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

by Bill Browder

In November 2005, Putin declared me a threat to national security and expelled me from Russia.

I’d heard stories about Putin’s enemies checking into Monaco hotels, presenting their passports, and finding themselves arrested within minutes by the local police.

All of this proved our point: the Klyuev Organized Crime Group and the Russian government were one and the same.

The Russians had spectacularly overplayed their hand. In fact, they had done our job much better than we ever could have done it ourselves. Not only had they failed to stop the Magnitsky resolution, but their actions cemented their defeat. Moreover, we’d succeeded in forcing Dmitry Klyuev out of the shadows.

November 8, 2012, Alexander Perepilichnyy flew to Paris to meet his mistress, Elmira Medynskaya, a 28-year-old, six-foot Ukrainian. She looked like a caricature of a Barbie doll—dyed blond hair, puffed lips, and impossibly long legs.

On the last night of their trip, they went to the Buddha Bar in the 8th Arrondissement, where they ordered sushi and tempura. Perepilichnyy had been relaxed throughout the trip, but on this last night he was agitated, nervously scanning the room. Halfway through the meal, he sent some of his food back, complaining it was spoiled.

When they returned to their room, Elmira poured herself a glass of wine and put her feet up on the sofa. Perepilichnyy wanted to join her but couldn’t. He spent most of that night in the bathroom, vomiting. Eventually, he crawled into bed. The next morning, he felt well enough to eat a full English breakfast. Afterward, they packed their bags and shared a taxi to the airport, where they discussed meeting again. They embraced, and went their separate ways.

At lunch, his daughter complained that her computer was malfunctioning. When he finished eating, he took her to PC World at the local Brooklands Shopping Centre to see if they could fix the computer. When they returned home, he changed out of his street clothes, put on his shorts and running shoes, and went out for a jog. Midway through his run, his breathing became heavy. He then collapsed. 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.

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.

According to the Russian media, 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.

“Any word from the British?” she asked. “Yes. They’re ready to help. If you can obtain the samples, they’ve promised the diplomatic pouch to move them to London.”

At 8:00 p.m., Evgenia and Prokhorov entered the hospital and went directly to the front desk. A receptionist, who barely looked up from her phone, said flatly, “Visiting hours are over. No visitors over the weekend. Come back Monday.”

“I’m going to move my husband tomorrow,” she said. “There’s a medevac plane waiting at Vnukovo.” “Mrs. Kara-Murza,” the director said. “Your husband cannot be moved. If we moved him from one side of the room to the other, he probably wouldn’t make it. There’s no way he would survive a trip to the airport, let alone a flight.” “Then I’ll have a second opinion. There’s an Israeli doctor here from Tel Aviv. I want him to see Vladimir in the morning.” “Mrs. Kara-Murza,” the director repeated, even more condescendingly. “Why would you need a second opinion?”

The director scoffed. “Imagine a train. And that train has hit your husband. Do you really care about what kind of train it is? No. You care about saving your husband. That is what we are trying to do.”

It was after 11:00 p.m. when Evgenia left the hospital. She climbed into Prokhorov’s car and they drove to her parents’ apartment. Once there, she placed the samples in the refrigerator and emailed Vladimir’s medical charts to me. The next morning, she returned to the hospital with the Israeli intensive care specialist. After examining Vladimir, he concurred with his Russian counterparts. Vladimir could not be moved. Evgenia had suspected this, but hearing it from a trustworthy source was thoroughly demoralizing. She was now faced with an impossible dilemma—if she moved her husband he would certainly die, but if she kept him in Russia, he would probably die too.

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.

The first response came from his source in US intelligence. He suspected there were two poisons at work. The first was designed to create the appearance of severe food poisoning. While the doctors were dealing with that, the second was doing the real job of shutting down Vladimir’s organs.

We’re all led to believe that if you’re a citizen of a powerful country like the United States or Great Britain, and something bad happens to you abroad, your government will bring its full weight and force to protect you. But that wasn’t happening here.

Overnight, Vladimir made even more progress. He began breathing without a ventilator, and the next morning the doctors removed his breathing tube.

“Vladimir just had an X-ray,” she said, her voice sounding different than before. “They’ve found something. Some kind of black spot on his stomach.”

the black spot was nothing to worry about—but because of the anticoagulants the hospital had put him on, he was prone to internal bleeding, and the operation caused an unexpected hemorrhage, leading to a stroke. Following this, Dr. Protsenko placed him back into a coma.

The stroke had been a bad one: he couldn’t walk, could barely eat, and chewing and swallowing were difficult. He had a lot of work ahead of him if he was going to return to normal.

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.

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.

the Global Magnitsky Act was added to the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s agenda for debate. The Global Magnitsky Act, an extension of the original Magnitsky Act, would enable the US government to impose asset freezes and travel bans on human rights violators and kleptocrats from anywhere in the world, not just Russia.

Julia’s mother. While making a routine check on the Gorokhovs’ empty Moscow apartment, she discovered that it had been broken into. It didn’t appear as if anything had been taken, but someone had certainly been there. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, except for Nikolai’s computer screen and keyboard, which had been wiped clean. Whoever had been there also made themselves tea, leaving two half-filled

filled cups on the living room table. This was a standard calling card of the FSB.

Whatever risk Nikolai faced, it was compounded in early 2017, when he made another important discovery in the case. That was when he came into possession of a tranche of emails showing that Andrei Pavlov had been colluding with the Russian Interior Ministry to cover up the authorities’ involvement in the $230 million crime. Nikolai felt that if these emails came to light, they would undermine one of the foundational pillars of the Russian government’s false narrative—that the police were not involved in any way. 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!”

Around dawn, as she was finally drifting off, she was jerked awake by a phone call. It was a man she barely knew named Ilya. It took her a moment to place him. He was an acquaintance of Nikolai’s from college whom she’d met in passing a few times over the years. After reminding her of who he was, he said, “You probably expected something like this, didn’t you?” His tone was harsh and unsympathetic. “Like what?” Julia asked. “Not this call, but what happened to Nikolai.… How is Nikolai, by the way?” he asked, almost as an afterthought. “Not well. He’s in intensive care.” “Are you planning on filing a criminal complaint?” This was probably the last thing on Julia’s mind at that moment. “I-I don’t know,” she said. “I would advise you not to. Anything can happen while he’s in the hospital.” This sounded like a threat. All she could think to say was, “Thank you. I have to go now.” She hung up.

This defeat was humiliating for Putin, but one thing he could control was his own country’s court system. On December 29, 2017, the Tverskoy District Court in Moscow found Ivan and me guilty of our latest “crimes.” Ivan was sentenced to eight years, and I was given another nine, both in absentia. I now faced 18 years in a Russian prison camp if I were ever extradited to Moscow.

At the time of writing, there are Magnitsky Acts in 34 different countries: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, the 27 countries of the European Union, Norway, Montenegro, and Kosovo. This doesn’t take into account the British Overseas Territories and Crown Protectorates of Gibraltar, Jersey, Guernsey, the British Virgin Islands, and the Cayman Islands. New Zealand and Japan are on deck.

But not only Russians. Magnitsky sanctions have now been applied to the Saudi assassins responsible for the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; the Chinese officials who set up the Uighur concentration camps in Xinjiang; the Myanmar generals responsible for the Rohingya genocide; the Gupta brothers, who stripped the South African government dry; and hundreds of others for similarly pernicious acts.