When Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench in Salisbury on the afternoon of March 4th, all signs – from Skripal's own history to the identity of the poison – pointed to Russian involvement. Ten days later, Theresa May confirmed those suspicions, telling the House of Commons: “there is no alternative conclusion.”
In return, May told Parliament, she would expel 23 Russian agents. But, aside from that almost ritual act, the Prime Minister's options were limited. What could deter someone like Vladimir Putin?
The Prime Minister did introduce one other measure, to allow the government to freeze the assets and ban the entry of anyone implicated in violations of human rights. The plan was based on a US law called the Magnitsky Act – and on this week's UpVote, we have the heartbreaking story of that act, from the man who invented and named it, American investor Bill Browder.
This recording was originally made in 2016 at WIRED Live. Here are some excerpts from that talk, edited lightly for clarity.
Himself. If you ask my friends to describe me in one sentence, that sentence would be: "Bill Browder is Putin's number one enemy."
The era of Russian privatisation. During the Soviet times the richest person in Russia was maybe six times richer than the poorest person. By 1999, the richest person in Russia had become 250,000 times richer than the poorest person. That disparity of wealth in a 10 year period poisoned the psychology of a whole country.
Putin's wealth. One day in 2003 Putin arrested the richest man in Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, put him in jail and put him on trial. And all the other rich guys, all the oligarchs, looked at Khodorkovsky, and said, "I don't want to sit in jail." So they went to Putin and said, "What do we have to do to not sit in jail?" And Putin said, "50 per cent."
Not 50 per cent to the Russian government, but 50 per cent to the presidential administration, but 50 per cent to Vladimir Putin. And from that moment in 2004 Vladimir Putin became the richest man in the world. I would estimate he's worth $200 billion right now.
Sergei Magnitsky. On June 4, 2007, 25 policy officers invaded my office in Moscow. 25 more officers raided the office of my law firm. They seized all of our corporate documents, and the next thing we knew those corporate documents were used to steal our empty investment holding companies through which we had invested all of our money.
I went out and hired the smartest lawyer I knew in Moscow, a young man named Sergei Magnitsky to investigate why they were stealing the companies and what we could do to stop them. Sergei and I were convinced this was a rogue operation and if we just exposed the bad guys then the good guys get the bad guys and that would be the end of the story. A month later, after Sergei's testimony, we discovered there were no good guys in Russia.
The Magnitsky Law. Those people that steal, they don't like to keep their money in Russia, because it could be stolen from them. They like to keep it in the West. So I came up with this idea: if we could take away their visas and freeze their assets, it's not justice in the truest sense of word, but it is better than nothing at all.
This is the Achilles heel of the Putin regime. They do their terrible crimes in Russia and they keep their money in the West.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
