Who is Bill Browder, Kremlin Foe was chosen in Putin's offer?

In a phone interview Monday, Mr. Browder stated that Putin's denunciation was only one more sign of the Kremlin's dissatisfaction with the Magnitsky law, a 2012 law promoted by Mr. Browder, in which the United States imposed sanctions against Russia.

"It's a true affirmation of the fact that we found Putin's Achilles' heel with the Magnitsky Law," said Mr. Browder in the interview. "He basically lost it, emotionally, because his own money in the West is now seized under this Magnitsky law."

For security reasons, Mr. Browder, who holds British citizenship, would not say where he was. But he said that he did not believe that Mr. Putin's remarks exposed him to greater danger.

"America is a country of law, and I think the rule of law will protect me," he said. In 1996, Mr. Browder and financier Edmond J. Safra were the co-founders of Hermitage Capital Management, which eventually became the largest portfolio investor in Russia, with more than $ 4 billion under management in 2005. [19659002] Thus, Mr. Browder angered the Kremlin by becoming one of the most outspoken critics of Russia's weak corporate governance standards. He was responsible for encouraging changes to giants like Lukoil and stimulating new local laws to protect shareholder rights.

In November 2005, Mr. Browder arrived at the V.I.P. salon in a Moscow airport during one of the dozens of annual trips that he made in and out of the country. Rather than being carried away as usual, he was fired without explanation, even though he was carrying a valid visa. Shortly after, he was declared a "threat to national security" as a result of his fight against corporate corruption.

After his expulsion from Russia, the authorities burst into his offices, seized the investment companies of the Hermitage fund and fraudulently used them. millions of tax cuts. When the firm's tax attorney, Sergei L. Magnitsky, investigated the crime, he was arrested by the same agents he had involved and tortured for nearly a year. He died in custody at the age of 37 in November 2009.