Bill Browder

William Felix Browder (born 23 April 1964) is an American-born British financier and economist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund that at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. After having business in Russia for ten years, Browder was refused entry to Russia in 2005 as a threat to national security; he has said it was because he exposed corruption. After the death in prison in 2009 of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant and auditor who had represented his company through power of attorney and conducted an investigation into massive tax fraud related to it, Browder lobbied for Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a law to punish Russian human rights violators, which was signed into law in 2012 by President Barack Obama. In 2013, both Magnitzky and Browder were tried in absentia in Russia for tax fraud. Both men—Magnitsky had died four years prior—were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. Interpol rejected Russian requests to arrest Browder, saying the case was political. In 2014, the European Parliament voted for sanctions against 30 Russians believed complicit in the Magnitsky case; this was the first time it had taken such action. In July 2017, Browder testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election through use of persons in Washington, D.C. On October 19, 2017, Canada enacted its own Magnitsky Act, which allows for the freezing of assets and visa bans on officials from Russia and other nations considered to be guilty of human rights violations, and prohibits Canadian firms from dealing with foreign nationals who have grossly violated human rights. Other countries including Estonia, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom, have also enacted their own version of the Magnitsky Act.On October 21, 2017, as part of a criminal conviction for tax evasion, the Russian government attempted to place Browder on Interpol's arrest list