Bill Browder is the co-founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund and asset management company specializing in Russian markets. In 2006, in retaliation for his firm’s investigation into high-level corruption, Russian authorities blacklisted Browder as a “threat to national security” and barred him from entering Russia. In November 2008, one of Browder’s lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested on charges of tax evasion after he accused Russian tax officials of systematic theft and fraud. Magnitsky died in custody after 11 months of imprisonment and torture while awaiting trial. Browder began a global campaign to bring justice to Magnitsky’s killers, a campaign that has since resulted in the creation of the Global Magnitsky Act, which targets individuals and entities proven to have committed serious human rights abuses or acts of corruption from entering the United States and using the US banking system. In 2013, Russian authorities announced charges of tax evasion against both Browder and Magnitsky; the resulting trial was the first in Russian history to charge a deceased individual. Both Browder and Magnitsky were convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison. Interpol rejected requests by Russia’s interior ministry to place Browder on its search and arrest list, denouncing the case as “predominantly political.
