How Russia works: Bill Browder on surviving Putin

Politics and Social Issues
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This was enlightening for me. I know next to nothing about real Russia, so am simply sharing this, because Browder does make sense and seems to know what’s happening (with some bona fides), so I feel good about sharing this - since it does resonate with me and it’s so informative about a mysterious reality that it’s worth sharing.

How Russia works: Bill Browder on surviving Putin | Full interview

The Institute of Art and Ideas

Jun 6, 2024 #putin #ukrainewar #russia

Bill Browder discusses Putin, Ukraine, the function of Magnitsky Acts, and the nature of corruption. Was a regime like Putin’s the inevitable outcome of Russia’s hard transition to capitalism in the 1990s?

Watch Bill debate the rise of BRICS at https://iai.tv/video/redrawing-the-gl… With war ravaging Ukraine and Russia exerting its power across the world, the whims of Putin are more valuable to understand than ever.

Bill Browder has survived as Putin’s number-one enemy ever since the murder of his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. While dodging Interpol arrest warrants, extradition attempts, and windows in high buildings, Browder has become a world-leading expert on the internal workings of Russia, and activism to hold autocrats to justice.

Bill Browder is an American-born British financier and political activist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, the investment advisor to the Hermitage Fund, which at a time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia.

00:00 Introduction
00:36 Was an autocrat like Putin the inevitable outcome of Russia’s hard transition to capitalism in the 1990s?
03:19 Did Putin embrace the oligarchs out of choice or necessity?
04:47 How would you characterise the economy of Russia today?
05:52 How do Magnitsky Acts work?
08:47 How does sanctioning oligarchs affect Putin’s regime?
11:08 What have sanctions achieved since the war in Ukraine?
12:29 Can the West alone effectively sanction Russian oil?
14:19 How do you see the future of BRICS?
16:16 Could BRICS’ New Development Bank become a major force?
17:06 Why did we allow Russian money to take such a hold of London?
18:49 Can this be reversed through legislation?
20:01 How do you see the future of Russia after Putin?
21:19 Will we manage to toughen up on Russia, or will we slowly lose our resolve?
23:22 If Trump becomes president again, will he cosy up to Putin?

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[2] Worrying Assange angle / Off-Guardian

[3] London Times runs fake Browder opinion piece / Consortium News

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Lucy Komisar: Bill Browder - takedown of a fraudster

Komisar’s article best read in full at link on KomisarScoop Der Spiegel exposé of Bill Browder could begin takedown of fraudster : The Komisar Scoop

Anti-Russian Browder’s book “Red Notice” is widely displayed at bookstores and has got traction. Now Browder has managed to get USA, UK and other states to adopt the Magnitsky Act - whereby USA gets transnational jurisdiction to set aside due process and freeze the financial assets of designated enemies. Browder has pushed the EU to also adopt this Magnitsky Act and it’s on the cusp of doing so. Some Danish and German journalists have uncovered the inconsistencies in Browder’s narrative, though.
In a public Skype call to the Daily Maverick conference last week, Browder punted over-egged anti-Putin points and named ‘Dominic Raab’ as an ally.

The first factual inaccuracy in Browder’s narrative is that he always refers to Magnitsky as his ‘lawyer’… whereas the man was an accountant - and a witness to Browder’s tax fraud. (This angle might throw a different light on motives for his “Epstein” end, at unknown hands).
Read Lucy Komisar’s writings on the subject:

[1] Der Spiegel and take-down of a fraudster / Komisar Scoop

Nov 24, 2019 - Two years after I wrote the first exposé of fraudster William Browder and his Magnitsky hoax published by the investigative

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Well, okay that’s interesting.

The plot thickens, I did some trawling, wound up with a dozen tabs that took a few days to look through. The two story lines developed, not sure who to trust, the new world order. Glad I’m simply a distant spectator.

Guess we’ll see how it plays out. Another brush fire in a world going to hell.

I appreciate the sharing.

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In the fraudsters own words

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We’re in the weeds. Sure sounds weird but I don’t know how the Russian system works, so won’t be satisfied with a few selected lines. I do have the impression the Putin has a good deal to do with creating this counter story, that’s devolved into he said vs. he said.

Then for me it comes down to who am I more apt to trust, this guy, or Putin.

War Crimes by Russia’s Forces in Ukraine

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE
MARCH 23, 2022

I am fully aware I only have a very superficial understanding, and America did do plenty of stupid things that helped turn Putin into the paranoid mad man he’s become, then the criminal Trump comes along and pumps him full of fawning admiration, what could go wrong.

Stateless, seems to me you have an undercurrent happening that Putin and what he’s doing is justified, that I’ll never stomach.

1 Like
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CC,
A couple of sites to view.

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There is more on Bill Browder in his own words. But you seem to have lost interest.

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Well it seems the damage has been done, Americans were their usual macho-macho-man fools, Putin got the war he craved, in a way on a geo-political level, it’s simply the SOS.

Now you link me to a Brit Wannabe Russian. Sorry I know we are to heck in hand bag, but there’s nothing about Russian that I long for. American ain’t what it used to be, but hey if trump is elected maybe well become more like Russian, which I sure would please many. Not me. America could have been, should have been much wiser, but people are jerks whatever country they come out of. Then we slept yet again and allowed an ultimate low life traitor character become President of our country.

So yes, I’m curious about you, but the topic has sort of lost it’s interest,
I’ve learned more than I knew a couple weeks ago, enough to know we’ll probably never know the truth, (heck we have people right here who seem to believe the 2000 Mules despite all the solid evidence to the contrary) but not enough to change my mind, or to change my general attitude towards those Russian madmen. On an individual level I’m sure there are many excellent Russians, heck I’ve actually known a few, but as a nation, as a mentality, NO THANK YOU.

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I havent lost interest in the topic

In the 1990s, along with the arrival of legitimate operators, predatory capitalists invaded the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR 1922 – 1991) on missions pecuniary, political, and/or a mixture of both.
[These were] “carpet-baggers from the West ” - in the words of David Cornwell (best known as novelist John le Carré).

Among them one William Felix Browder, New Jersey, USA-born (23.04.1964) – a con-man who’d worked for the crooked UK+ ‘press baron’ Robert Maxwell until the 1991 death of the “Bouncing Czech” off his super-yacht, Lady Ghislaine.

(Maxwell purchased the Lady Ghislaine from the Emad Khashoggi family. Emad’s uncle, Saudi arms-dealer Adnan Khashoggi, earned notoriety globally via his association with BCCI – the corrupt Bank of Credit and Commerce International known colloquially as the “Bank of Crooks and Criminals Intl.” Adnan made news in Canada in the 1980s when he endeavoured to cheat creditors by moving assets through Vancouver Stock Exhange-listed+ shell companies.)

In the wake of this curious death-at-sea in 1991, ex-Maxwell employee Bill Browder came under the “like gold” wings of a dubious mentor, the Lebanese-Brazilian banker Edmond J. Safra (mis-spelled as Edmund Saffra in the “black book” of convicted, notorious, sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein).

Safra’s Republic National Bank of New York‘s associated with a number of dodgy Canadian stock deals of the 1980s and ’90s … […]

As detailed in subsequent pages on “J’Accuse News ” site, for Browder it’s “like winning the lottery” when Edmond Safra (who died, under bizarre circumstances, from smoke-asphyxiation) and French-Israeli “diamond tycoon” Beny Steinmetz, (mired more recently in a massive bribery and money-laundering controversy in Guinea), bank-rolled an operation in Moscow, Hermitage Capital, with him up-front as CEO.

Hermitage launched in 1996… Encamped in Moscow, in a particularly callous as well as lucrative scheme, the Hermitage group (Bill Browder as Director; Sergei Magnitsky as Chief Accountant) ’employed’ disabled people – eg. a victim of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster cleanup, an Afghan war veteran, and one challenged with a genetic disease and mental retardation – claiming them to be expert financial analysts. {They were] essentially props in a multi-million-dollar tax-fraud.

The court found that Browder, Magnitsky and team were “wittingly aware that no work will be performed by the disabled people ” and carried out their scheme “without creating jobsites for them” . Browder was responsible for filing these sham companies’ tax returns – which he duly signed.

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“A scheme to loot Russia’s wealth and park it in the West”

You know way back in 1974 I was able to spend a week in Budapest, Hungary it was a real eye opener on many levels, mostly the insane destruction that the two World Wars brought. I was told a joke I’ll never forget.

I was asked,

“What’s the difference between the Communism and Capitalism?
You see under Communism people exploit their fellow humans.
In the Capitalism, it’s exactly the other way around.”

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Here is a link to the full film that exposes the lies behind the whole Magnitsky Act saga. The film was banned out of all public screening in the U.S.

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Is this just some interesting history? I get there’s a twist and Browder is shady, but isn’t he exposed in the end? What’s the take away fir now? Should the Act be repealed?

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CC wants a picture of the real Russia (whatever that means) and turns to a Bill Browder’s expose, a person who made hundreds of millions off of the dismantling of state industry and theft of state assets

Browder was one of the biggest cheerleaders for Putin according to the Economist when he was “earning” 100s of millions with his hedge fund in russia

It all turned to sh@t when his investment into gazprom was littered with tax fraud chargers that putin all of a sudden turned into a authoritarian dictator.

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I think I said, I don’t know what the “real” Russia is like.
Though I believe I have learned enough that I would never want to visit the place, let alone imagine living there. Even if Siberia is actually an awesome place, and not just a giant prison colony.

I dream of a better America, I don’t dream of running away from America.

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So you turn to browder ?.

Sounds like MAGA

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What’s your vision of a better future? Is it great?

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A question for the poster who brought this up

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Why so many threads related to Russia if it’s not to spread misinformation and disinformation, as well as Russian propaganda?

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Who started the threads?