Red notice

42. Feelings

After reading this, you may wonder how it all made me feel.

The simple answer is that the pain caused by Sergei’s death was so great that I couldn’t allow myself to feel anything. For a long time after Sergei was killed I locked up my emotions so tightly that if there was any sign of their coming out, I would shut them down as quickly and as hard as I could. But, as any psychiatrist will tell you, avoiding grief doesn’t make it go away. Eventually, the feelings will find their way to the surface, and the more you’ve bottled them up, the more dramatically they will burst out.

In my case, the dam burst in October 2010, almost a year after Sergei’s death. I had been helping two Dutch documentary filmmakers access everyone involved in Sergei’s story. They interviewed each of us and were making a movie that they planned to premiere before eight different parliaments around the world on November 16, the first anniversary of Sergei’s murder. As we got closer to the release date, I became concerned that the movie wouldn’t be good enough to show to these important decision makers. I assumed that because it was produced in such a hurry, it wasn’t going to be high quality, and I was afraid it could do more harm than good.

Realizing how nervous I was and hoping to allay my fears, the producers invited me and Vadim to Holland to view the rough cut in October.

We flew to Holland and traveled to Oosterbeek, a small village an hour southeast of Amsterdam, to the home of Hans Hermans, one of the filmmakers. Before showing us the film, he served a traditional Dutch lunch of Edam cheese and salted herring in his small kitchen, then invited us into the living room. We sat on floor cushions as his coproducer, Martin Maat, started the movie.

The film, entitled Justice for Sergei, was not easy to watch. It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, but it showed Sergei’s story in a completely new light. In addition to the horror of his ordeal, there were the everyday facts of his life before he’d been taken into custody: his devotion to his sons, his love of literature, his enjoyment of Mozart and Beethoven. These details were harder for me to bear than any of those describing his detention. Achingly, the movie ends with his aunt, Tatyana, telling the story of a recent visit to Sergei’s grave. After she left the cemetery, she walked by an old woman at the Metro station who was selling cornflowers. «She was so sad», Tatyana said. «I passed her, but returned to buy some flowers, knowing that’s what Sergei would have done. Whenever he walked with his mother past a lady selling plastic bags, he would always buy one. When the lady would ask, ‘Which one would you like?’ Sergei would answer, ‘The one no one else wants to buy.’ »

These are among the last spoken words of the film, but not the final message. To drive it home — to really show what the film is about — the image fades and a simple track of guitar and clarinet music ramps up. Clips from old home movies appear showing Sergei: raising a glass to toast a summertime family gathering; inspecting a waterfall on vacation; standing in the doorway of his apartment, entertaining dinner guests; sharing an outdoor meal with his best friend, joking, laughing, pointing at the camera. There is Sergei, alive as he would never again be except in the hearts and minds of those who loved him — who still love him.

Up until that moment, I had held it all in, terrified of what would happen if I allowed myself to let go. Now, in that room in Oosterbeek, I let my guard down and the tears flowed as they’ve never flowed before or since. I cried, and I cried, and I kept on crying.

It felt terrible, but it also felt good to finally feel the pain. Hans, Martin, and Vadim sat quietly, fighting back tears of their own, not knowing quite what to do.

Finally, I regained my composure and dried my eyes. «Can we watch it again?» I asked quietly.

«Sure», said Hans.

And we did, and I cried some more. That was when the healing finally began.

They say there are five stages of grief and that recognizing the pain is the most important one. That may be true, but recovering from a murder where the people who were responsible are walking free and blatantly enjoying the fruits of their crimes made recovery that much more difficult.

The main thing that has brought me some comfort has been the relentless pursuit of justice. Every parliamentary resolution, every news story, every asset freeze, every new criminal investigation, leaves me with a small feeling of relief.

The other thing that gives me some peace is seeing how Sergei’s story has changed so many lives. In contrast to other atrocities in Russia, Sergei’s murder has gotten under the cynical skins of Russians in ways that were previously unfathomable. Now prison guards across Russia worry about being too brutal in case they end up being held responsible for another Magnitsky. Now victims of human rights abuse in Russia feel that there is some recourse to justice as they gather their own «Magnitsky lists» to sanction the officials terrorizing them. Now Russia has been forced to focus on the horrible mistreatment of orphans who had previously disappeared from the national conscience. Now the concept of Magnitsky sanctions has been used as the main tool in fighting Russia over its illegal invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps most important of all, Sergei’s story has given everyone in Russia, as well as millions of people around the world, a detailed picture of the true brutality of Vladimir Putin’s regime.

This story has also changed matters outside Russia. The Russian authorities have been so brazen in pursuing me that they have ruined their standing with many international institutions. In a highly unusual step the Russian authorities applied again to Interpol to get a Red Notice issued for me, and for a second time they were rejected. Because of the abuses in my case, Red Notice requests from Russia are now no longer automatically accepted at Interpol.

The Russians also failed spectacularly on the libel front. The decision handed down by the British High Court in the libel case brought by Major Pavel Karpov was unprecedented. The judge decisively struck out Karpov’s lawsuit and made legal history in England, creating a precedent that would prevent future libel tourists like Karpov from abusing the London courts in their efforts to silence critics of authoritarian regimes.

However, as important as these developments are, it is often difficult for my friends and colleagues to understand why I continue to fight.

In the summer of 2012, my old friend Jean Karoubi came to my house one Saturday for a family visit. We had a pleasant dinner where we caught up on business and family life, but as I was making tea in the kitchen, he came in and asked if we could speak privately. I took him to our living room and closed the door.

He sat down and said, «We’ve been friends for a long time, Bill, and I’m very concerned. You have a beautiful family, you’re a successful businessman, and there’s nothing you can do to bring Sergei back. Why don’t you stop this campaign now before something else bad happens?»

This wasn’t the first time I’d had this conversation, and obviously I’m aware of the possible consequences of what I am doing. Nothing upsets me more than the idea that my children could grow up without their father. That thought haunts me. Whenever I’m attending my children’s school ballet or playing with them in the park, I wonder how many more times I will be able to do these things before it all comes tragically to an end.

But then I think of Sergei’s children, and especially about how his young son, Nikita, will never see his father again. And I think of Sergei, who was in a far more precarious situation than me, but wasn’t prepared to back down. What kind of man would I be if I did back down?

«I have to see this through, Jean. Otherwise, the poison of not doing anything would eat me up from the inside».

I certainly don’t do this out of bravery, though; I’m no braver than anyone else and I feel fear as much as the next person. But what I’ve discovered about fear is that no matter how scared I am at any particular moment, the feeling doesn’t last. After a time it subsides. As anyone who lives in a war zone or who has a dangerous job will tell you, your body doesn’t have the capacity to feel fear for an extended period. The more incidents you encounter, the more inured you become to them.

I have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed someday. Like anyone else, I have no death wish and I have no intention of letting them kill me. I can’t mention most of the countermeasures I take, but I will mention one: this book. If I’m killed, you will know who did it. When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know. So if you sympathize with this search for justice, or with Sergei’s tragic fate, please share this story with as many people as you can. That simple act will keep the spirit of Sergei Magnitsky alive and go further than any army of bodyguards in keeping me safe.

The final question that everyone asks is how I feel about the losses I’ve incurred as a result of this quest for justice. I’ve lost the business I so painstakingly built; I’ve lost many «friends» who distanced themselves from me for fear of how my campaign might affect their economic interests; and I’ve lost the freedom to travel without the worry that I might be arrested and handed over to the Russians.

Have these losses weighed heavily on me? Strangely, the answer is no. For everything I’ve lost in certain areas, I’ve gained in others. For all the fair-weather friends who’ve abandoned me as a financial liability, I’ve met many inspired people who are changing the world.

If I hadn’t done this, I would never have met Andrew Rettman, a political reporter in Brussels who has unrelentingly taken up Sergei’s cause. Despite being disabled, for over five years he has hobbled to the most mundane meetings about the Magnitsky case at the European Commission and vigilantly reported on them to make sure that the bureaucrats there don’t sweep this issue under the carpet.

Nor would I have met Valery Borschev, the seventy-year-old Russian prison rights advocate who, within two days of Sergei’s death, had used his independent authority to enter the prisons where Sergei had been kept and compelled dozens of officials to answer his questions. In spite of the extreme risks to his safety, he exposed the glaringly inconsistent statements and the lies of the Russian authorities.

I would have never met Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the eighty-six-year-old Russian human rights activist who was the first person publicly to accuse Russian police officers of murdering Sergei Magnitsky. She stood by Sergei’s mother and filed criminal complaints, and even when those complaints were ignored, she wouldn’t let it go.

In this mission I’ve met literally hundreds more people who have given me a whole new perspective on humanity that I would never have gotten from my life on Wall Street.

If you asked me when I was at Stanford Business School what I would have thought about giving up a life as a hedge fund manager to become a human rights activist, I would have looked at you as if you were out of your mind.

But here I am twenty-five years later, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. Yes, I could go back to my previous life. But now that I’ve seen this new world, I can’t imagine doing anything else. While there is nothing wrong with pursuing a life in commerce, that world feels like watching TV in black and white. Now, all of a sudden, I’ve installed a wide-screen color TV, and everything about my life is richer, fuller, and more satisfying.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t have profound regrets, though. The obvious one is that Sergei is no longer with us. If I could do it all over again, I would never have gone to Russia in the first place. I would gladly trade all of my business success for Sergei’s life. I now understand how completely naive I was to think that as a foreigner I was somehow immune to the barbarity of the Russian system. I’m not the one who’s dead, but someone is dead because of me and my actions, and there is nothing I can do to bring him back. But I can carry on creating a legacy for Sergei and pursuing justice for his family.

In early April 2014 I took Sergei’s widow, Natasha, and his son, Nikita, to the European Parliament to watch the vote on a resolution to impose sanctions on thirty-two Russians complicit in the Magnitsky case. This was the first time in the history of the European Parliament that a public sanctions list was ever to be voted on.

A year earlier, I had relocated the Magnitsky family to a quiet suburb of London where Nikita was able to attend a prestigious private school and where Natasha could stop looking over her shoulder every day. They felt safe for the first time since Sergei’s murder, and I thought that it would help their healing to watch more than seven hundred European lawmakers from twenty-eight countries condemn the people who killed Sergei.

On the afternoon of April 1, 2014, we got on the Eurostar from London to Brussels. As we emerged from the Channel Tunnel in Calais, France, I received an urgent call from an assistant at the European Parliament. «Bill, the president of the Parliament has just received a letter from a major US law firm on behalf of some of the Russians on the sanctions list. They’re threatening legal action if the vote is not canceled. They claim that the Parliament is violating the rights of these Russians».

«What? These guys are the rights violators! That’s ridiculous».

«I agree. But we need a legal opinion to present to the president of the Parliament by ten tomorrow morning or the vote may not happen».

It was already six o’clock in the evening, and I couldn’t imagine being able to find a top lawyer who would change his plans and stay up all night to write a convincing legal opinion.

I would have given up without even trying, but then I looked at Nikita, his face pressed against the train’s window as he stared out at the fast-moving French countryside.

He looked exactly like a little Sergei Magnitsky.

«O'kay, let me see what I can do», I said to the assistant.

I went to the space between the cars, the same place where I had sat with Ivan seven years before when we discovered that our Moscow offices had been raided. I started making calls and leaving messages, but after an hour and thirteen calls, I still hadn’t been able to reach anyone. I made my way back to my seat agonizing about how I was going to explain all this to Sergei’s widow and son.

But just before I reached my seat, my phone rang. It was Geoffrey Robertson, QC, a London-based lawyer who’d received one of my messages.

In the world of human rights, Geoffrey is a god. As a QC he was a member of a highly select group of English barristers known as the Queen’s Counsel, who take on the most complex and difficult cases in the English courts. From the start, he had been one of Britain’s most outspoken and ardent supporters of a global Magnitsky Act.

I explained the situation and prayed that we wouldn’t get cut off by a poor mobile-phone connection. Thankfully we didn’t, and at the end of our call he asked, «When do you need this by?»

I was sure he was expecting me to say two weeks or something similar. Instead, wincing, I replied, «Tomorrow morning at ten a.m».

«Oh». He sounded surprised. «How important is this, Bill?»

«Very. Sergei’s widow and son are with me on the train to Brussels. We’re heading there to watch the vote tomorrow. It would break their hearts if the Russians found another way to deny them justice».

There was a silence on the other end as he contemplated staying up well into the night to write this opinion. «Bill, you’ll have it by ten a.m. tomorrow. We won’t let the Russians take this away from the Magnitsky family».

The next morning, at exactly 10:00 a.m., Geoffrey Robertson sent in his legal opinion. It destroyed the Russians’ arguments point by point.

I called the assistant and asked if the letter sufficed. He thought it was perfect, but he didn’t know if it would convince the president of the Parliament to go ahead with the vote later in the afternoon. I’d done a lot to shelter Natasha and Nikita from all the political intrigue in the West, and I prayed that they wouldn’t have to see it that day.

At 4:00 p.m. I met Natasha and Nikita at the entrance to the Parliament and took them up to the balcony of the plenary hall. Beneath us were the 751 seats of the parliamentarians, laid out in a broad semicircle. As we sat, we put on our headphones and clicked through the channels of the roughly twenty different simultaneous translations in which the Parliament conducts its business.

At 4:30 p.m., Kristiina Ojuland, the Estonian MEP[18] who sponsored the Magnitsky resolution, suddenly appeared on the balcony. Breathlessly, she told us that Geoffrey Robertson’s opinion had indeed convinced everybody, and that the vote was going ahead as planned.

Kristiina then disappeared to introduce the resolution. We spotted her in her purple dress among the beehive of parliamentarians below. She stood and began her speech. Like many other speeches I’d heard before, she went through Sergei’s story and the Russian government’s cover-up, but then she did something unexpected. She pointed toward us and said, «Mr. President, we have with us in the visitors’ gallery today the late Sergei Magnitsky’s wife, together with his son and his former boss, Mr. Bill Browder. I am pleased to welcome our guests».

Then completely unexpectedly, the entire chamber of seven-hundred-odd parliamentarians stood, turned toward us, and erupted in applause. Not polite applause, but real, thunderous applause, which carried on for nearly a minute. I felt a lump in my throat and goose bumps on my arms as I watched tears welling up in Natasha’s eyes.

The vote went through and there wasn’t a single objection in the entire European Parliament. Not one.

Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.