Bloomberg writer Joe Nocera says Russian kleptocrat Bill Browder is the “man Putin can’t get out of his head.” But Browder is the man Bloomberg and the west won’t let any of us forget. Here’s why.
Bill Browder’s claim to fame is that he, the American-born Jewish tycoon who worked to destroy Russia during the Yeltsin era, is Putin’s enemy number one. The banking villain who created the investment fund Hermitage Capital Management for the purpose of stealing trillions of dollars in Russian assets. Let’s just call big investment banking what it really is here. Browder’s intention of using Hermitage to soak up the wealth of Russia when the country was at its weakest is a matter of history.
The grandson of the US Communist leader arrived in Russia after the Soviet collapse and grabbed an enormous fortune using opaque financial transactions. Browder would have been okay in his position as transplant oligarch, except for two big mistakes. First and foremost, he got way too big for his britches and ran afoul of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had been lenient with opportunists from the Yeltsin era. Secondly, the American chiseler in Moscow got too greedy and hired a shyster accountant named Sergei Magnitsky to evade Russian taxes altogether. This facet shows who Browder really is more than any other aspect of his dealings because Russian taxes on oligarchs are virtually nothing anyway. A business leader has to be the ultimate miser to try and chisel the state out of relatively paltry sums. Browder is a miserly psycho, which is further indicated in his relentless pursuit to develop Putin haters.
No Bloomberg story will reveal to the potential Putin detractors how Magnitsky established dummy companies in tax-free zones of Russia, like remote Kalmykia for the purpose of tax evasion. Browder’s bean counter extraordinary used the tax-free status had been remote Russian areas for improving their economies in order that Hermitage and subsidiaries could benefit from the fake companies set up in these states. It is also suggested Magnitsky went so far as to set up dummy companies made up of handicapped people in order to use their tax-free status. But before we go on framing Bill Browder, let’s look at how the banking scum of the world started their Russian feeding frenzy in the first place.
When President Boris Yeltsin announced the first round of privatizations, the result was to issue vouchers to all Russian citizens that would buy the bearer about 10,000 rubles worth of shares in selected state enterprises. However, within a few months, almost all of these vouchers were bought up through intermediaries for cash. So, the wealth of state enterprise in Russia ended up in the hands of people like the notorious Mr. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and other power brokers. This was stage one of the embezzlements of the Russian legacy. Stage two is where Browder and a few other resource thieves moved in. When Yeltsin came up for re-election, his popularity was at about 5%. The Russian leader needed monetary and PR support, and big time, if he was going to maintain power. At this point, a cadre of willing banksters and mafiosos in the media business and banking was recruited to finance Yeltsin’s campaign while ensuring Yeltsin’s message is the one in everyone’s ear. This all led to the second round of privatizations in the Yeltsin era, and that is where Browder and his ilk came in.
There is some evidence that the whole Yeltsin privatization fiasco was assisted by the deep state in the US and in Britain. A story about billions being transferred from the National Republic Bank of New York and the United States Federal Reserve so that Russian assets could be bought bears rethinking here (See The Money Plane). This story fills in some of the gaps in Browder’s dealings and how he came to raise the money for Hermitage in the first place. It was Edmond Safra who forked over the original $25 million Browder needed to play in the Russia game, and Safra was implicated in the Friedman “Money Plane” story about money laundering. Safra was also linked to Boris Berezovsky, another kleptocrat banished by Putin for his evil deeds in Russia.
I’ve no desire to launch into the whole story of the nastiness this carrion carried out in Russia. What I want to make plain here is how people like Browder, people who should be behind bars and afraid to pick up the soap in the shower, end up heroes of the American Congress. Browder is the man who has contributed most to the new cold war between the West and Russia. People in the thousands die or are destroyed because of such men. And American journalists like former Fortune Magazine editorial director Joe Nocera aid Browder and his new-mafia partners. Browder is bolstered and empowered by crooks and nincompoops alike. As for Browder and his getting the U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, he probably blackmailed the American government with information tying the so-called Money Plane and the U.S. attempt to set up a puppet government in post-Soviet Russia. The Americans did not eliminate Browder because he could be a useful chess piece against Putin’s Russia. And here we are.
One final note on Browder and his role in the current Cold War. Few people take note of the fact that Sofra and Browder were silent partners with Israeli billionaire and diamond magnate, Beny Steinmetz. In his book, Browder talks about Steinmetz being one of the reasons he began investing in Russia in the first place. It’s also no coincidence that at the time the “Money Plane” was flying into Russia, Bill Clinton was presiding over an American government that found nothing wrong with channeling billions to the Russian mafia.
Safra’s alleged involvement with the Iran-Contra affair, Steinmetz being fingered for corruption in Romania, the breadth of these people’s dastardly practices is staggering. These modern mafiosos carried out criminal businesses from Guinea to the Congo and back, and Browder was partners with them. In his book “The Killing of William Browder,” author Alex Krainer frames the truth of Bill Browder perfectly. The Hermitage Capital founder was all-in for Vladimir Putin when the new Russian president was snuffing out corrupt pirates like Yukos oligarch Mikhael Khodorkovsky. But when the corruption microscope turned to Browder and friends, he became another useful western globalist idiot. Krainer characterizes the life of Browder in Russia with this revelation about the businessman’s “Safra” connection:
“In 1998 he confronts a rival investment group that attempted to defraud him and its investors in a fight to recover the money even at considerable risk to his own life. The situation was so serious that his largest investor, Israeli-Bazilian banker Edmond Safra sent Browder a squad of 15 heavily armed bodyguards with four armored vehicles.”
The author goes on to point out that Browder prized his co-investors and the money more than his wife and newborn child, both of whom were in Moscow at the time other mobsters were set to kill Browder. Eventually, his wife left him taking their infant son with her, but Browder managed to stay alive and to be supported by his key investors. Shifting to the 29 September 2010 introduction of the Magnitsky Act by United States Senators Ben Cardin, John McCain, Roger Wicker and Joe Lieberman, we come full circle in painting in the real world of William Browder, Putin enemy number one. McCain? Really? What a coincidence that a senator with ties to organized crime and the military industrial complex pushed so hard for Browder. “The Killing of William Browder” goes on to reveal just who Washington D.C. is in bed with, and Bloomberg certifies its own position in this mafioso mess every day a piece supporting these criminals is printed. The more time and evidence that passes, the more likely it is Russia-1 TV’s documentary “The Browder Effect” is the actual truth of Browder. This film suggests Bill Browder was not actually after money, but that he was probably a spook set in place to help the globalists finish off Russia for good. Given all we see arrayed against Putin and Russia, this reality answers a great many questions about the man who almost magically appeared in the center of Russia’s turbulent economics.
It’s probably true that Vladimir Putin cannot get Bill Browder out of his head. The man trying to save Russia for Russians has many world-class criminals aligned against him. U.S. senators, British ministers, Rothschild bankers and George Soros, the world of Vladimir Putin is fraught with such dangerous villains. But then again, it’s our world too. Bloomberg just won’t let me get Bill Browder out of my head either. Maybe this is a good thing.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”