Freezing Order: A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath

by Bill Browder

Thankfully, the OCCRP was not intimidated, and they ran their story. Even though their website only got 1/1,000th the traffic of Barron’s, and hardly anyone in the United States read the story, one person did read it: a compliance officer at UBS in Zurich, the bank where Prevezon held $7 million. After reading the article, the compliance officer filed something called a suspicious activity report (SAR) with Swiss law enforcement. These are routinely filed by banks whenever they come across anything dubious regarding their clients. In theory, SARs absolve banks of responsibility if their clients later turn out to be criminals. Globally, thousands of SARs are filed every day, and nearly all of them are ignored. But not this one. Shortly after it was submitted, the Swiss authorities placed freezing orders over Prevezon’s $7 million at UBS. This was the third freezing order in the Magnitsky case. New York had to be next. Adam Kaufmann wanted a New York nexus, and now we had one.