Bill Browder
| Bill Browder | |
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Browder at the Annual Meeting 2011 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 27, 2011
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| Born |
William Felix Browder April 23, 1964 Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Nationality | British (formerly American) |
| Education | Stanford, MBA; Chicago, BSc Economics; University of Colorado Boulder (transferred) |
| Employer | Hermitage Capital Management |
| Title | CEO |
| Children | Joshua Browder |
| Parent(s) |
Felix Browder (father) Eva Browder (mother) |
| Relatives |
Earl Browder (grandfather) William Browder (uncle) Andrew Browder (uncle) |
 Browder's testimony on the Foreign Agents Registration Act before the Senate Judiciary Committee, July 27, 2017, C-SPAN
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William Felix Browder (born 23 April 1964) is an American-born British financier. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund that at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. He gave up his U.S. citizenship in 1998 to avoid paying taxes related to foreign investment. After having business in Russia for 10 years, Browder was refused entry to Russia in 2005 as a threat to national security; he has said it was because he exposed corruption.
After the death in prison in 2009 of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and auditor who had represented his company and conducted an investigation into massive tax fraud related to it, Browder lobbied for Congress to pass the "Magnitsky Act", a law to punish Russian human rights violators, which was signed into law in 2012 by President Barack Obama. In 2013, Browder was tried in absentia in Russia for tax fraud, jointly in a posthumous prosecution of Magnitsky. He was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison. Interpol rejected Russian requests to arrest Browder, saying the case was political. In 2014, the European Parliament voted for sanctions against 30 Russians believed complicit in the Magnitsky case; this was the first time it had taken such action.
In July 2017, Browder testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election through use of persons in Washington, DC.
On October 19, 2017, Canada enacted its own Magnitsky Act, which allows for the freezing of assets and visa bans on officials from Russia and other nations considered to be guilty of human rights violations, and prohibits Canadian firms from dealing with foreign nationals who have grossly violated human rights. Other countries including Estonia, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom, have also enacted their own version of the Magnitsky Act.
On October 21, 2017, in retaliation for the Canadian Magnitsky Act, Putin attempted to place Browder on Interpol's arrest list. After a protest by U.S. Congressional leaders, his visa was restored the following day. Putin's arrest-warrant request was rejected by Interpol on October 26, 2017.
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