51 Facts About Bill Browder

Bill Browder is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisor to the Hermitage Fund, which was formerly the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia.

Bill Browder took on large Russian companies such as Gazprom, Surgutneftegaz, Unified Energy Systems, and Sidanco.

In retaliation, on 13 November 2005, Bill Browder was refused entry to Russia, deported to the UK, and declared a threat to Russian national security.

Eighteen months after Bill Browder was deported, on 4 June 2007, Hermitage Capital's offices in Moscow were raided by twenty-five officers of Russia's Interior Ministry.

Bill Browder assigned Sergei Magnitsky, head of the tax practice at Firestone Duncan, to investigate the purpose of the raid.

In 2013, both Magnitsky and Bill Browder were tried in absentia in Russia for tax fraud.

Interpol rejected Russian requests to arrest Bill Browder, saying the case was political.

Bill Browder was released two hours later, after Interpol confirmed that it was a political case.

William Felix Bill Browder was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and he grew up in Chicago, Illinois.

Bill Browder is the son of mathematician Felix Browder, and the grandson of communist leader Earl Browder.

Bill Browder attended the University of Colorado, Boulder, before transferring to the University of Chicago, from which he graduated with a degree in economics.

Bill Browder earned an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1989 and entered the financial sector.

Bill Browder's paternal grandfather Earl Bill Browder was born in Kansas in 1891.

Bill Browder was a radical and had lived in the Soviet Union for several years from 1927 and married Raisa Berkman, a Jewish Russian woman while living there.

Bill Browder was instrumental in establishing a science and technology center in conjunction with Princeton University and Bell Labs.

Bill Browder has one sibling, Tom Browder, who entered the University of Chicago at 15, and became a particle physicist.

Bill Browder started his career in the Eastern European practice of the Boston Consulting Group in London, then worked for Robert Maxwell's Maxwell Communication Corporation, and after that managed the Russian proprietary investments desk at Salomon Brothers.

Bill Browder cited that he did so because of "a legacy of bad feeling about the rule of law" as a result of his family having been "viciously persecuted" by US authorities in the 1950s, citing especially his communist grandfather, Earl Browder who was imprisoned twice during the era of McCarthyism.

Bill Browder exposed management corruption and corporate malfeasance in these partly state-owned companies.

Bill Browder has been quoted as saying: "You had to become a shareholder activist if you didn't want everything stolen from you".

From 1995 to 2006, Hermitage Capital Management was one of the largest foreign investors in Russia, and Bill Browder amassed millions through his management of the fund.

In 2005, after ten years of business deals in Russia, Bill Browder was blacklisted by the Russian government as a "threat to national security" and denied entry to the country.

Bill Browder was "charged with two counts of aggravated tax evasion committed in conspiracy with Mr Browder in respect of Dalnyaya Step and Saturn".

The investigation was to focus on whether Bill Browder violated any Russian laws when Hermitage used Russian companies registered in the region of Kalmykia to buy shares.

Bill Browder was charged with trying to gain access to Gazprom's financial reports.

Bill Browder admitted having sought influence in Gazprom, but denied any wrongdoing.

Bill Browder said that purchasing Gazprom shares was an investment in the Russian economy, and the desire to influence the Gazprom management was driven by the need to expose a "huge fraud going on at the company".

Bill Browder said that the scheme of using Russian-registered subsidiaries entitled to tax advantages was practised by other foreign investors at the time and was not illegal.

Bill Browder said that he believed the trial was a response to the United States passing the Magnitsky Act, which had blacklisted Russian officials involved in Magnitsky's death, preventing them from entering the US The Financial Times reported that this trial was the first in Russian history that included a dead defendant.

On 11 July 2013, Bill Browder was convicted in absentia by a district criminal court in Moscow on charges under article 199 of the RF Criminal Code, and sentenced to nine years.

In December 2017, Bill Browder was tried in absentia and convicted of tax evasion and deliberate bankruptcy by a Russian court, receiving a sentence of nine years of imprisonment.

On 30 May 2018, Bill Browder was arrested by Spanish police in Madrid on a Russian Interpol arrest warrant.

Bill Browder was freed soon after when the General Secretary of Interpol warned the Spanish police not to follow the Russian arrest warrant.

Bill Browder had come to Spain to brief anti-mafia prosecutor Jose Grinda.

In November 2018, Russian prosecutors announced new charges against Bill Browder, accusing him of organising a "transnational criminal group" and claimed he may have poisoned Sergei Magnitsky.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos in May 2022, Bill Browder criticised Germany for its earlier Russia course: "Putin is 95 percent to blame for this war, because he is the one who throws the bombs and murders civilians" but "the West is responsible for five percent and especially Germany to blame for what is happening in Ukraine," Bill Browder told the media.

Bill Browder has strongly criticized Switzerland and the role played by Swiss banks in allegedly aiding the financing of Russia's invasion.

Bill Browder called on Switzerland to adopt its own sanctions against Russia and not just those proposed by the EU, as it had been doing.

Bill Browder cited a Swiss Bankers Association estimate stating that there were in excess of $200B of Russian money in Swiss accounts, while bemoaning the fact that Switzerland had sanctioned fewer than $10B worth of Russian deposits.

On 27 July 2017, Bill Browder testified to the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election in regards to the Foreign Agents Registration Act and Fusion GPS.

Bill Browder directly discussed the President of Russia Vladimir Putin.

Bill Browder keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation.

Bill Browder concluded his statement by reviewing the circumstances that led to US passage of the Magnitsky Act:.

In February 2015, Bill Browder published a book about his career, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice, focusing on his years spent in Russia and the Russian government's attacks on Hermitage Capital Management.

Pursuant to a subpoena, Bill Browder gave deposition testimony in the case.

Bill Browder has been the recipient of dozens of awards and recognitions.

In 2018, Bill Browder was named the 67th most powerful person in the world by Worth magazine.

In September 2019, Bill Browder received the Trinity College SMF award for outstanding contributions to finance.

Business associates of Mr Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia and never paid any taxes neither in Russia nor the United States and yet the money escaped the country.

Bill Browder says that he is a British citizen and no longer American, therefore Trump would be unable to respond to Putin's request.

On 22 November 2019, German news magazine Der Spiegel published an article in which it claimed Bill Browder accusations concerning the "Magnitsky Case", do not withstand thorough examination.