Quick trivia question. Who is the wealthiest musician on the planet?
Paul McCartney? Nope.
Elton John? Nope.
Jay-Z? Nope.
Kanye West? Close, but nope.
The world's richest musician is a cellist named Sergei Roldugin. Who played in St. Petersburg, Russia. Who grew up with Vladimir Putin. A man who -- based on data divulged in the Panama Papers -- controls companies that have shifted billions of dollars through bank accounts across the world since roughly 2000. He is one of likely dozens of such parties who act as "shell humans" to own the cash and assets reflecting the hundreds of billions Putin has grifted from Russia since taking power.
That's the most interesting factoid in Freezing Order but there are many more maddening anecdotes throughout the book. American-born and current British citizen Bill Browder founded a venture capital firm called Hermitage Capital Management in the 1990s that focused on investments in Russia and within a decade became the largest foreign investor in Russia. Browder was deported from Russia in 2005 after his firm made repeated public disclosures of fraud his firm encountered dealing with varous parties in Russia, including the government. Between 2005 and 2009, firms owned by Hermitage were accused of tax fraud and were investigated by a Russian lawyer named Sergie Magnitsky. Rather than finding fraud on the part of Hermitage, Magnitsky's investigations found confidential documents of Hermitage-owned firms were stolen then used to fabricate filings for tax REFUNDS worth the equivalent of $231 million dollars. At that point, Magnitsky and Browder were targeted with new fraud charges, leading to Magnitsky's arrest and retention in jail for over a year before he was finally beaten to death in jail in 2009. At that point, Browder devoted virtually all of his efforts to lobbying western governments to adopt freezes on public officials and businessmen involved in not only this $231 million dollar tax fraud but the entire money-laundering network created by Putin.
Browder's prior book Red Notice covered the history of Hermitage, the bogus tax fraud investigation into his firm, the subsequent investigation into the real $231 million dollar tax refund fraud and Magnitsky's murder and Browder's work to push for nations to enact "Magnitsky Act" sanction legislation. Freeze Order picks up where Red Notice left off, describing Browder's continued efforts to push for sanctions legislation across the world to combat money laundering but also his continual efforts to avoid arrest and extradition by Russia and NUMEROUS efforts Russia made across the world including within the United States to undo his efforts.
It is those efforts that merit a read of this book by the average American. Across the different chapters of the book, a few key themes emerge that hold true not only in America but most western countries:
- Thirty years of systemic grift throughout Russia has concentrated immense wealth that cannot appear to be concentrated in official records, creating enormous amounts of work in forging owersnhip records, purchases, etc.
- Creating forged paperwork on an industrial scale involves enormous fees for lawyers, which many law firms find impossible to resist.
- Many banks and real estate firms find it equally impossible to turn away tainted Russian dollars, willingly absorbing huge amounts of cash to yield profits otherwise unattainable.
- Russia has no difficulty in finding elected officials in numerous countries to do its bidding as well.
The key point in the book is that Putin's work to undo the Magnitsky Act within the US was perhaps his PRIMARY goal in interfering in the 2016 presidential race. Browder summarizes a few events that support his case.
After the US passed the Magnitsky Act of 2012, Russian began efforts to arrest Browder from multiple countries and extradite him back to Russia for trial for manufactured charges related to the $231 million dollar fraud turned up previously. At the same time, Russia had produced and was trying to promote a "documentary" outlining Browder's corruption in an effort to poison his reputation and ability to get additional nations to pass similar Magnitsky Act legislation and get existing countries like the US to either overturn their legislation or simply decide to not enforce it and stop sanctioning additional Russians.
Russia also announced an end to a program that allowed western families to adopt Russian orphans, most of which had physical or mental health issues and would NOT get the desired care in Russia. Keep this point in mind.
In 2016, a group of investigative journalists published millions of documents from a Panamanian law firm that provided cross references between thousands of shell companies and bank accounts worldwide that exposed the extent of international money laundering. Days before that Panama Papers event, a delegation of Republican Congressional leaders, including Dana Rohrabacher, visited Russia and met with numerous officials, including people who had led the effort to try Browder and Magnitsky. (By the way, the FBI had notified Rorhabacher that he was being groomed by Russian forces but he gladly took the trip anyway… In the House vote of 365-43 for the sanctions law, Rohrabacher was one of the 43 nays.) In that meeting, a Russian named Victor Grin handed Rorhabacher a two-page letter marked CONFIDENTIAL (and presumably in an envelope). Grin was notable for two things --- he was the party that initiated the second round of bogus criminal charges against an already dead Magnitsky and Grin was also a current member of the US sanctions list under the Magnitsky Act.
Two interesting things happened after Rorhabacher returned to the US.
New legislation, termed the Global Magnitsky Act was coming up for debate that allowed sanctions under the original act to be extended to ANY party in ANY country engaging in money laundering. Within a week of the Russian trip, consideration of the new legislation had been mysteriously wiped from the sponsoring committee's agenda. Browder found from various sources that Rorhabacher had triggered the removal and had shared that CONFIDENTIAL letter, which basically offered a quid pro quo --- eliminate the Magnitsky Act in the US and Russian/US relations could improve mightily, including the resumption of orphan adoptions.
On June 9, 2016, another interesting meeting was held between Russians and Americans, this one at Trump Tower. The most notable Russian in attendance was a woman named Natalia Veselnitskay, who at the time the story came out in 2017 was often caricaturized as a modern-day Natasha Fatale (famed partner of international intrigue with Boris Badenov in the Rockie and Bullwinkle cartoons). In reality, she was a key player in Russian efforts to overturn sanctions. On the "american" side (it's pretty clear no one present behaved as "Americans"…) were Donald Trump, Jr, Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. When the existence of that meeting came out in 2017, the Trump camp was quick to emphasize that the meeting talked about "adoption", hoping to convince people it was a humanitarian discussion. For EVERYONE involved on both sides of the table, "adoption" was shorthand for the larger tit-for-tat battle between sanctions and adoption restrictions -- in other words, shorthand for eliminating sanctions against Putin's money laundering network.
That June 9, 2016 meeting had another interesting coincidence. Earlier on that same day, Browder's legal team had scored an important victory in a New York courtroom that excluded a law firm that had previously represented HIS firm from now representing RUSSIA in their US legal actions against Browder. In that courtroom representing Russia was the same Natalia Veselnitskya. Also in that courtroom sitting with the Russian team was Glenn Simpson. Simpson operated Fusion GPS, which had originally been linked to the "Steele Dossier" allegedly summarizing thirty-plus years of compromising information Russia had gathered on Trump.
Browder's outline of these events lays out a crucial point. The SAME actor was working BOTH sides of the fence. Simpson was said to have offered the dossier material to the Clinton campaign to HELP defeat Donald Trump in 2016 -- a result presumably NOT helping Putin. At the same time, Simpson was also involved in other activities directly with Russian officials OBVIOUSLY for Putin's benefit. Sources had provided Browder details of some of the alleged activities in the dossier material well before they were public. He concluded that even if a large portion were true, they were likely tainted with enough that WASN'T true so that even if someone attempted to leverage the material, at least part of it would blow up in their faces, further sowing doubt in the public about their ability to trust ANYTHING related to Russia, thus helping Putin's larger goals of defeating sanctions.
There are more twists and turns in the book that make for an interesting, if not infuriating read. Perhaps the key takeaway is that the extent to which Russian money has already infiltrated America within the legislative, judicial and administrative branches. Even if the specific Trump cancer is exorcised, there are enough willing takers of ill-gotten booty to warrant additional investigations and legislative action to further limit money laundering avenues. Our democracy depends on it.
WTH
