Red Notice

Starred review from November 10, 2014
In Russia the gangsters are running the government, according to this fascinating firsthand story of state criminality and persecution. Browder, founder of the hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management (and grandson of American Communist Party leader Earl Browder), made his fortune investing in underpriced, privatized ex-Soviet companies and prodding their corrupt managers to divulge the truth about their assets. The enmity of Russian oligarchs—and, eventually, Vladimir Putin—got him expelled from the country, whereupon his companies were seized by a group of police officials and used to steal $230 million from the Russian Treasury. When Browder’s Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky unmasked the officials behind the conspiracy, Magnitsky was arrested, denied medical attention, and finally murdered in prison. Browder’s narrative lays out in vivid detail the often murky mechanisms of Russia’s kleptocratic economy, culminating in an engrossing account of what would surely be the heist of the century were it not so representative of business as usual. It’s also a chilling, sinister portrait of a society in which the rule of law has been destroyed by those sworn to enforce it. The result is an alternately harrowing and inspiring saga of appalling crime and undeserved punishment in the Wild East. Photos. Agent: Patrick Walsh, Conville and Walsh Literary Agency (U.K.).

February 1, 2015

This book is an entertaining and frightening example of the workings of risk and return, two elementary concepts in finance. In 2005, Browder, an investment manager, had made a fortune investing in post-Soviet Russia. The author describes in a breezy, conversational style how he antagonized Russian oligarchs who attempted to thwart his company's investments. He then ran afoul of the Russian government when his tax attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered tax fraud committed by Russian officials. After this, Browder says that the government arrested Magnitsky and murdered him. Russia attempted to have Interpol arrest Browder via a "Red Notice," an international arrest warrant, but several countries have refused to honor it. Through Browder's efforts, the United States enacted the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which imposed visa and banking restrictions on Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses. The only shortcomings in an otherwise captivating book are extensive reconstructed dialog and an absence of sourcing. VERDICT Rich characterizations and well-explained financial intrigue make this a compelling read. [See Prepub Alert, 8/11/14.]--Harry Charles, St. Louis

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2015
Browder was a successful businessman, a pioneering investor in the emerging market that was Russia after the collapse of the Soviet empire. In the 1990s, savvy investors were seeking out his hedge fund as a way to get in on astonishingly undervalued, newly privatized businesses in Russia. But along with privatization came the oligarchs, powerful Russians who took control of previously government-operated entities. After operating successfully for years, Browder ran afoul of the oligarchs and the government. He was suddenly persona non grata, expelled from Russia, leaving his company at the mercy of a tax scam$230 million in fraud committed by Russian government officials. From London he fought back, with help from Russian colleagues, including an attorney who uncovered the criminal enterprise and was eventually murdered. Browder offers a harrowing tale of corrupt business and political tactics, traceable all the way to President Putin, and the long struggle for justice that could have cost him his life. This is a revealing thriller of Russian financial and political corruption.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2014

American financier Browder was thrown out of Russia when he called down certain oligarchs for robbing the companies in which he was investing. Subsequently, his crusading attorney, Sergei Magnitsky, was arrested, tortured, and apparently beaten to death. Now Browder is on a quest to clear Magnitsky's name.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2014
An American-born financier spins an almost unbelievable tale of the "poisoned" psychology afflicting business life in Vladimir Putin's Russia.By 2000, Browder, founder and CEO of the Hermitage Fund, helmed "the best performing emerging-markets fund in the world." Taking full advantage of the unprecedented investment opportunities available during post-Soviet Russia's transition from communism to capitalism, a gangland business atmosphere where oligarchs operated with impunity, Browder's firm became the biggest investor in Russia's stock market. He owed his rise in part to his willingness to fight back, to alert Western business contacts, to inform the press and to file complaints with government authorities against those corrupting the business culture. For a while, his interests coincided with those of Putin, still busy consolidating power, doing his own bit to rein in the oligarchs. By 2005, however, secure in his authority, Putin revoked Browder's visa, branding him "a threat to national security." There followed a series of moves against Browder and Hermitage, including the raiding of the company's Moscow offices on trumped-up charges of tax evasion and, most notoriously, the arrest, imprisonment, beating and death of tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who had helped expose government crime. Browder's unceasing efforts to achieve justice for his murdered friend and employee culminated in the 2012 Magnitsky Act, a human rights landmark that named and shamed the responsible Russian officials. This well-paced, heartfelt narrative covers the author's personal life-he's the son of a famed mathematician and the grandson of Earl Browder, former head of the Communist Party USA-his business career, including brushes with the likes of fraudster Robert Maxwell and swashbuckling Ron Burkle; close relationships with billionaires Edmond Safra and Beny Steinmetz; his dealings on the Magnitsky Act with U.S. senators; and Putin's vindictive retaliatory measures against Browder and the act. It may be that "Russian stories never have happy endings," but Browder's account more than compensates by ferociously unmasking Putin's thugocracy.

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