January 28, 2024
Published in 2015, Red Notice is a memoir spanning the period of Russia’s privatization of state assets during President Yeltsin’s time (1991 to 1999) and the rise of the oligarchs during President Putin’s time (from 2000). Browder noticed business opportunities spawned by privatization and took advantage of them but then ran afoul of the Russian political system, and the government deported him from Russia in 2005.
He returned home to London, but upon learning that his lawyer and friend Sergei Magnitsky died of a beating in Moscow on November 16, 2009, he became a human rights activist. The book describes his advocacy that resulted in the Magnitsky Act in the US, signed by President Obama in 2012.
Born into an intellectual and leftist Jewish family where science and mathematics were the only career choices, Bill rebelled and decided to become a capitalist.
Bill’s grandfather, Earl Browder, was a union organizer in the US. Russia invited him to live in Moscow, where he married and had three sons. When Earl came back to the US with his family, he became the head of the US Communist Party and ran for President in 1936 and 1940, becoming subject to the McCarthy witchhunts of real and perceived communists and jailed for sixteen months.
All of Earl’s sons became noted mathematicians in the US. Bill’s father, Felix, a child prodigy in maths, earned his Ph.D. from Princeton at age 20. He had trouble landing a job because of his father’s communist background. However, Eleanor Roosevelt, then Chair of the Board of Governors at Brandeis University, overruled the Board and hired Felix in 1955. Subsequently, Felix taught at the University of Chicago, Yale, and Princeton
Bill studied economics at the University of Chicago and earned an MBA from Stanford to pursue his career goals. The typical career ladder for MBAs led Bill to join investment banks, but he was not happy until he found an opportunity to go to Eastern Europe. He describes in his book that he longed for some experience that reminded him of his grandfather’s stay in Russia.
Bill describes in his book how the Yeltsin regime privatized state assets. Each Russian citizen received one share to buy any company’s share. Some people realized that accumulating shares cheaply was advantageous; most had no idea what the shares meant and sold them cheaply or for a drink.
Bill had the business training to value Russian companies, and by comparing them to similar companies in the West, he quickly realized that the Russian companies were way undervalued. And he thought he could make a fortune buying into the Russian oil and other companies.
But he needed money to invest, and the first part of the memoir describes his talent in raising capital by cold-calling, networking, and directly asking rich people to trust him to invest their money in Russia. The book reads like the who is who of people with millions of dollars in Europe, the Middle East, and the US.
Studying Russian companies, Bill discovered that the oligarchs, who controlled the enormous Russian companies with their accumulated shares, stole from their companies by splitting off parts of them and selling them to their friends and family at discounted prices. When President Putin came into power in 2000, he took advantage of Bill’s work exposing the corrupt oligarchs. Putin put some of them in jail – the prime example was Khodorkovsky of GasProm – and others agreed to Putin taking a portion of their profits to avoid prison. But when Putin took control of the oligarchs, he had no use for Bill anymore and kicked him out of Russia.
Bill moved back to London and published material on the corrupt business practices of the oligarchs, irritating Putin. In response to the bad publicity, the Russian police arrested Bill’s lawyer, Magnitsky, while other members of Bill’s Moscow staff escaped to London. Attempts to free Magnitsky failed despite newspaper articles and YouTube videos exposing the corruption in Russia. The bad publicity caused international condemnation, and Magnitsky’s jail conditions worsened, culminating in a deadly beating.
Learning of Magnitsky’s death, Bill had become depressed and swore revenge. Instead of focusing on his company, he spent most of this time trying to avenge his friend’s death. As a first step, he collected information on those who contributed to Magnitsky’s death.
Armed with this information, Bill lobbied Senators Durbin and McCain to sponsor a bill to sanction all those responsible for Magnitsky’s death. There is a detailed description of how Bill lobbied, working with the US government and Congress to advocate for the bill. The ultimate result was that Senators Durbin and McCain pushed the Magnitsky Act through Congress, subsequently signed by President Obama in 2012.
Browder has an eye for detail, and I found it fascinating to learn of the people Bill has known. For example, Bill worked with Crysthia Freeland in Moscow when she was the bureau head for the Financial Times. Freeland is the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister in Canada today. He also talks about lunches in specific locations with dates. Maybe he journaled, or he has a fantastic memory.
The book reminded me of my early life living in Hungary under Russian rule in the 1950s. At that time, the state owned most of the property in Hungary, and there was no tax since the government employed all the people and provided all services. There was no private industry. And the secret police were all over. People disappeared overnight, and nobody asked any questions for fear of being the next one to disappear. The socialist system resulted in poverty, much like the situation Browder describes in Russia.
Further enhancing my interest in the book, Felix Browder, Bill’s father, was my brother Peter’s advisor at Yale University for his doctoral dissertation in mathematics in 1964.
andrasthehun.ca 