Bill Browder on his war with Vladimir Putin

anyways so um uh I come from an unusual American Family my my grandfather was the head of the American Communist Party um between 1932 and 1945 and so in my um teenage rebellion I tried to figure out how do you Rebel from a family of communists and um you can't tell this when you look at me right now but I grew my hair long and it grew into an afro but that didn't upset my family uh uh I don't know how familiar you are here in Norway but I I followed the Grateful Dead around the country for a couple months um that also didn't upset my family but but then I figured out the perfect way of upsetting my family which was to put on a suit and tie and become a capitalist and that really did upset my family I went to Stanford Business School and I graduated in 1989 which was the year of the Berlin Wall came down and uh as I was trying to figure out what to do post business school one day I had an epiphany which is that if my grandfather was the biggest communist in America and the Berlin Wall has just come down I'm going to try to become the biggest capitalist in Eastern Europe and so that's what I set out to do I um I ended up moving to London and then eventually I moved to Moscow and I set up an investment fund called The Hermitage fund um which actually grew to become the largest investment Fund in the country so I achieved my um my um sort of goal of becoming the largest capitalist at least Western capitalists I should say and how was Russia during the 90s I mean The Story Goes about the wild 90s Cowboy capitalism a lot of chaos how was it to to operate in Russia well it was um it was both um uh exhilarating and heartbreaking right so um you know it was exhilarating in the sense that from a business standpoint they were basically giving everything away for free this they came up with this idea Mass privatization um they wanted to go from Yeltsin wanted to go from communism to capitalism and he said the best way to do that is to give everything away for free so everybody becomes All State Properties everybody becomes capitalist well that sounded pretty good and and um and as an investor it was particularly good because when they gave everything away for free these shares started trading at at some slight premium to free which was still free and so and so um it was just you know things traded at 99.7 discount like oil and gas companies to uh to the comparable companies in the west and so that was the exhilarating part um the heartbreaking part was that uh it ended up being a situation where nobody ended up getting anything really I mean the average Russian was destitute and 22 oligarchs ended up with 40 of the country and um and the destitution of these Russian citizens you couldn't feel anything but but absolute horror the um life expectancy for a male in Russia um when I first got there was 57 years old um why was why was it so low because um everybody was drinking committing suicide um you know there's no health care or just horrible um everybody had to basically rummage to with you know grow potatoes in their in their dacha plot to survive and it was just not a very pleasant thing and in a certain way that's that that destitution of of the whole country led to a backlash which is some every they they wanted the Russian people were hungry for order and um this nameless faceless guy that no one had ever heard of before named Vladimir Putin showed up and and as Yeltsin was uh no longer able physically to be president and and uh he promised the Russian people that he was going to restore order and and they went for it what was your first impression of uh Putin in many ways people say and and people who have dealt with him that it was a totally different put in in 2000 obviously and and it changed gradually what was your first impression of Putin manirad well I don't think anyone really changes that much I think that certain people so Putin um so what is so Putin was a little man he's like I don't know five foot four or something like that um he has no facial expressions he he um I don't know whether I mean I don't know whether he mastered this um he's not he's not actually that good at most things other than brutality but but he um he would be a great poker player if he played poker with him because he just he has this face you just can't tell anything from his face and um and Putin was whatever you wanted him to be when he first came into power so he he made a few very Grand promises restoring order bringing normalcy back to life getting rid of the oligarchs it all sounded pretty good and he was also a little scared of his job it wasn't like um he had been planning on this for his whole life he was totally an accidental president um Yeltsin was looking for a successor and Yeltsin picked three other people before Putin each one of them picked fired picked fired picked fired and and they were running out of time and so they picked this guy who nobody knew much about and um and so it wasn't like he was he had known in advance that he was going to be president and he showed up and he was pretty scared of the job and he was scared of the Russian people and so for the first couple years I would argue that he was he was sort of a boring technocrat um he wasn't this Tyrant like we see right now and and um I actually kind of liked him in the first year or two because he was doing economic reforms and I mean you know he would there was nothing exciting about him but but nobody wanted excitement people just wanted some something normal and and the thing that really um excited me at first was when he um arrested the first oligarch the biggest oligarch in Russia Mikhail hortikovsky the owner of yukos I thought wow you know one down and um a man of action and 21 to go but but before let me just go uh slightly backwards uh uh Bill and and there has been a lot of discussions about the way that Vladimir Putin rise to power and especially his FSB former KGB credits and I'm talking about uh the bombing of the apartment buildings in Moscow which at that time there was much Freer press in in Moscow and and Russia and there are hard evidence that the FSB not the Chechen terrorists who were framed for the uh the actions uh were behind it did you have an impression about it and and what does it say if it's true and and it certainly seems that way to me that he actually with his FSB comrades was behind bombing Moscow to get this political Capital to to continue the church in war and and have political Capital um really thank you for asking that question because it's the it's the original sin that leads us to today so um I was living in Moscow when this was going on and it was really interesting and horrifying so you live in Moscow apartment built a big apartment building blows up 100 people dead um and so you're sitting there thinking okay wow that's terrible it's a terrible terrorist Act and then another apartment building blows up and um and you think oh my God this is like a series of terrorist attacks and I could be next and there wasn't a person in Moscow in in that period in 1999 that didn't fear going to bed at night waking up and having their apartment bombed and so the entire city of Moscow wasn't just Moscow it was other neighboring places um all everybody was just on in a state of total tension and um and then they blamed it on the chechins and then the craziest thing happened which is that um there was a apartment but building I think it was in riazon which is um uh a different city a regional provincial City where um they were planning to blow up another building and whoever um was organizing this thing didn't tell the local police to stay away and some neighbor or some resident saw this and they surrounded the person they called the police and it turned out to be not a Chechen but a member of the FSB and everyone was they were the the and when the Russians mess up these things they they like say the wrong thing and they backpedal and so on and so forth and and and basically an FSB agent got caught doing it and it was so if he was doing that building obviously they were doing the other buildings um they came up with no idea that this was a training exercise to see how Vigilant everybody was and blah blah blah but the FSB was blowing up the apartment buildings but um they glossed over the fact that the FSB got caught they blamed it on the chechens um this little nameless faceless man named Vladimir Putin then announces he's going to go to war with these terrible terrorist apartment bombers and as he and he's and he made this famous speech he says that you know we're going to go after these people and we're going to bomb them even if we bomb them in the meaning the Outhouse using the word and um everyone said yes a strong man is here for us he's finally you know finally and um and and they go in and embark on this ruthless absolute destructive murderous War killing chechens left right and Center fifty thousand dead in grozny and and uh and the Russians love that and and his approval ratings go from zero no one ever heard of him to more than than 51 he wins the election and becomes properly formerly formally um the president and so why is this the original sin because Putin understands the the value of war in terms of popularity and um and that was the first time he did it to get to power and it wasn't the last time uh a leap forward now Bill and and the magnitsky story which has defined much of your uh relations with with Russia if you very briefly could tell them I know you have done it many times but what is the short short version here well the short version is that um as as I was running my investment Fund in Russia um it became obvious um that every one of the companies I was investing in was being robbed Blind by the oligarchs and so I decided to try to stop the um stealing I mean the only way I knew how which was to research how it was done and then share the research with the international media and um uh we we exposed gas prom spare Bank unified Energy Systems Sergo nefta gas all sorts of big Russian companies and um and for a while it the these expose worked in fact they worked because Putin was fighting with the same guy as I was fighting with the oligarchs who were stealing money for me were stealing power from Putin and he would step into these um into these uh situations and do something he would issue presidential decrees he would vote the state's shares he would do all sorts of interesting things that would help the the who put pressure on the oligarchs and and um help the share price then he arrested hortikovsky the owner of yukos the richest man in Russia and um uh and then after he arrested hortikovsky instead of arresting the second richest man in Russia um all the oligarchs go to him and say what do we have to do so we don't get arrested and he says 50 percent it was the biggest Shakedown operation in the history of the world he becomes the richest the richest man in Russia the richest man in the world and the biggest oligarch in Russia and I was continuing to to name and shame these um other people and but instead of going after his enemies I was going after his own interests I was expelled from Russia in 2005 declared a threat to National Security my office's Moscow were raided in 2007. They seized all of our documents I hire a young lawyer named Sergey magnitsky to investigate he discovers the documents seized from my um my office and my law firm's office were used to basically fraudulently re-register our companies and then after the companies were re-registered um the people who stole the companies then applied for a 230 million dollar illegal tax refund he discovered this he testified against the officials involved and those same officials arrested him in November of 2008 put him in pre-trial detention uh tortured him uh for 358 days and murdered him with rubber batons eight eight Riot guards with Robert batons beat him on November 16 2009 until he died and he was 37 years old he left a wife and and two children and since then um it was also sentence post-mortem wasn't it but so after after his uh after his murder I went on this mission to get Justice for him I made it my I put aside I no longer do business I'm not a fund manager anymore I became a full-time activist to go after the people who killed him and um uh I tried to get Justice for him in Russia and by the way he documented everything his his way of dealing with the uh horrible conditions in prison was to document it all and every once a month he would take a stack of these handwritten criminal complaints hand them to his lawyers his lawyer would file them nothing would happen we got copies and so we have them we have hugely detailed evidence of this torture and we expected at least some kind of low at least low level Justice getting the the physical executors of his murder but they circled wagons they they gave promotions to everybody involved or all the most important people involved from uh State honors promotions they um and then as you said they three years after they killed Sergey they put him on trial in the first ever trial against a dead man in the history of Russia um the uh and they um put me on trial list as co-defendant we were both found guilty um he was they couldn't do any more than sin to death they've sentenced me to nine years in prison in absentia and so it became obvious there was no chance whatsoever of getting Justice in Russia and so did Sergey magnitsky know what he was up against do you know the risks when he still wanted to fight for justice um Sergey magnitsky was um I would call a stubborn idealist um I think uh he he I think he knew there was a lot of really bad and dangerous forces in Russia but he also had this I guess misconceived belief that there was also some law in Russia and so when he was put in jail so I mean even before he was put in jail so after he testified against the officials involved before he was put in jail I I said you need to get out um and he said I have not done anything wrong and I I was I begged him to come to London and um he said he said that bill this is not 1937. it's not Stalin's Russia I haven't done anything wrong the law will protect me and um and so he stayed and then he got arrested and um uh and then when he was in jail they they um tortured him to try to get him to withdraw his testimony they put him in cells with 14 inmates and eight beds and left the lights on 24 hours a day to impose sleep deprivation they put him in cells uh with no window panes in December and Moscow and he nearly froze to death they put him in cells with no toilet just a hole in the floor with a sewage Bubble Up they moved from cell to cell and the purpose of all this was to get him to withdraw his testimony against these um corrupt police officers and they wanted him to sign a false confession to say that that he stole the 230 million dollars and he did so on my instruction and uh Sergey was a man of such integrity and principle that the idea of perjuring himself and bearing false witness was more for him more upsetting than the physical pain they were subjecting him to and he refused and it just got worse and worse and worse and and so I mean you know up until the very last moment of his life he he somehow thought that that you know good would Prevail and it just there was no good no good in the whole system and in your book freezing order you you tried to describe how you have tried to locate all the 230 millions and how the Russians and and the regime sort of money Lord ring and and is there a short version also to explain how they actually are able to launder money in Russia um well uh there's a short version explained and I'll do that but but it's um if you saw the diagram that we've created to um trace the money which we actually Trace so so I've spent 10 years tracing the money and the diagram is the most complicated thing you've ever seen in your entire life it's the most complicated thing but but in in very simple terms um uh if you want to send uh stolen money in Russia abroad you can't just send it to London and buy a house because the British Banks don't want to get money from directly from Russia so what are the what do the gangsters do they first in this particular case they they move the money to Moldova I don't know why Moldova is better than Russia but they did um and I think they controlled A Bank in Moldova and then from Moldova they sent money to Cyprus Lithuania Latvia and Estonia and they love Cyprus and the baltics because those countries are EU member states but they still have the same values as um as Russia and particularly um well I mean particularly all of them really and and to make matters um worse they would set up UK companies so the UK they would set up a company at British company's house and they would get British directors in some cases or other EU citizen directors they would then set up accounts for these UK companies at a Danish Bank in Estonia dansky Bank um and Dan ski bank that sounds pretty legit right British company British directors Danish Bank Estonia and so and then they move it from danske bank to you know another another uh maybe sweat bank and then nordia bank and um uh DNB the DNB that one of your Banks here yeah and uh and by the time it's gone through a bunch of these Banks and and and so it's gone through and all these accounts and all these Banks and British companies it all looks very legit and so then they send it to Paris and buy paintings or buy jewelry or in London they buy a house and um uh and it all looks um and it's gone through so many different permutations in in countries and banks that um by the time it gets there nobody's asking any questions and um and so we did this analysis and and um and every time we would find the money we would we would file a criminal complaint in the country where we found the money and we would then ask the law enforcement agencies to issue a freezing order which is then that's why that's called Freeze the book The English title is freezing order and I guess it's translated here in cold money which are not a bad it's not not a bad uh presentation and it's interesting a lot a lot of um a lot of my foreign Publishers couldn't translate freezing order for some reason them anyways um and so the money would would disperse all over the world but but I'll tell you something very interesting um what one of the things which we discovered and this is a huge Discovery and it explains why Putin is calling me out in uh Helsinki in places like that is that um from the Panama papers we discovered that um Putin got some of the money um now what I mean by that it didn't go to you know Vladimir Putin's personal bank account but one of the um the heroes or anti-heroes I should say of the Panama papers every country had an anti-hero and the anti-hero of for Russia was a a guy named Sergey roldugin and Sergey Gabriel Dougan um was was Notorious because he was a cellist and he was worth two billion dollars and the next richest cellist in the world is Yo-Yo Ma um most of us have heard of him he's only worth 25 million so how does this cellist get to be worth 2 billion and by the way the money that he gets is like gifts from oligarchs gifts from State Banks um mate doesn't make any sense and um and so you then look at his background it turns out this cellist is not any old cellist he happens to be Putin's best friend from childhood he was a Godfather of Putin's um one of Putin's daughters and he's also the guy introduced Putin to his wife and so this cellist is not you know basically why do all these oligarchs give this guy the two billion dollars because he's not they're not giving it to him they're giving it to Vladimir Putin and he got him a Putin trust this guy so we discovered this guy received some of the money from the crime that Sergey magnitude was killed over so Vladimir Putin gets some of the money which is why he's so interested in this whole thing you mentioned that you filed uh complaints wherever you could find the money and and I guess my question is how well is this money laundering system understood in the in the west and how have their reactions been when you filed complaints well what's interesting so um uh the reaction has been bad for the most part I mean good in some places bad in others but why um why in different places different reasons so so let me summarize the thing so we we found most of the 230 million dollars that was stolen I think it's gone to 26 countries 16 of the countries open criminal investigations um what my home country Britain which was the recipient of the largest amount of money didn't and we and we filed six different criminal complaints let's try to get them to do it and they just wouldn't do it why wouldn't they do it either uh there's political direction that they don't want to rock the boat with Russia and by the way Britain has not investigated a single Russian money laundering case in 22 years since Putin has come to power but another country that didn't open a case when we filed the complaint is your country Yours Truly Norway um Norway uh didn't do anything some countries did um the United States did when we filed a criminal complaint they went like you know you didn't want to be on the other side of the Department of Justice when they when they came calling they um and other countries which are you would never expect Latvia has turned out to be one of the most robust countries they've Frozen and seized a bunch of different uh assets that we've identified um uh France has been really good they have a criminal case opened um Spain um Switzerland was good we froze 20 million dollars in Switzerland and they're now giving back 16 to the culprits um uh but in any case what uh so here I am highly resourced former hedge fund manager I've got money for lawyers I've I I've got a personal Vendetta I've been doing this for 10 years I've got a team of people working on it we're finding it all over the world um and and these are my resources you know if you if you were just you know is any law enforcement agency ever going to do anything about that no and so in in my analysis um it wasn't just 230 million dollars that was stolen from the Russian government it was we've been able to identify just through dansky bank uh 230 billion dollars that was stolen from Russia and that's just danske bank if you were to lift the hood at rifenbank um and UBS and credit Swiss and Deutsche Bank and a few others you probably get to a trillion dollars and that'll I would say that 99.9 of that money is safely offshore nobody's investigated no one's done anything about it you didn't you mentioned Deutsche Bank and Germany is a particular interesting case as I understand it you haven't found the publishing house in Germany you wanna translate your book yeah that's do you know why well so so so so what does it tell you about Russian Connections in Germany well let me just put this in context so I write my book freezing order um and in the publishing business um uh you're you're in the business of trying to identify a book um when the author comes to you usually before it's published whether it's going to be a bestseller or not because if it's a bestseller and you get the book and you're the publisher you sell a lot of copies and you make a lot of money it's a pretty good thing and so um we uh signed up uh I signed up my my UK my us publisher UK publisher in French and Norwegian before I publish the book and um uh we had trouble getting a German publisher so my agent says okay well let's just wait till the book is published see how it does because once it does well they automatically get Publishers if it does well so we publish it and it is an instant number one New York Times bestseller in the United States it sold five times as much as my first book red notice which is also a bestseller um and it becomes the number one bestseller in Canada a number one best seller in Australia a number one bestseller in the Netherlands another number one best seller in South Africa a number one bestseller in New Zealand and even after that we go to Germany and they will not touch I have don't have a German publisher I mean what in the world I mean so this is not about money because um so what is going on in Germany this is the same country that became that built North stream 2 that became more dependent on Russian gas when everybody knew that Russia was going to use gas as a this is a country where it's I mean it's interesting after my my first book was published um uh like you know I showed up here in Norway lots of you know Full House I show up in the Netherlands Full House I should have been in in Berlin where my book was published and we had a theater for the 200 people like 42 people were there there's something something about the German psychology which is they don't like people that they they don't like people being tough on Russia I think and have bad conscience for second world war or something yeah something like that and and um I don't know what it is but it's so strange so here I am you know uh I still don't have a German publisher so um I mean it's kind of in a certain way it's kind of a badge of honor at this point um so if there are any Germans here we have any questions right right uh I'm very soon going to open up for Q a from the audience I have some light against me but I think I have a a an overview to to notice that I have seen two people at once uh but before I go to the audience uh uh bill could you just again briefly uh just tell about the process around the magnitsky loss how they have uh how how they come to be and and how the processes has been so um when it was impossible to get Justice for Sergey magnitsky in Russia I said we need to get Justice outside of Russia and um how do you get Justice outside of Russia and the answer is um you go after their money in the west so what I what I've seen very clearly is they steal money in Russia and then they buy stuff in the west and so I went to Washington and I explained this idea of freezing their assets and banning their visas in the west to two senators a Democratic senator named Benjamin Cardin and a republican Senator John McCain and I said and I told them the story of how Sergey was tortured and killed and how he uncovered this crime and I said can we freeze their assets and ban their visas and these two senators said yes and that became the magnitsky ACT and originally the magnitsky Act was just for Russia and um at the time uh there was no pro-russian torture and murder Lobby in Washington and so um uh the uh when it went for a vote it passed 92-4 in the Senate um 89 of the House of Representatives and it became a federal law on December 14 2012. but you met some opposition from Obama and Hillary Clinton we did indeed so this was an interesting part of the story when I was uh well first of all America is is got a Constitution which says that the legislative branch Congress is a co-equal branch of government to the Executive Branch the White House and the administration and when when President Obama um became president um he wanted to quote reset relations with Russia he thought that George Bush was really had ruined things and he thought that he was a very charismatic guy and he could on the power of his own personal Charisma he could reset relations and and whether in resetting relations Matt meant that he wanted to basically not say anything to Putin that might upset him and so uh when I started coming around in 2010 asking for sanctions against Russians he didn't want to have it at all and he did everything he could to block on the magnitsky ACT but he can't block so he you know here the the government you know the the parliament the the majority of parliament is the government in in um in the United States you can be a Democrat um but you're not in the government and so the the Senate I mean it was just a logical thing nobody was no one would lose a single vote in the senate or the House of Representatives putting putting their vote on a law to ban Russian torturers and murderers to come to America and so it was just an obvious you know right thing to do this I mean there's a lot of ugly things in politics but this was just black and white and um Obama tried to stop it right up to the very end but um the power of the story and the and the power of democracy and the power of the Senate over overcame that and we ended up getting the magnusi Act passed in 2012. it became Global so it didn't just it was started with Russia but then it applied to um uh it became a global magnesium act going after China and Iran and Venezuela in 2016 in 2017 the Canadians passed their version of the magnitsky ACT uh 2018 Britain did 2020 the European Union did uh 2021 the Australians did and I believe that Norway is a 2021 Gunner 2021 Norway has a magnitsky act they don't call it magnitsky by the way they they the government wanted to sort of tip their hat to Putin and say we understand this upsets you and we don't want to call it magnitsky [Laughter] um uh I discovered it last week when I was being interviewed my my book is coming out in Icelandic and I was interviewed by an Icelandic journalist and and he said we have an Icelandic magnitsky act I said no way that's so there's an Icelandic one there's a one Kosovo Montenegro and so there's 35 magnitski acts in total and it's the um it's really become a huge tool for victims of Human Rights abuse and and one of the co-sponsors of tonight's event the Norwegian Helsinki commission has been with me the whole time and working on this and and now preparing uh applications for victims and all over the world and it really is it's remarkable when I um I get emails every day from people with the most horrific stories and they finally have some hope with the magnitsky act and so this really is sort of uh this is the success story had you imagined that it would been this successful when you started I I I don't want to use the word success you know in the same conversation as Sergey magnitsky but what it is it is it's a legacy you know Sergey has a legacy his death wasn't meaningless this is a but I they're not going to be while Putin's in power they're not going to build any monuments to Sergey magnitsky but this is a legal Monument to Sergey magnitsky and I feel you know that makes me sleep a little bit better at night that's great speaking about the Norwegian housing as the first Speaker I also note this the gentleman sitting over there and also Jan I don't know everybody's name here but some of you I do we will see how many we will have time for before further also one there please go now thank you so um in the helsink committee we have been supporting Bill's campaign for my next kilos for a long time and you were not always very impressed by in Norway I think he came out in the piece in Douglas already and I remember when I told you we actually have a magnesium law in Norway you were do you and yes we have and one of the reasons we have is that you all the time had some supporters even in the parliament where the Liberal Party were one of the I would say most consistent supporters of this idea Grande has part of the I think credit for this law and to really have you and um let's say the magnesi campaign understand the Norwegian law and its potential uh Force um we have made a report and we got some pro bono assistance from weak Bahrain to do it and this is our gift for you today I would say to all of you read Bill's books first and then this one thank you thank you that's very good uh good version I think you committed uh that's a good president Phil isn't it so so is this is the Norwegian sanctions act you need to re before you pass this out you should call this the Norwegian magnitsky sanctions act right I had a next Gentleman on the speaker's list sitting there and also I noticed yarn and one people sitting more behind yes you please hi uh my name is Steven uh thank you very much for a very interesting uh uh opinions to protos uh I wondered if you could weigh in on uh current events and based on your knowledge of Russia of Putin and the power apparatus that he's got uh with him uh what is the chance that he's going to be brought down and what's in the future of Russia the way you see it that's a great question yeah of course the you know the elephant in the room uh if you will um I think you can really draw a straight line from Sergey magnitsky to the war and let me do this um you know what we discovered was uh a trillion dollars of money stolen over a 22-year period and you know we started pulling on the magnitsky string that led us to dansky bank and then led us to this you know enormous theft and that was money that was supposed to be spent on the um Healthcare and schools and roads and public services instead it was spent on yachts and planes and Villas and you could do that for a year you can do that for three years you can do that for five years but can you do that for 22 years as a leader stealing all the money from your people and not have them eventually you know get Restless get angry get grumpy get hungry and particularly after two years of covid where everything was really stressed anyways and I think that Putin believed I'm sure the Putin believed that that he had a um uh a real probability at some point of some something happening that something unexpected happening that um where the the ma you know the match would light up and everything would go up in flames and he would be you know sitting in the Kremlin having to have a helicopter take him out because a million people would be on Red Square and um I think that that's Putin um did what every dictator does when they're afraid of their own people rising up which is to create a foreign enemy start a war and remember in the beginning of this conversation we talked about the war in chechnya served him very well in terms of becoming president the war in Georgia the the 2008 despite his approval ratings the Takeover of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine in 2014 spiked his approval ratings and I believe that this war is all about Putin desperate to stay in power and I should point out that if Putin ever were dethroned if he ever lost power it's not like he could just sort of um retreat in a dignified way to the Putin Presidential Library and paint and enjoy his yogan gains they would come for him so fast they would string him up from a lamppole and he would die and he understands this and so um this for him this is a struggle for life and death and for him he needs to stay in power and for him going to war is to stay in power and so what does this mean it means that that you can make any pledge you want about Ukraine being in NATO or not being in NATO and that's not really what this is all about you can make some you know in theory you could follow Emmanuel macron's you know wish to give Putin a piece of Ukraine and have him sign a peace treaty and that would be the end of it because that's not that's not the end of it War being at war is the objective the end game is not any end game is just being at War that's what he wanted and it worked by the way he went up to an 85 approval rating what didn't work was he his military was so incompetent and so corrupt and so hollowed out that they didn't succeed in in um in what they set out to do and this has turned into a spectacular Fiasco both in terms of sixty thousand Dead all equipment being burned shot destroyed um and and he was forced into a situation where if um if he didn't replenish his troops he would absolutely have lost the war in Ukraine and um as we had to do what he absolutely didn't want to do which is um it can script uh somewhere between 300 000 and a million new soldiers and in doing so um he's kind of done exactly the opposite of his original intention because people are not no longer you know cheering on a uh uh you know a war a patriotic nationalist War um they're all running for their lives or being sent to the front and cast cannon fodder and so it's hard to say how this is going to play itself out I do think that um it would be sort of foolish to bet against Putin um he he's done we've seen uprisings and all sorts of discontent before he always quashes them and this is different this is worse this affects people in a much more real way but um we've seen other dictators manage these situations Kim Jong-un the Iranians that they've kind of kept everything under wraps and so I I mean you know in an Ideal World Putin loses the war in Ukraine the ukrainians pushed the Russian soldiers back maybe even out of Crimea if that were to happen then I think the Russian people would take care of Putin very quickly get rid of him and if that were to happen there's a chance they would take care of the whole the not just Putin but the regime and if they took care of the regime then there's one person waiting in the wings um who is an alternative um which is Alexi navalny and if Alexi navalny who's sitting in jail and I think you all know who he is if he were the new president I think we wouldn't have war and I think we would have normal relations with Russia in the west but that's a that's a low probability scenario the most probable thing is we could be sitting here five or ten years from now and still talking about Vladimir Putin in the same way as we are about Bashir Assad um in in Syria by the way was saved by the Russians it was saved by the Russians we thought he was gone in six months since 10 years later he's still there I mean these evil regimes and the Iranians the same thing these evil regimes can really hold on for a long time and so the most likely scenario is that we're sitting here and and you know scratching our heads uh wondering what to do about Putin yeah we're in for the Long Haul uh Jan you're next I also uh recognized the gentleman sitting or a person sitting behind I haven't noticed anybody else also you're on the first row and I think that's what we have time for before 8 30 young thank you so much and thank you for for the speech despite and after Mario Poole after butcher after April still a lot of many Norwegian companies within fishing within shipping and within oil is doing business with Russia earning money on Russia what responsibility do you think that Luigi in industry or businesses and that still is earning money on Russia have and what risk do they take and the second question is Noah is still having the harbors open for rushing fishing chips or rushing fishing oligarchs what do you believe that Norway should do with sanction should it's time for closing the harbors is it also time for Norway to say like we did to South Africa enough is enough we close all trade and we stop trading with the dictatorship of Russia you know I um I I'm really perplexed when I come here so Norway so money is is the ultimate determiner of almost everything and Norway has all the money in the world this is the richest country in the world per capita maybe with the exception of Qatar and so Norway really has the financial ability to take the moral High Ground as Norway did with South Africa and I'm watching other countries far far poorer make huge sacrifices to do the right thing in the situation with Russia where people where the maps of Europe are being redrawn where women are being raped where children are being killed and where it's the right thing to do to starve Putin of his financial resources and I hear and this is this is I've been talking about this all day with with journalists have been asking me the same question that Norway is like continuing to conduct business with Russia and the fishing business and other things and I'm thinking to myself of all the countries in the world you know if if the fishing industry needs financial support The Government Can subsidize them but to be doing to take to not take a moral position here is just shameful and unethical and really um puts the whole country in a bad light for for a small number of people and I and I hope I hope that um that that policy changes that that um the the what business is being conducted um ceases because it's it's the responsibility of everybody to starve Putin of his resources and and a lot of other people who have a lot less money are doing it um and doing it very bravely and Norway should follow suit I noticed uh yes you please speak into the mic thank you uh my name is Elizabeth thank you for a great uh discussion I had a question related to the magnitsky ACT um a lot of the criticism of the magnific has been that the people who remain or end up on these lists of sanctions do not have the right to a fair trial and of course we know also in the case of beninsky it was clearly not a fair trial how do you defend that and also maybe to know a little bit of what are the enforcement mechanisms and what are the results that have been achieved through the different magnitsky Acts thank you um so when when we were conceiving of the magnitsky act and I was going around different governments and parliaments around the world that was the obvious question which is um if this is an administrative act where you free someone's assets then what what are the rights of the person whose assets have been frozen and uh in every country um in the world where we have a magnitsky act there is a right of appeal and so um uh it's not it's not such a terrible thing if you believe somebody if the government has a has evidence that somebody is involved in human rights abuse to freeze their assets and if that evidence turns out to be wrong it's not a such a terrible thing for the person to go back and say you're wrong in the same way as if you're arrested for murder and and it turns out that you can exonerate yourself and so the only thing unusual about the magnitsky ACT is they freeze the assets first and then um and then give the person a chance to appeal but that's no different than a situation where somebody has defrauded somebody and and you go into court and you get something called a ex parte freezing order and so um it's all designed to um to be uh to be as Fair as it can be in a situation like this and the magnitsky ACT um uh what I'll tell you is that in the U.S which is the main which has been the main user of the magnitsky ACT um uh I think they've sanctioned more than 500 people and entities um there hasn't actually there hasn't the people who are sanctioned are such villains um and that really it's so hard to get someone on the magnitsky list that they really picked the low-hanging fruit that nobody has has um appealed a lot of people have appealed being sanctioned for Ukraine a lot of oligarchs have appealed at the EU and even the U.S but nobody has appealed their magnitsky designations because um uh you can't appeal saying it's wrong to be sanctioned um for human rights abuse you can appeal and say I didn't do the human rights abuse or you can you could appeal and say I'm not the person who did those human rights abuses but nobody has appealed being on on the magnitsky list and and it's it's very powerful and we know it's powerful by how much Putin hates it uh last questions from the audience you get to make speak into it hi hello so my name is Sophie I have a podcast called the political bark and I ask I always ask a lot of questions I have a bit of a personal question um I'm very curious about your first incentive and interest in Russia before you uh moved there and started doing business there and became the the biggest foreign investor I'm curious to know um why you wanted to enter Russia and uh yeah the first incentives and uh knowing especially how to totalitarian countries are a run um from the outside why the interest and also the huge success you did have in Russia uh until things got very messy that's a fairly big question so if you have another question you can have two questions and that's that's okay well so so um uh well you know when I when I was um I mean it was you know so I had this whole grandfather thing going where I went was sort of rebelling from my grandfather and I had this really weird um uh kind of um romantic romanticized view of of the um uh of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union uh and and I and and it was all after it broke up so uh I I was I thought I was going to be the guy involved in in you know bringing you know capitalism and and and civilization to this crazy sort of uh Jungle of of former Soviet chaos and um and for a while it was kind of it kind of worked that way um you know that I was there from the what I when it went from a financial perspective I was telling everyone we're on we're on the horrible to bad transition um it doesn't have to get good here it just has to go from horrible to bad and it did it went from horrible to bad um and that went from bad back to horrible um and and that was really the the heartbreaking part of the whole thing is that it could have gone it could have kept on I mean if if um if we had just gone on the trajectory that Putin had started in his first two or three years and he hadn't gotten all corrupt and dictatorial and and and uh you know there's this expression that power corrupts an absolute power corrupts absolutely if he hadn't gotten so tyrannical you know it might it it could have been it could have been a different story but um he he didn't want to get rid of the oligarchs he just wanted to be the biggest oligarch himself if you have a second question you have the chance now but make it short no I have too many actually yeah but you have one um [Music] I think a question is then a bit about your romantic relationship with Russia and your interest would you have stayed in Russia if things were a bit better back in the days if they think business was good so would you have stayed uh otherwise definitely you know we this is this is the um the thing that that um this is what happens in all these places you wonder like why didn't like Jews leave during the Holocaust and and uh I was lucky that they kicked me out you know that they when they declared me a threat to National Security in 2005. I was really lucky because if they hadn't kicked me out I would have stayed there and far far worse things would have happened to me they would have killed me instead of Sergey magnitsky um you know that now they're desperately chasing me around the world trying to get me extradited and arrested and extradited back to Russia and um it was really the biggest gift that Putin could have ever given me by kicking me out you know they they didn't think ahead um and uh I would have stayed there and and I would have lost all my money I would have been in jail and I'd probably be dead so um there you go uh at the end here uh Bill uh just a final question about the book which we are soon going to open up so you can sign just around the corner and I highly recommend it it's both written as or the enlightened thing about how Russia works but it also kind of Crime Story and the political trailer all at once uh when did you know that you were such a good writer well I I mean it's nice of you to say I I I can't say that I know that I'm such a good writer it was the the uh there's the pain and suffering that I had to go through to write this book so that it was actually readable was it took me three times as long as any other writer would take so I don't think I'm a good writer but but what it was really important to me was to um it's kind of a it's kind of kind of tricking everybody because um I I positioned this book as a thriller so you could read this book you could care nothing about Putin nothing about money nothing about Russia and um and you could pick up this book and you'd be highly entertained and um and so my publisher uh in the U.S um and Simon and Schuster he said to me you want to hide the vegetables and the dessert and and so I made these books something pleasurable to actually do you can read it on holiday read it on an airplane read it on the train and you'll miss your stop or whatever because it really sucks you right in and and the point is that I wanted I want a lot of people to know this story because a lot of people know the story then then I can make some change in the world and my first book red notice I think it was responsible of the 35 magnitski acts there's probably five or six that are directly came from from from politicians and government officials who read read notice and so it's all part of my campaign but I've done it in a way that I think um you know is I'm not I'm not um pedantic in my explanation of what happened I make it enjoyable and interesting and entertaining and gripping do you have a next project you can reveal something my next project is not to write any more books before we give a vorm applaud to Bill just let me repeat that we have the book around the corner and I want to thank everybody for coming here tonight thank you so much Bill brother for your work and for coming to Oslo once again thank you [Applause]

Channel: Tankesmien Civita

Views: 28,970

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Id: ZT5HwtsIYx8

Length: 53min 45sec (3225 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022