Excellent Bill Browder interview:

[Leghorn21]

Did you foresee anything like the Russia scandal while writing "Red Notice"?


The big insight that I have, not so much from writing Red Notice but from living as the main character of Red Notice, is that Russia was and is a criminal state unlike any other sovereign country. The things they’re willing to do to further their crimes are so far outside the box of what we consider acceptable behavior that almost everything they do doesn’t surprise me. It doesn’t surprise me that they cheated entirely in the Sochi Olympics with performance enhancement drugs, or that they manipulated the U.S. elections and other elections around the world. And most worryingly, it wouldn’t surprise me if Putin ends up starting a major military conflict with the West at some point in the future to save his own skin as head of state in Russia.

snip


The main thing that I’ve learned since writing Red Notice is not so much about Russia but about how many very legitimate people in the West have sold their souls to the Russians to help them in their terrible goals outside of the country. I’ve discovered the crimes of the Western enablers. There’s many different types of people in the West that are helping Putin and Russia achieve their critical aims. There’s whole teams of lawyers and PR executives and investigators on the Russian payroll, unashamedly working for the Russians, who are often people who come from the highest reaches of society in the U.S. and Britain and Europe. And in some ways, these people are even more contemptuous than Putin and his regime because they should know better. Putin is a cold-blooded killer who doesn’t deserve any sympathy whatsoever, but if you’re brought up in a completely amoral criminal country where every incentive is against you, you need to be caged as a wild animal. But people who were brought up in civilized countries, who were brought up with the same values that we are, who are supporting criminals in Russia and knowingly are jettisoning those values for money in order to further the crimes of the Putin regime—those people deserve even more contempt.

(my emphasis)
much more:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/interviews/article/74483-four-questions-for-bill-browder.html

[tblue37]

1. K&R for visibility. nt

[sagesnow]

2. Browder's story is so central to what is

happening between Russia and the US that I encourage everyone I can to read it. It will give the reader a good sense of how Putin came to power, why he wants to meddle in US politics. It is compelling reading like a Tom Clancy novel, only it's real life. I can't recommend it enough.

[AlexSFCA]

3. love it

It is widely considered that Broweder is Putin's public enemy #1 bar none. He and his family must have been under 24/7 security. He has been under Putin's death warrant for many years. He always speaks 100% truth and has thorough documentation to his claims. His story is absolutely critical to the understanding of putin's regime and its enablers in the west which include trump, flynn, manafort, rochrabacher and many others.

Browder initiated Magnitsky Act which froze Putin's and his accomplices' assets worldwide. We are talking about upward $200B in frozen assets; money that were supposed go into russia's budget. While he's been stealing from foreign investors, ultimatey he has been stealing from russian people who have been gaslighted for decades by state run propaganda into belief that putin is god and west is evil.

Now, it is pretty obvious that trump organization has helped to launder some of that money by redirecting the flow into real estate via phony LLCs. What that means is that at the minimum, trump would be in violation of global magnitsky act.

What I suspect at this point, is that one of the primary goals of trump's presidency is to unfreeze putin's assets and we can guess the deal could be that trump would get $50B+ or so which would make him the richest public person on earth.

[maxsolomon]

4. supporting criminals in Russia and knowingly are jettisoning those values for money

IOW, Paul Manafort & Wilbur Ross.