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

by Bill Browder

In total, Denis Katsyv had used Prevezon to purchase roughly $17 million worth of real estate in New York. This was far more than the $857,764 we’d traced from the $230 million—and we had no idea why he’d received it—but it was a major breakthrough to discover that the son of a senior Russian official was linked to the stolen $230 million.

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.

The first person to find him was his neighbor’s chef, who rushed outside dialing 999 (the British emergency services number). The chef, who had been in the British Special Forces, knew CPR. He dropped to his knees to try to save Perepilichnyy. Between chest compressions and mouth-to-mouth, green foam started bubbling from Perepilichnyy’s lips. The chef wiped his face and spat onto the ground. He later reported that it had tasted like battery acid. Within minutes, an ambulance arrived. The EMTs pushed the chef out of the way and knelt around Perepilichnyy. His body was cold, wet, and unresponsive. They called the time of death at 5:52 p.m. on November 10, 2012. Another witness in the Magnitsky case was now dead.

We’d been working on this legislation for over two years, and it was finally coming to fruition. Boris Nemtsov had made good on his Helsinki promise and had advocated for the US Magnitsky Act multiple times on Capitol Hill. In large part due to Boris’s involvement, the Magnitsky Act passed the House that day, 365–43. It would head to the Senate within weeks, and was certain to be signed into law by the president soon afterward. I should have been elated—and part of me was—but Perepilichnyy’s sudden death cast a dark shadow over this success in Washington. Perepilichnyy wasn’t a friend or colleague like Sergei, but he had played an important role in our money laundering investigation. Whatever his motivations or background, he had taken a huge risk, and now he was dead. His death was not only tragic—it was also terrifying. It appeared the Russians were sending assassins to the West to retaliate against people exposing Russian government corruption in the Magnitsky case. If there ever was a moment to get the US authorities involved, this was it.

US Senate passed the Magnitsky Act 92–4, and President Obama signed it into law on December 14, 2012.

This was the first time the United States had sanctioned Russia since the Cold War, and Putin was apoplectic. His immediate response was to ban the adoption of Russian orphans by American families. This sounded terrible on the surface, but it was even more heinous when you looked at the details. Most of the orphans Russia put up for adoption to foreigners were the sick ones, suffering from things like Down syndrome, spina bifida, and fetal alcohol syndrome, and often wouldn’t survive in a Russian orphanage. By banning Americans from adopting these children, Putin was effectively sentencing some of them to death to protect his own corrupt officials. This was exceptional, even by his own depraved standards. Putin also got personally involved in the cover-up of Sergei’s murder. At his annual press conference, Putin pronounced that Sergei had never been tortured and that he had simply died “from a heart attack.” This meant no one would ever be prosecuted for Sergei’s torture or murder in Russia. There were prosecutions forthcoming, however. At the same press conference, Putin mentioned both Sergei and me by name in connection to our alleged “economic crimes.” A week later, a Moscow court set a date to put me on trial in absentia. And I wouldn’t be the only defendant. Sergei would be tried alongside me—posthumously. This would be the first trial of a dead person in the history of Russia.

The trial against Sergei and me was set to begin in early March 2013. Putin was using the full weight and force of the Russian government to crush anyone associated with me and the Magnitsky case, up to and including murder. The only way to make this a fair fight would be to bring in strong allies, and the best possible ally was US law enforcement.

If his office were to bring a money laundering case under New York State law, they would have had to prosecute a physical person. This meant Denis Katsyv would have to be brought to the United States and put on trial in New York. Since the United States and Russia have no extradition treaty, and there was no way Denis Katsyv would willingly surrender to New York authorities, that would be impossible. However, Duncan explained, under federal law there was no need for a physical defendant. Federal prosecutors could simply go to court, file an asset forfeiture case, and try to seize the property that had been purchased using illicit funds. Nobody would go to jail, but it would be a lot better than anything we had at that moment.

When we’d started this process, I viewed every question from the SDNY as confirmation that the case was moving forward. But after months of giving and giving, I began to worry that this was turning out to be no more than some kind of government fact-finding exercise that would lead nowhere. All of this was made even more upsetting by what was going on in Moscow. On March 6, a Russian state-controlled television station, NTV, aired a 45-minute “documentary” called Browder’s List in a prime time slot. According to the film, not only had I evaded taxes, but I’d stolen $4.5 billion of IMF bailout funds from under the noses of all international authorities and the Russian government, and I’d killed my former business partner, Edmond Safra, who’d died tragically in a fire at his house in Monaco in 1998. These types of “documentaries” were pro forma leading up to any major political show trial, with the aim of convincing the Russian public that the defendant was a truly heinous individual. The trial against Sergei and me started the following week. In May, while it was in full swing, Russia issued its first Interpol Red Notice for my arrest. This had been inevitable, but it still came as a shock. I had finally been upgraded to Russia’s international wanted list. Fortunately, after my lawyers intervened, Interpol deleted this Red Notice from their system for being politically motivated. But that wasn’t going to stop the Putin regime. This weaponization of Interpol, which is notori...

The Department of Justice was asking the court to issue a worldwide freezing order over Prevezon’s assets. This order included approximately $20 million of real estate and cash in New York, along with €3 million (approximately $3.5 million) of assets held in the Netherlands. The total was more than 27 times the $857,764 we’d originally traced from the stolen $230 million going to New York. The US authorities were going after everything they could find, with the intention of seizing all of the $230 million, provided they could locate it. The SDNY’s filing was a complete and independent vindication of everything we’d been saying since 2008. The Department of Justice had laid out the facts in black-and-white and was now ready to stand by them in a US federal court. The next day, the court approved the government’s application. This was the fourth freezing order in the Magnitsky case.

Russians were going to defend themselves. And their lawyer? John Moscow. I called Bill. As soon as he answered, I said, “Is this our John Moscow?” “The one and only.” “That can’t be true.” “It is. I’m devastated,” he said sincerely. Aside from John Moscow’s towering reputation, Bill had been close to him for decades. The two had regular breakfasts together at a Greek diner in SoHo, and Bill had gone to John Moscow’s going-away party when he left the New York District Attorney’s Office. Bill had even employed John Moscow’s son as an intern at Barron’s. This development was potentially devastating for me and my colleagues. Of the 57,000-or-so lawyers licensed to practice law in New York, the Russians had chosen the only one who had represented us on this exact same matter. After befriending us, working for us, ghosting us, and coming back to help, John Moscow was now working for the other side. It was unbelievable.

For many, the words “lawyer” and “ethics” are mutually exclusive. As we all know, lawyers have become the brunt of countless jokes. (What’s the difference between a lawyer and a jellyfish? One is a spineless, poisonous blob. The other is a form of sea life. Why won’t sharks attack lawyers? Professional courtesy.) But I thought this disrespect was mostly reserved for ambulance chasers with one-room offices in strip malls, not Ivy League attorneys in glass towers in midtown Manhattan. I was surprised that BakerHostetler, a firm that had been around since 1916, with clients like Ford and Microsoft, would conform to this lowest stereotype.

If BakerHostetler weren’t going to recuse themselves, then we would make sure the rules forced them to. On December 6, we filed a complaint with New York’s Attorney Grievance Committee, the body that polices lawyers’ conduct, laying out how John Moscow and BakerHostetler had switched sides. It was one thing for them to try to snow-job us with legalese, but another for them to be scrutinized by the Grievance Committee and risk punishment, up to and including disbarment. It would be much easier for them just to walk away from Prevezon. But once again, BakerHostetler surprised us. They responded to the Grievance Committee by repeating their previous spin from the letter to us, but they went further, claiming they were “not engaged by Hermitage to ‘trac[e] the proceeds of the stolen $230 million and identifying beneficiaries of this fraud.’ ” When I read this, I thought they’d backed themselves into a corner. We had copies of the subpoena requests to the US banks that John Moscow had drafted specifically looking for the $230 million.

I don’t want to alarm you, and I can’t be a hundred percent sure about this, but we’ve received intelligence that some individuals are soliciting funds to hire a team to locate you and bring you back to Russia.” Bring me? “Which people?” I asked. “It involves Russians.” “Which Russians?” “That’s all I can share with you. We’re notifying the British authorities, but I wanted to let you know so you can take whatever precautions you think are necessary.”

The Russians knew my family’s whereabouts, and I suspected that this was because of John Moscow. It was one thing for him to switch sides in a legal case and align himself with the Russian government, but he had completely crossed the line by involving my wife and children.

Red Notice was set to be published in early February, and I was slated to be in New York to launch it. There was no way I’d be able to stay under John Moscow’s radar on that trip. When Randy heard about the book tour, he was adamant I not come to New York. I might have taken that advice if my only concern had been minimizing the subpoena risk, but there was a lot more at stake. The Russians had invested so much in creating a false narrative about Sergei that it was essential I share the true story of what happened as far and wide as possible. I could brief lawmakers and prosecutors until I was blue in the face, but there would be no substitute for a bestselling book. My editor at Simon & Schuster, Priscilla Painton, thought we had a real shot. But books don’t sell themselves, especially from first-time authors, and the only way to hit the bestseller list was to take every interview and go on every TV show that would have me. I had to go to New York.

This was the second significant loss in my life after Sergei Magnitsky. My mother’s natural, peaceful death at home and among people she loved made his murder that much more awful. In addition to being robbed of decades of life, Sergei had spent his last moments alone without any loved ones, in a cold isolation cell, being beaten to death. As I flew back to London, I realized that the best way for me to mourn my mother and right the injustice of what had happened to Sergei was to convert my sorrow into righteous action. In two weeks, I would return to New York. And I would promote the hell out of Red Notice.

Getting “served.” Sophie (second from left), process server (center), Juleanna (second from right), and me (right). The person at left in the white coat is unknown. February 2015. (U.S. COURT DOCKET NYSD)

“There’s no way it is safe. They’ve threatened to kill me. They’ve threatened to kidnap me. I should say that just a couple of minutes ago I got terrible, terrible news from Russia that Boris Nemtsov, who is one of the leaders of the opposition, was gunned down and killed on Red Square.”

Boris Nemtsov’s body on the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge, February 27, 2015. (© EVGENIY FELDMAN/NOVAYA GAZETA)

Everything the authorities did following his murder showed they had no intention of getting to the truth. Instead of chasing proper leads, they raided Boris’s apartment and office, seizing his files, computers, phones, hard drives, and anything connected with his political activities. They were more interested in knowing who was assisting him in his opposition to Putin than establishing who had killed him. The authorities may not have been interested in the truth, but the Russian people were. Two days after his assassination, more than 50,000 of them took to the streets, stretching for miles along the Moscow River. What had been planned as an anti-Putin march before Boris had been killed was now a mass demonstration of public grief, one that demanded justice. Thousands of flowers had been placed on the spot where Boris was assassinated. The authorities swiftly removed these, but people kept coming back to put down more. This happened again and again and again. To this day, flowers still mark the location as a semi-permanent memorial to Boris Nemtsov. Boris’s murder caused such a furor that the Kremlin had to do something, so the authorities arrested five Chechen men (a sixth died in an explosion just as he was about to be arrested). One of these men confessed, but later it transpired that he had been tortured before his confession. Another of the men turned out to be an active member of the Russian Interior Ministry. Eventually, all five would be sentenced to long prison t...

Perhaps the thing that most upset Putin about Boris was his work on the Magnitsky Act. In Putin’s mind, this was an unforgivable betrayal. But beyond all of this was the message that Boris’s murder sent to people like Vladimir Kara-Murza and me. A year earlier, in an appearance on CNN, Boris had said, “I’m a well-known guy, and this is safety because if something happens to me, it will be a scandal not only in Moscow, but throughout the world.” I had said nearly identical words about myself many times. And even though his death was scandalous, these words were now meaningless. Boris’s murder showed that Putin did not care.

“They have a total of seven hours to depose you. If they want to waste twenty minutes verifying a document, that’s their choice—and it’s their twenty minutes.”

“Bill, you have to train yourself to believe that there are no human beings in the room, just mannequins. They can smile or shout or whisper. This isn’t a conversation and you’re not there to convince anyone of anything. You’re just there to answer questions truthfully.” “So the answer is ‘No,’ ” I said. “Correct. Most importantly, if they ask a question you don’t know the answer to, you just say, ‘I don’t know.’ Don’t try to help them. It doesn’t matter if you look smart or stupid, there’s no legal consequence. If you start speculating or having arguments, that will only get you into trouble.”

Vladimir was suffering from multiple organ failure brought on by “acute non-alcoholic intoxication.” “Acute non-alcoholic intoxication” was conveniently open to interpretation, but for me there was only one translation: Vladimir had been deliberately poisoned.

We needed to become poison experts—and fast. We both knew about the infamous KGB Poison Factory, which for decades had developed novel, vicious, and mysterious ways of killing Russia’s enemies. The poisons they developed were often tested on prisoners in the Russian gulag before being deployed in the field. Favorites included ricin, dioxin, thallium, hydrogen cyanide, polonium (which had been used in London to kill Alexander Litvinenko), and even rare venoms extracted from jellyfish. We had to determine whether any of these—or something else—had been used on Vladimir.

The only response we received came from the former homicide detective. He didn’t offer any theories about what Vladimir had been poisoned with, but he did provide a set of gruesome instructions to preserve the “crime scene”—i.e., Vladimir’s body—in the event of his death. This included “milking” blood from his femoral artery, removing a section of his liver, and retrieving a vial of his eyeball fluid.

In the end, the Western institutions that were supposed to have saved him—the British government, Porton Down, our concierge doctor, the Harley Street clinic—had all failed. He’d been saved by someone we thought wouldn’t—his Russian doctor. Although there were many in the Russian system who wanted Vladimir dead, he’d been lucky enough to encounter someone who was intent on doing his job, and had been faithful to his Hippocratic oath to do no harm. Vladimir Kara-Murza, a good Russian, had come under the care of Dr. Denis Protsenko, another good Russian. And that had made all the difference.

In non-legalese, this meant everything was halted. The lawyers had to put down their pens. The trial was on hold until the Second Circuit determined whether or not BakerHostetler should be disqualified. This was remarkable. For an appeals court to stop a major money laundering case just days before trial showed how seriously it took the misconduct of John Moscow and BakerHostetler. From that moment, everything on the docket went silent. The next filing came three months later, on April 29, 2016. It was a notification from the Southern District of New York court system. The Second Circuit was still considering the disqualification, but Judge Griesa, who had served on the federal bench since 1972, had been permanently removed from the Prevezon case.

Unlike 40 years ago, when a money launderer could show up at a bank carrying a suitcase full of cash and open an account, today, the most cash you can deposit or withdraw is $10,000—anything more and you’re required to file a declaration with the relevant authorities. As a result, money launderers no longer deal in cash. They conduct their operations using wire transfers. They create hundreds of accounts in dozens of banks in the names of countless shell companies and then wire the money so many times and in so many denominations that they hope nobody has the patience, resources, or vigilance to track it. It’s also simple by design. Money laundering consists of nothing more than transferring money, and every transfer leaves an indelible trail, just as John Moscow had pointed out back in 2008. In all Russian money laundering cases, the money starts in Russia; then goes through a handful of transit countries like Moldova, Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia; before landing in destination countries like France, Switzerland, and the United States. When it reaches this final stage, the money is accumulated in banks or kept in real estate, or used to make extravagant purchases like yacht and private jet charters, jewelry, or fine art.

Putin needed others to hold his money so that no paper trail led back to him. For this, he needed people he could trust. In any mafia-like organization, these people are rare birds. There is no commodity more valuable than trust. Roldugin was one such person for Putin. From the moment the two had met on the streets of Leningrad in their 20s, they were like brothers. Roldugin introduced Putin to his wife; he was the godfather to Putin’s firstborn daughter; and through the decades they had remained the closest of friends.

Thanks to the Panama Papers, they now had at least one small part of that picture. For us, this news was potentially even more dramatic. If we could somehow link any of the $230 million to Putin through Roldugin, it would be a game-changer. Vadim ran every Roldugin company mentioned in these April 3 articles through our system. But nothing hit. However, these first articles just scratched the surface. Other journalists continued to mine the Panama Papers, and two days later, a Lithuanian website, 15min.lt, wrote another story about Roldugin. It reported that in May 2008 (just six months after the $230 million fraud), one of the companies linked to Roldugin had received $800,000 from an account at a Lithuanian bank. This account belonged to a shell company called Delco Networks. Vadim searched our database again. Delco was in our system. He found transactions showing that the $800,000 was connected to the $230 million tax refund. After leaving Russia, the money had passed through a series of banks in Moldova, Estonia, and, ultimately, Lithuania. We could now link the crime that Sergei Magnitsky had exposed and been killed over to Roldugin. And from Roldugin, we could link it to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The Magnitsky Act says that Russian human rights violators will have their assets frozen in the West. It also says that beneficiaries of the $230 million crime will be sanctioned. That Putin was a human rights violator was not in dispute, but now he ticked both boxes. The Magnitsky Act put all of his wealth and power at risk. That made him a very angry man. His crusade against the Magnitsky Act wasn’t just philosophical, it was personal. We had genuinely hit Vladimir Putin’s Achilles’ heel.

HRAGI, all he found was a bare-bones website featuring a collection of stock photos of generic-looking, happy families. HRAGI’s stated purpose was overturning Putin’s adoption ban—code for repealing the Magnitsky Act in the United States.

The article, “Russian Propaganda Mysteriously Stalls a Human-Rights Act in Congress,” went through the entire chronology of Rohrabacher’s trip to Moscow and the spiking of the bill. It concluded, “As long as the Global Magnitsky Act remains stuck in committee on specious grounds, Russia’s information offensive is winning.”

It wasn’t just Engel who rejected Rohrabacher’s amendment. Rep. Gerald Connolly from Virginia said, “I felt listening to [Rohrabacher] like I was watching RT,” Russia’s international propaganda outlet. Rep. David Cicilline from Rhode Island said, “To allow the Russian government any modicum of influence over this legislation, including its name, would be shameful and would dishonor the work of Mr. Magnitsky.” Several others, Republicans and Democrats, chimed in with similar sentiments. Rohrabacher was allowed to speak again, and he made a last-ditch effort to muddy the waters, but it didn’t work. When the vote was called, Rohrabacher lost 46–1. He had been slaughtered. Our current problems in Washington were over.

It’s one thing for Russians to act the way they do. Their society is so harsh and unforgiving that in order to get through life, most people are either getting screwed or screwing someone else—and often both. There are few rewards for doing what is right. It takes exceptional individuals like Sergei Magnitsky, Boris Nemtsov, and Vladimir Kara-Murza not to descend reflexively into nihilism, dishonesty, and corruption. In the West, and especially in America, it’s different. There’s no question we have our own issues, but Americans like John Moscow, Mark Cymrot, Chris Cooper, and Glenn Simpson have led charmed lives. They went to the best universities, associated with the highest-caliber people, lived in comfortable homes, and operated in a society that at least aspires to honor good conduct and ethical behavior. Everyone is entitled to a legal defense, but this wasn’t about the law—it was an active Russian disinformation campaign. For these people to use their considerable knowledge, contacts, and skills to assist Putin’s cronies in exchange for nothing more than money was even more contemptible than the actions of the Russians themselves. Many Russians can’t help what they do. But Americans like these can, and they act with full cognizance.

Foreign Agents Registration Act, which says that anyone trying to influence US policy on behalf of a foreign government is legally required to register with the Department of Justice. It was enacted in 1938 to help prevent Hitler’s agents in the United States from spreading Nazi propaganda in the run-up to World War II. Now we faced Putin’s agents in the United States spreading Russian propaganda, apparently without a worry in the world.

They said the circumstances of our case “truly are extraordinary” and acknowledged that I was in real danger from the Russian government. They said I had every right to expect my confidences to be protected by my former lawyers. For these reasons, they instructed the district court to “enter an order disqualifying [John] Moscow and BakerHostetler.” I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as Noah continued to skip along ahead of me. I couldn’t help but smile. I was finished with John Moscow and BakerHostetler once and for all.

On the surface, it appeared that Trump was acting irrationally, but what I’ve learned over the years as an investor is that almost everyone behaves rationally. If someone does something that appears irrational, it just means you don’t have all the information.

The outgoing Obama administration had similar fears. Following Trump’s victory but before his inauguration, they added five more names to the Magnitsky List, including Andrei Pavlov. He had been one of our highest value targets right from the start. He’d played a central role in almost everything that had happened, from orchestrating the collusive court judgments that had been used in the $230 million fraud, to showing up in Monaco at Dmitry Klyuev’s side, to threatening Alexander Perepilichnyy. But because he wasn’t a Russian government official or a colorful ex-con, he had managed to slip under the radar.

Then, late on the night of January 10, as I lay in bed checking the news, BuzzFeed broke ranks with the rest of the media and published the dossier in its entirety. I clicked on the PDF link and started reading. It was a 35-page document compiled by a former British intelligence officer, claiming that the Russian security services possessed video kompromat of Trump watching prostitutes perform “golden showers” in the presidential suite of the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. It also alleged that Trump and his associates would receive a 19 percent stake in Russia’s largest oil company, Rosneft, (a stake worth about $13 billion at the time) in exchange for lifting US sanctions. It suggested that the Kremlin had been cultivating Trump as an asset for decades. And these were just the highlights.

The easiest way for the Russians to diminish the potency of this dossier would be to deliberately insert disinformation into it. The upshot was that a bunch of “facts” would find their way into the dossier which, over time, could be disproved. This would then enable the Russians and, not incidentally, Trump himself to claim that everything in the dossier was false, even if something in it turned out to be true. They and all of their mouthpieces could then point at it and scream, “FAKE NEWS!” And they wouldn’t be wrong.

Nikolai Gorokhov. Nikolai had been working for the Magnitskys in Russia since 2011. He was a former prosecutor and acutely aware of the danger this placed him in, but Nikolai was cut from the same cloth as Sergei. He felt it was his duty to hold Sergei’s murderers to account. To fully appreciate how dangerous the world had just become, we have to go back to 2015, when Nikolai became a key witness for the US government in the case against Prevezon. At that time, the SDNY had a significant obstacle in the case. To win, they needed hard evidence proving the stolen money had moved from Russia, through a network of international banks, and into New York. We’d supplied them with reams of Russian bank records from our money laundering database, but Paul Monteleoni and his team considered this to be intelligence, not evidence, and it wouldn’t be admissible in court. Normally, US prosecutors use mutual legal assistance requests (MLAs) to obtain this kind of evidence from their counterparts in other countries. And that’s exactly what happened here. The SDNY had formally asked half a dozen countries, including Estonia, Latvia, and Cyprus, to share their banking information, and they’d all cooperated. There was only one exception: Russia.

He realized that the Russian authorities in charge of the cover-up had made a crucial error when they formally named Sergei as one of the people who had stolen the $230 million. You might recall that after trying to blame the crime on a cadre of dead men, the Russian authorities decided to add a living ex-convict, Vyacheslav Khlebnikov, who would plead guilty in order to make the case appear more legitimate. But what they seemed to forget was that the moment Khlebnikov named Sergei as his “co-conspirator,” Nikolai, as the Magnitsky family lawyer, gained the legal right to see the case file. Nikolai applied for access to it, which was shot down. He applied again. This was also shot down. He applied again. Shot down. Nikolai knew that corruption in the Russian legal system was endemic, but not always perfectly executed. So he kept at it. Finally, on his 12th try, he got a judge who mechanically followed the law and, at long last, granted Nikolai’s request.

Russian authorities had made another crucial error. In an attempt to make the case appear credible, they included data showing the real bank transfers that had taken place within Russia. If this information was made public, it would exonerate Sergei and expose the real perpetrators of the crime (not to mention, reveal the inner mechanics of the Russian money laundering system). Nikolai needed to make a copy of every single page. Facing the magnitude of this task, he ordered a digital Pentax camera from the United States and bought a special tripod that would allow him to point the lens straight down onto a tabletop. The camera didn’t have a remote, so Nikolai, who was something of a tinkerer, designed one himself. After testing the setup at home, he returned to the courthouse day after day and spent eight hours every day taking a high-resolution photograph of each page. He expected someone to come in at any moment and tell him to stop, so he worked as quickly as he could. After three weeks, he had copied the entire file. The total haul was roughly 27,000 images on seven SD cards. These contained the exact banking information that the Russian government should have provided to the SDNY when the Americans made their mutual legal assistance request.

Nikolai was scheduled to present these emails to a Russian judge on March 22, 2017. But he never made it to court that day. On the afternoon of March 21, Julia got a panicked call from their daughter. “Mama,” Diana said, her voice shaking, “Papa fell from the roof!” The Gorokhovs lived on the top floor of a five-story apartment building in Moscow, meaning that Nikolai would have fallen 50 feet to the ground.

Nikolai had suffered a shattered lower jaw, eleven broken ribs, internal bleeding, a fractured skull, a severe concussion, and a badly damaged left eye and orbital socket. But his arms and legs were fine. His heart and lungs and other vital organs were intact. Recovery would require months of painful convalescence and maxillofacial surgery, and his vision would be permanently impaired, but compared to the alternative, his condition could only be described as a miracle. He and Julia spoke until visiting hours ended. Although Nikolai couldn’t recall the moment of his fall, he remembered most of what led up to it. The Jacuzzi, which he’d purchased secondhand online, had been delivered by three men working for a moving company he’d contacted earlier that week. He’d also arranged for them to pick up and deliver several bundles of drywall. Since the Gorokhovs lived on the top floor, it was easier to bring everything up to the roof with the winch than up the stairs. Nikolai had been on the roof with one of the men working the winch, while the other two men were on the ground. They brought up the drywall first, then attached the Jacuzzi. That was as far as his memory went.

Perhaps the most glaring giveaway was the report filed by the responding officers. They questioned only two of the three movers. It was as if the third man didn’t exist (and to this day, no one knows his identity). The two men they did question both lied. They said no one had gone up to the roof with Nikolai, which wasn’t true. They also claimed that they’d carried the drywall up the stairs, and had only used the winch on the Jacuzzi. Also untrue. And then there was the threatening call from Ilya. None of it added up. On April 7, only a couple weeks after the incident, Nikolai filed a more exhaustive and expanded criminal complaint of his own. Unsurprisingly, the authorities refused to investigate, and stuck to their story. If someone had been responsible for pushing Nikolai off the roof, as we all suspected, we would never find out who that was. But at least Nikolai, unlike Sergei, was still alive.

Six days before trial, the SDNY won a significant victory. The judge who had replaced Judge Griesa ruled that Nikolai’s evidence would be admissible. This was a crucial development. If this evidence hadn’t been allowed, the government wouldn’t have been able to draw an uninterrupted line from the $230 million crime in Russia to assets to New York, and they almost certainly would have lost the case. Prevezon had done everything they could to prevent this evidence from being admitted. But now that it had been, they weren’t left with much.