by Bill Browder
Next was security, then check-in at the gate, and then just getting off the ground. All of these hurdles were cleared too, but there was one more. The purchase of this ticket could have tripped a wire, and it was entirely possible that some of the bad guys would be waiting for him at the Khabarovsk airport when he landed. He tried to sleep on the overnight flight that crossed seven time zones, but it was impossible.
Finally, exhausted and frayed, Eduard landed in Khabarovsk. The plane taxied to a stop. A stairway on a truck was driven to the side of the plane. The door opened, and the few passengers got off and made their way into the terminal. When Eduard ducked his tall frame under the plane’s door, he saw a car waiting right there on the tarmac. His heart skipped a beat, but then he saw Mikhail standing next to it, a welcoming smile on his face.
Eduard walked down the stairway, his small carry-on in hand and, without ever setting foot in the terminal, was whisked to a nondescript hotel in a suburb where Mikhail checked him in under an assumed name.
• • •
We had no idea where Eduard was, what he was doing, or if he was safe. But while we were powerless to help him in Russia, that didn’t mean we couldn’t find out more about what was being used to frame him.
In early September, we received copies of materials from the court in Kazan. The most ominous document was a witness statement from Viktor Markelov, the convicted killer who’d stolen our companies. He’d sworn he’d done everything at the direction of a man named Oktai Gasanov, who’d died of a heart attack two months before the theft. Furthermore, Markelov claimed that Gasanov took all of his instructions from Eduard Khayretdinov, and that Eduard received all of his orders from me.
We now understood exactly what would happen if Eduard stayed in Russia. The corrupt officers at the Interior Ministry would eventually find him and arrest him. Once in custody, he would be tortured until he gave testimony implicating both of us in the theft of the $230 million. If he complied, they might go easy on him and make him serve only a few years in a penal colony. If he refused, they would kill him, and everything Markelov, the convicted killer who stole our companies, claimed would be accepted as the official “truth” in Russia.
We had to find a way to get this information to him. Vadim gave some of Eduard’s contacts in Moscow a simple message in case they were in touch with him: “New information has come to light. Your life is in danger. Please leave as soon as possible.”
• • •
Unbeknownst to us, Eduard eventually received this message. But even then, he was not ready to give in. He thought that if our complaints about the theft of the $230 million were reviewed by someone high enough in the government, then everything could still be resolved.
But even Mikhail, his host, was getting nervous and thought that it was becoming too dangerous for Eduard to stay in Khabarovsk. He assigned Eduard two armed bodyguards, who moved him to Mikhail’s dacha in the woods, a hundred miles from town. There, Eduard had electricity from a generator, a satellite phone, and a car. It was picturesque country, blanketed by softwoods and birch, and dotted with fish ponds.
After two weeks in the country, Eduard got a message from Mikhail. One of Eduard’s most trusted confidants was making a special trip to Khabarovsk to deliver a message to Eduard in person. Eduard took this as a good sign—why would someone come all the way to the Far East only to deliver bad news? Two days later Eduard and the guards got into the car and left the dacha to meet the man from Moscow at a café on the outskirts of Khabarovsk. When his friend arrived, Eduard’s hopes were almost immediately dashed. His friend shook his hand with a grave look of concern. They sat and ordered tea and began to talk.
“We’ve tried everything,” the man said. “There are some very powerful people involved. Nothing is going to change. This is not going away.”
“But why come all the way here just to tell me that?”
The man leaned forward. “Because, Eduard, I wanted to tell you face-to-face—you must leave Russia. You’re in danger of being killed. These people who are after you will stop at nothing.”
This shook Eduard to the core. After this meeting, he called Mikhail and said, “I need to get out of Russia. Can you help?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Mikhail said.
Since Russia is such a decentralized country, the power of an influential businessman in some areas could rival that of the Moscow Interior Ministry. Mikhail was one of the most important businessmen in the region, and Eduard had no choice but to put his faith in Mikhail’s influence. He had to hope that it would help him navigate the security and immigration checkpoints that every traveler had to pass through on their way out of the country.
Mikhail arranged to have a local fixer escort Eduard through the airport all the way to the gate. Eduard asked over and over if this fixer would be able to get the border agents to let him pass. Mikhail just told him not to worry. Of course, Eduard couldn’t help but worry.
On October 18, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., Eduard went to the airport and was met by the fixer, a short man with friendly eyes in a well-tailored, gray suit. Eduard already had a UK visa, so he went to the Asiana ticket desk and bought a round-trip economy ticket to London via Seoul. Eduard checked in and waited until an hour before the flight to go through security and passport control. When he couldn’t wait any longer, he and the fixer walked toward security.
They walked straight to the front of the security line and went through. The fixer stayed with Eduard the whole time, nodding and winking at the security people, and even shaking a few hands. Eduard put his bags on the scanning belt, presented his boarding pass, and went through the metal detector.
They then moved toward passport control, and when they reached the immigration booth, the fixer shook hands with the border guard and they exchanged pleasantries.
The guard then took Eduard’s passport. He placed it on his desk, looked at Eduard, looked back to the fixer, found a blank spot in the passport, slammed his stamp onto a red-ink pad, and punched the stamp onto the paper. He didn’t even bother to look at his computer. He closed the passport and handed it back. Eduard’s eyes met those of the fixer. He winked. “Thank you,” Eduard said. He turned and hurried to his gate. He had only a few minutes until the doors closed.
He made the flight, and the plane took off. Not until two hours later, when Eduard could see that the plane was flying over the Sea of Japan and was therefore out of Russian airspace, did he finally, after all these weeks, feel at ease.
He was out.
• • •
Later that day in London, Vadim’s phone rang with a number whose country code he didn’t recognize. He picked up. “Hello?”
“Vadim! It’s Eduard.”
Vadim jumped from his chair. We hadn’t heard from Eduard in nearly two months. Every day we’d swung between hope and despair, wondering if he was safe or dead or somewhere in between. “Eduard!” Vadim exclaimed. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m in Seoul.”
“Seoul?”
“Yes, Seoul. I’m coming to Heathrow on the next Asiana flight. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
“So you’re safe?”
“Yes, yes. We have a lot to talk about. I’ll see you soon.”
The next evening at 7:00 p.m., a car picked up Eduard at Heathrow and brought him straight to the offices on Golden Square. As soon as he walked through the door, we took turns giving him big, backslapping hugs. Though I’d met him only once before in my life, it was as if I were being reunited with a long-lost brother.
When we finally settled down, Eduard told us his story, with Vadim and Ivan taking turns translating. We were rapt, and when he finished, I said, “That’s amazing, Eduard. Truly amazing. Thank God you made it.”
He nodded. “Yes, thank God is right.”
That evening, I allowed myself a moment to savor that Eduard was safe, but our problems were nowhere near over.
While Eduard had been underground, Sergei was still fully exposed in
Moscow. In late September, we’d come across an article in an obscure Moscow business weekly called Delovoi Vtornik. The title of the piece was “Purely English Fraud.” It repeated the now familiar claim—that Eduard and I were the masterminds behind the fraud—but it slipped in a name we’d never seen in print before: Sergei Magnitsky.
After this, Vadim tried to convince Sergei to leave, but Sergei steadfastly refused. He insisted that nothing would happen to him because he had done nothing wrong. He was also indignant that these people had stolen so much money from his country. He was so adamant and believed so faithfully in the law that, on October 7, he actually returned to the Russian State Investigative Committee to give a second sworn witness statement. Once again, he sought to use procedure to insert more evidence into the official record, and this time he provided a number of additional details about the fraud and who was behind it.
This was a bold move. It was also a worrying one. While I couldn’t help but be impressed by Sergei’s determination and integrity, given what they had tried with Eduard and Vladimir, I was terrified that they would just detain him on the spot. Remarkably, they didn’t.
On the morning of October 20, 2008, Ivan made another attempt to convince Sergei: “Listen, all of our lawyers are being targeted. Eduard is here. Vladimir is here. We’ve seen materials with your name on them. I believe that something very bad is going to happen to you if you stay, Sergei.”
“But why would anything happen?” Sergei asked, sticking to his guns. “I haven’t broken any laws. They’re only after Eduard and Vladimir because they fought the fraudulent lawsuits in court. I never did that. There’s no reason for me to leave.”
“But you must leave, Sergei. They’ll arrest you. Please. I beg you.”
“I’m sorry, Ivan. The law will protect me. This isn’t 1937,” Sergei said, referring to Stalin’s purges, when people were disappearing left and right at the hands of the secret police.
There was no changing Sergei’s mind. He was staying in Russia and we could do nothing about it. He was of a different generation than Vladimir and Eduard. Both of them had been adults during the Soviet era and had seen firsthand how capricious the government could be. If powerful people wanted you arrested, then you were arrested. The law didn’t matter. Sergei, on the other hand, was thirty-six years old and had come of age at a time when things had started to improve. He saw Russia not how it was but how he wanted it to be.
Because of this, he didn’t realize that Russia had no rule of law, it had a rule of men.
And those men were crooks.
29
The Ninth Commandment
Early on the morning of November 24, 2008, three teams of Interior Ministry officers reporting to Lieutenant Colonel Artem Kuznetsov moved out across Moscow. One team made its way to Sergei’s home. The other two were headed to the apartments of junior lawyers who reported to Sergei at Firestone Duncan.
When Irina Perikhina, one of those junior lawyers, heard the knock on her door, she was sitting at her vanity. Like any self-respecting thirtysomething Russian woman, she wouldn’t be caught dead talking to anyone without her makeup on. Instead of answering, she continued to brush on mascara and apply lipstick. When she was finally done and went to the door, no one was there. The police had given up and left, thinking the apartment was empty.
Boris Samolov, another of Sergei’s lawyers, was luckily not living at his registered address when the knock came. He avoided the police altogether.
Sergei, however, was at home with Nikita, his eight-year-old son. Sergei was getting himself ready for work and Nikita for school. His eldest son, Stanislav, was already gone. Sergei’s wife, Natasha, hadn’t been feeling well that morning and had gone to see the doctor.
When the knock came, Sergei opened the door and was faced with three officers. He stepped aside and let them in.
The Magnitsky family lived in a modest two-bedroom apartment on Pokrovka Street in central Moscow. Over the next eight hours the officers turned the apartment upside down. When Natasha returned from the doctor, she was shocked and scared, but Sergei wasn’t. As they sat in Nikita’s bedroom, he whispered, “Don’t worry. I’ve done nothing wrong. There’s nothing they can do to me.” The police were still there when Stanislav returned home from school. He was angry, but Sergei, in his calm voice, assured him that everything would be fine.
The police finished their search at 4:00 p.m. They confiscated all of Sergei’s personal files and computers, family photos, a stack of children’s DVDs, and even a paper airplane collection and sketchbook that belonged to Nikita. They then arrested Sergei. As he was being led away, he turned toward his wife and children, forced a smile, and said he’d be back soon.
• • •
Thus began the tragic ordeal of Sergei Magnitsky. I learned about it in fits and starts over several months, but it’s an ordeal that I have never stopped thinking about.
I learned about the search of his home in real time. In the midafternoon of November 24, Vadim rushed to my desk with a panicked look on his face. “Bill, we need you in the conference room now!”
I followed him. I knew what he was going to tell me. Ivan, Eduard, and Vladimir were already there. As soon as I closed the door, Vadim said, “Sergei’s been arrested!”
“Shit.” I fell into the nearest chair, my mouth suddenly dry. Dozens of questions and images ran through my head. Where was he being held? On what grounds had they arrested him? How did they frame him?
“What’s going to happen next, Eduard?” I asked.
“He’ll be given a detention hearing where he’ll either be granted bail or put into a detention center. Almost certainly the latter.”
“What are those like?”
Eduard sighed and avoided my eyes. “They’re not good, Bill. Definitely not good.”
“How long can they hold him?”
“Up to a year.”
“A year? Without charging him?”
“Yes.”
My imagination launched into overdrive. I couldn’t help but think of the American TV show Oz, about a Harvard-educated lawyer who gets thrown in jail with horrific and violent criminals at a fictional New York State correctional facility. It was only a TV show, but the unspeakable things that happened to this character made me shudder when I considered what Sergei was about to face. Were the authorities going to torture him? Would he be raped? How would a gentle, erudite, middle-class lawyer deal with a situation like this?
I had to do whatever I could to get him out of there.
My first move was to get Sergei a lawyer. He requested a well-known attorney from his hometown named Dmitri Kharitonov. We hired him immediately. I assumed Dmitri would share any information he learned about Sergei’s situation, but he turned out to be extremely guarded. He was certain his phone was being tapped and his email monitored. He wanted to communicate with us only in person, and that could only happen when he would be in London, in mid-January. I found this arrangement highly unsatisfactory, but if this was the lawyer Sergei wanted, I couldn’t possibly argue.
My next move was to see the new head of the Russia desk at the Foreign Office, Michael Davenport, a Cambridge-educated lawyer roughly my age. Unlike his predecessor, Simon Smith, I didn’t warm to Davenport. I’d met him several times before to brief him on our troubles with the Russians, but he seemed to view me as a businessman who’d gotten what he deserved in Russia and didn’t merit the attentions of the British government.
Now that a vulnerable human being was involved, I hoped his attitude would change.
I went to his office on King Charles Street and he ushered me in. He pointed to his wooden conference table and we sat opposite each other. He asked his assistant to bring us some tea, then said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Browder?”
“I have some bad news from Russia,” I said quietly.
“What’s happened?”
“One of my lawyers, a man named Sergei Magnitsky, has been arrested.”
Davenport stif
fened. “One of your lawyers, you say?”
“Yes. Sergei discovered the massive tax-rebate fraud I told you about earlier in the year. And now the Interior Ministry officers who committed the crime have taken him into custody.”
“On what grounds?”
“We’re still trying to figure that out. But if I had to guess, it would be tax evasion. That’s how these guys operate.”
“That’s very unfortunate. Please, tell me everything you know.”
I gave him all the details as he took notes. When I was finished, he promised authoritatively, “We will raise this issue at an appropriate time with our counterparts in Russia.”
I’d met enough diplomats by that point to know this was standard Foreign Office speak for “We’re going to do jack shit for you.”
The meeting didn’t last much longer. I hurried out, hopped into a black taxi, and headed back to the office. As we drove through Trafalgar Square, my phone rang. It was Vadim.
“Bill, I just got some bad news from my source Aslan.”
“What is it?”
“He told me that the Interior Ministry has assigned nine senior investigators to Sergei’s case, Bill. Nine!”
“What does that mean?”
“A normal criminal case gets one or two. A big one might get three or four. Only a huge political case like Yukos would have nine.”
“Shit!”
“There’s more. He also said that Victor Voronin, the head of Department K of the FSB, was personally responsible for Sergei’s arrest.”
“Fuck,” I muttered, and hung up the phone.
Sergei was in big trouble.
• • •
Sergei’s bail hearing took place at the Tverskoi District Court in Moscow two days after his arrest. The police had no evidence of a crime and no legal basis for keeping him in custody. Sergei and his lawyers thought that with such a flimsy case, bail would be granted for sure.
As they assembled in court, they were confronted with a new investigator from the Interior Ministry, a thirty-one-year-old major named Oleg Silchenko, who was so boyish-looking that he didn’t even appear qualified to give evidence to a court. He could have been an intern in Sergei’s tax department at Firestone Duncan, or a graduate student at Moscow State University. But Silchenko was wearing a crisp blue uniform, and as he aggressively presented his “evidence,” he showed that he was every inch an officer at the Interior Ministry.