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

by Bill Browder

I stayed laser-focused on playing it straight down the middle. I couldn’t afford for this hearing to become partisan. I needed Republicans and Democrats to continue to work together to fight off Putin as he tried to derail the Magnitsky Act. Fortunately, as the hearing progressed, the partisanship fell away. There was genuine desire among all the senators to understand how Russia worked and why Putin behaved the way he did. For an hour and 45 minutes, I unpacked Putin’s motivations. I drew a line from the $230 million fraud to Putin’s proxy, the cellist Sergei Roldugin. I explained that this wasn’t a one-off, but one of thousands of crimes Putin had benefitted from, allowing him to accumulate an estimated $200 billion fortune. I pointed out that nearly all of this wealth was held at financial institutions in the West and at risk of being frozen under the Magnitsky Act. For these reasons, the law was an existential threat to him and his senior officials. Four of the nine senators were former prosecutors, and they brought all of their prosecutorial skills to bear with their questions. By the time I was done answering, an epiphany had emerged among the lawmakers in the room. For the first time, it all made sense: one of the main reasons Putin had interfered in the US election was because of the Magnitsky Act.