry out serious economic crimes both on Russian territory and abroad.”  Russian authorities are looking into companies located in Cyprus, Latvia, and Switzerland as part of their investigation.  

What is perhaps more troubling and reminiscent of the Boston bombings when FBI Director Robert Mueller ignored Russia’s warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev, is that Russian authorities have contacted U.S. officials about Browder multiple times over the course of the last two years, which they have ignored. According to Alexander Kurennoy, a spokesman for the General Prosecutor’s Office:

In July 2016, Russia sent relevant materials at the request of the American side in the amount of more than 1,100 pages about tax, economic, financial and other crimes committed by Browder with the participation of the owners of the Ziff fund in Russia and the United States. They were sent to the US Department of Justice, but before To date, there has been no response to them.

We also sent additional materials in August 2016, in addition, we sent reminders four times to our American colleagues in November 2016, January, March and May 2017. These same questions, by the way , were discussed during three video conferences with representatives of the US Department of Justice, which are held on a regular basis. Subsequently, this information was brought to us twice by us to Jeff Sessions, who until recently served as US Attorney General.

Given what we have outlined, we very much hope that that the new leadership of the US Department of Justice will take an impartial legal approach to assessing the activities of William Browder, will return to the consideration and implementation of requests from the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, taking into account that, in addition to data on the criminal activities of Browder and his accomplices in the territory of the Russian Federation, they contain information about crimes that Browder and other people around him committed, including on the territory of the United States,

Bill Browder is clearly protected by the U.S. and the question is why? Surely, the Obama administration, including former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, knew about his criminal activities. The Trump administration learned about his shenanigans during that infamous June 2016 Trump tower meeting with Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya.  And the U.S. Department of Justice was definitively in the know by early 2016, with a gentle Russian reminder taking place via a video conference call in June 2017.

Finally, U.S. embassy staff in Moscow were notified by the Russians about Browder’s alleged criminal network three months before the Trump tower meeting took place so feel free to dive into that can of worms.  

The investigators had questions for an international group that included the Ziff brothers, William Browder, and Jamison Firestone. These foreign nationals headed up Ziff Brothers Investments, a US investment fund that used offshore companies to transfer money to the accounts of Russian shell corporations. Eventually, this scheme was applied to acquire the Gazprom shares at St. Petersburg and Moscow Exchanges in violation of the presidential order that regulated Gazprom share sale procedures at the time.

Then in 2006, all assets (Gazprom shares and dividends) were funneled out of the affiliated Russian companies. The companies failed to pay 1 billion rubles in taxes and were dismantled, while their assets (at least 1 billion dollars) were transferred to Cypriot companies and then, after a very short period of time, to US companies, in the same manner…

Back in March 2016, we met with representatives of the US Embassy in Moscow, including some FBI operatives. We officially informed them that in the course of the investigation we had found certain information that showed that those people and organizations could have violated not only Russian, but also American tax and financial regulations.

— Denis Grunis, head of the International Cooperation Department for Major Cases at the Office of International Legal Cooperation of Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office

It certainly doesn’t prove anything but it does make the month of May 2016 murkier than it already is: Fusion GPS hired former M16 agent, Christopher Steele; they received their first payment from Perkins Coie; and Robert Otto’s State Department emails were hacked and leaked revealing Bill Browder (or someone else) was stalking Veselnitskaya’s home three days before the meeting.

I'd like to know why Browder sent Kyle Parker a photo of the outside of Natalia Veselnitskaya's house three days before the Trump Jr meeting? Anybody got the inside scoop on that? pic.twitter.com/z676PDT44P

— David Jonathon Blake (@HisBlakeness) July 27, 2018

Some of the material that Russia sent to the U.S. government may have included information about the deaths of Octai Gasanov, Valery Kurochkin, and Sergei Korobeinikov. All three men had direct connections to Browder’s patently false story about Russian officials stealing a $230 million tax refund from the Russian government and then using his shell companies as a vehicle for the theft.

In other words, all three men were accused of taking part in the theft and now they’re all dead. For example, Browder’s firm, Hermitage Capital, gave Octai Gasanov power of attorney to sell Browder’s shell companies, the same companies he later claimed were stolen and used for the theft. In November 2017, Putin accused Browder of being a serial killer and Russian court documents fingered him as the main suspect behind the killings.

Yesterday, a Russian official stated, “It is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder.” Now, the Russian government is looking at Browder as the main suspect behind two other deaths:  Alexander Perepilichnyy and Sergei Magnitsky.

Perepilichnyy is another shadowy figure in Browder’s highly contested “tax fraud” story. According to him, a year after Magnitsky died in a Russian prison, Perepilichnyy reached out to Magnitsky’s former employer, Firestone Duncan, claiming he had “proof that a woman at Moscow Tax Office Number Twenty-eight got millions from the [tax return] fraud.”

He [Perepilichnyy] sent me some Swiss bank statements and some offshore company documents in his email…They show a bunch of wire transfers going to bank accounts that seem to belong to the husband of Olga Stepanova, the lady at the tax office who signed the refund check.

– Jamie Firestone, co-founder of Firestone Duncan

Perepilichnyy then provided Hermitage Capital with Swiss banking documents that allegedly proved Russian officials colluded with a criminal network known as the “Klyuev Gang” to steal the $230 million tax refund despite these very same documents implicating Perepilichnyy in the crime. The chart below is the money trail that Perepilichnyy’s documents allegedly revealed:

That was at the end of 2010.  On November 10, 2012, Perepilichnyy dropped dead while jogging in London. When UK authorities conducted an inquest into his death in 2017, Perepilichnyy’s wife stated that he either owned or was taking funds from Baikonur Worlwide Limited, a company conveniently listed on Browder’s chart above.  

According to early police reports, she also “repeatedly stressed there is danger around the Hermitage saga…” One reason she may have been concerned was the fact that Browder burned Perepilichnyy as his source without batting an eye. You see, a few months after Perepilichnyy allegedly handed over these banking statements, Browder’s law firm, Browne Ruddnick, “initiated a criminal complaint in Switzerland” using these very same statements.  

At this point, Octai Gasanov, Valery Kurochkin, Sergei Korobeinkov, and Sergei Magnitsky are all dead (and likely murdered) so if anyone was cognizant of the danger that Perepilichnyy put himself in by handing over documents that purportedly showed a $230 million theft laundered by Russian officials through Swiss accounts, it was Browder.  Not surprisingly, he didn’t care.  The following is part of the transcript from the 2017 UK inquest:

Q:  Up until this point, Mr. Perepilichnny from your perspective had had involvement with you and your company and, through your company, involvement with the Swiss prosecutors because they had got material which he had given to you?

Browder:  Yes.

Q:  At that stage were the Swiss authorities aware of the provenance of the material from him.

Browder:  Yes.

Q:  Who told them that?

Browder:  I gave evidence to them.

Although Browder went on to claim that Perepilichnyy gave his permission to out him as a source, which seems dubious at best, he later stated, absurdly, that he tried to protect Perepilichnny from “public exposure.”

Q:  What was your reaction when you saw this article, saw the letter and heard about the media appearance?

Browder:  Well I was a bit upset that Perepilichnny, who we had been trying to protect from public exposure, had been so quickly sucked into this whole thing in a public way.

Right. Half of Browder’s testimony was about Perepilichnyy’s safety and how it was of no concern to him. He and his colleagues failed to take any steps whatsoever to protect their (alleged) source despite the fact that Browder knew Perepilichnyy had received death threats in November 2011, and, according to authorities at the time, been placed on a Russian hitman’s list.

Q:  Did it occur to you for example that by publicising the story again within a few weeks, bringing it again to public attention, that it could endanger Mr. Perepilichnny?

Browder:  No more than — I don’t believe it endangered him any more than he was already endangered by becoming public in the first place.”

Q:  Did you consider that issue at the time?

Browder:  No.

Browder’s callousness and complete disregard for his sources, some of whom he himself calls “whistleblowers,” speaks volumes to his character. But Perepilichnny isn’t the first time he’s short-changed the people he claims blew the whistle on corruption.  Take for instance his former partner at Hermitage Capital, Edmond Safra.  

In 1998, Safra’s bank, Republic Bank of New York, blew the whistle in 1988 on a massive money laundering network washing funds through The Bank of New York. At least this is what some sources claim, including Browder. The following year, Safra was murdered in his home after HSBC not only gained control of his bank, but became the trustee and manager of Browder’s firm, Hermitage Capital. Now I ask you, how often do you hear Browder talk about Edmond Safra? Right. Just about never.

Going back to the U.K. inquest, Browder claimed that he had never met with Perepilichnyy personally and that no one, including any of his fellow associates at Hermitage Capital or Firestone Duncan, took notes or recorded the twenty or so meetings they allegedly had with him because that’s wildly convenient. According to Browder, he didn’t even make a copy of the hit list where Perepilichnyy’s name appeared nor did he ask who else was on it despite his endless claims that Putin is out to get him.

More recently, Browder has been vocal about the Danske Bank scandal and how they were using mirror trades to “launder money for clients of a Russian company owned by Alexander Perepilichnyy.”  Back in June 2017, Browder also tweeted that “Money flowed from Kluyev’s bank to Perepilichnyy’s company acct in Switzerland to Cyprus acct of person linked to Syrian chemical weapons,” and then later added, “Dead Russian whistleblower in Magnitsky case, Alexander Perepilichnyy, was involved in Deutsche Bank mirror trades.”

And yes, you probably know where I’m going with this.  Browder’s setting up a dead guy to take the fall for money he himself laundered through Swiss (and other) bank accounts and I’m happy to place money on that.  As for the Russian government, they believe Browder murdered Perepilichnyy “in order to eliminate a participant in a regular provocation organized by Browder.”

In this connection, on November 14 the Russian Prosecutor General’s office sent to the Russian Investigative Committee a resolution to address the issue of initiating a criminal case on suspicion of Browder organizing the murder of Perepilichnny.

Finally, there’s Russia’s other allegation that he killed his own accountant, Sergei Magnitsky.  If you’ve never seen the documentary, “The Magnitsky Act:  Behind the Scenes,” do it.  Director Andrei Nekrasov and producer Torstein Grude of Piraya Film put together an extraordinary film about the anomalies in the Hermitage Capital/$230 million tax refund theft case, Magnitsky’s death in a Russian prison, and Browder’s almost fantastical PR machine that he’s used in countless countries to pass the Magnitsky Act. Then read Alex Krainer’s Grand Deception and come to your own conclusions as to whether or not Mr. Browder had any interest in keeping Magnitsky alive.

New information released by the Russian government has only added to the mystery of Magnitsky’s death.  Remember those three men I mentioned earlier? All of them, including Sergei Magnitsky, showed signs of a myocardial issue caused by chemicals containing aluminum meaning they may have been poisoned. According to Mikhail Alexandrov, another spokesman for the Prosecutor General’s office:

Gasanov, Kurochkin and Magnitsky had precisely these symptoms in their final moment before death.  Traces of toxic aluminum compounds were also found in Korobeinikov’s liver.  In light of that, the Investigative Committee is investigating the murder of Gasanov, Kurochkin and Korobeinikov, that is under Part 2 of Section 105 of Russia’s Criminal Code.

And as a side note, it has never been reported that traces of aluminum were found in Perepilichnyy’s system but they did discover that he had “traces of a rare plant poison in his stomach.”  So just to recap the trail of bodies behind Browder so far:

Edmond Safra (alleged whistleblower)
Octai Gasanov
Valery Kurochkin
Sergei Korobeinikov.
Alexander Perepilichnyy (alleged whistleblower)
Sergei Magnitsky (alleged whistleblower)

Of course none of this covers Browder’s other questionable, if not criminal, activity like taking part in rigged Russian auctions during the 1990s; his partner at Hermitage Capital who was literally funneling billions of U.S. dollar bills from the U.S. treasury to the Russian mafia; his ties to $4.8 million in missing IMF funds; the buying and selling of Gazprom shares; the Avisma debacle; and his association with the U.S. government, Brexit, Beny Steinmetz, HSBC, Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Thor Halvorssen, just to name a few.

Naturally, Browder has always denied any wrong doing and called Russia’s latest allegations “Putin’s ‘fever dream'” and “Kafkaeske.”  And in what was an obvious effort to counter Russia’s charges, he appeared in a press conference today with former Russian oligarch and financial crime lord Mikhail Khodorkovsky under the guise of lobbying against Russia’s Major General Aleksandr Prokopchuk becoming the new president of Interpol.

In case you missed it, Interpol held their 87th General Assembly in Dubai this past week because according to the New York Times, Interpol’s former President, Meng Hongwei, “was abruptly arrested by China on corruption charges…after he went missing in September while on a trip to China.”  Thus, they are holding a vote tomorrow on who will become the new president.  Interestingly, the only time China came up in Browder and Khodorkovsky’s press conference was during the Q&A and even then the subject was quickly steered back to Russia.

Browder wasn’t just lobbying against Prokopchuk, he wants to prevent Russia from using the Interpol system entirely. As he put it, “Interpol is a club,” and he doesn’t want Russia in it.  The rest of the conference was entirely what you would expect.  He cried about Putin, complained about Moscow goons trying to kill him, and then he blamed the Motherland for the Skripal poisonings, the downing of MH17, and the 2016 U.S. election.  

With the protection that is afforded Browder from both the United States and Britain, it is unlikely that he will ever be arrested and extradited to Russia to face criminal prosecution for his 25-year crime spree. Even if Aleksandr Prokopchuk becomes the president of Interpol and approves Russia’s latest Red Notice, it’s doubtful that any of the countries Browder carefully chooses to travel to will recognize it.

Correction:  The name of one of the three men connected to the $230 million tax fraud is Semyon Korobeinikov not Sergei Korobeinikov.

Updated/edited February 2024.