Bill Browder: The future of Russia after the war

ladies and gentlemen I'm delighted to welcome our special guest after beginning his career with early Spells at the Boston Consulting Group and Salomon Brothers he spotted the opportunities created by a wave of privatizations that swept so former Soviet Russia and went into business with Edmund Safra creating Hermitage capital that business became the single largest foreign investor in Russia through a strategy of activist investing that brought to light the wholesale corruption and kleptocracy that was perpetrated by many Russian businesses Executives and politicians but when this strategy met with the disapproval of Vladimir Putin he was ejected from the country and his businesses and Associates faced chomped up charges it was invited in fighting this corruption that Mr barra's Tax Lawyer Sergey magninsky was arrested he later died in 2009 before facing trial since then Mr Barrow's campaign campaigned in his name successfully convincing several countries to introduce magnitsky acts a Cornerstone of the modern Western sanctions regime that is being used to combat Vladimir Putin and his war in Ukraine ladies and Gentlemen please welcome Bill Browder foreign I should say before we get going properly um Bill's book freezing order will be available to purchase during the drinks reception if you get in there quickly he may even sign a copy or two um now first of all Bill I've given recent events I just need to start by asking you for your impression of what's been happening in Russia in the last week or so yeah I mean I um we're talking about all these greater great um concierge type things a couple sessions ago and I was um I was I had a long plan to go to Queens to watch the semi-finals on Saturday and um uh looking forward to it I had a bunch of guests coming with me and of course this coup broke out and and I thought how absolutely inconvenient that they decided to do their coup on the day that I have Queens the um the answer is this is the single most damning thing that's ever happened to Vladimir Putin since he came to power Vladimir Putin governs Russia through fear he's a strong man and everybody is terrified of this guy and they're terrified because they think that if they do something bad they do something to challenge him um the the the best that happens is they lose their job perhaps they go to jail and maybe they die and so for 23 years Putin has sort of sat over everybody breathing the fear of God into them and then all of a sudden in one afternoon uh a mercenary with a bunch of ex-convicts or current convicts that work for him was able to take a group of them in a convoy and take over a large city in southern Russia take over a military base without a single shot being fired then move on to another city take over that City move within two hours of Moscow before the guy finally gave up and what it suggests is that and then Putin somehow in his negotiation with this guy allows him to safely leave the country instead of having his head chopped off on Red Square I don't know how Putin recovers from this because how do you continue to be a sort of Ruthless strong man when that happened and so I think that that the next weeks and months will be very determinative of what happens next in Russia on one hand it could all continue to disintegrate for Putin because once once everybody sees that the strong man is no longer strong and I should point out that in Russia they absolutely despise weakness it respects strength despise weakness so either they're gonna he's not going to be able to reassert his strength in which point being the president of Russia is one of the most profitable Enterprises in the world you can you'll end up being worth 200 billion dollars personally if you're President of Russia so there's a lot of people that would like that job and like that money on the other hand um Putin May and I'm sure he's going to embark on this exercise of a massive Purge going after everybody and anybody who he thinks has either been disloyal or not loyal enough and you're going to see people in the military people in the government people in the oligarchy all rounded up and either put in jail or killed um and he may succeed in doing that to such an extent that people do start to be afraid of him but what I can say is that um and all the time that I've been involved in Russia this is the most for Putin this is the most terrible thing and potentially the most optimistic thing for anybody who's hoping for an end of this terrible murderous regime okay well we may come back to some of that later but um I always need to ask you about what you're doing at the moment I think I'm right to say you no longer manage other people's money no and so you're spending your time doing other things writing campaigning can you can you tell us what you're up to well as you mentioned I I um uh there's a book I wrote my second book which is called freezing order Which documents are mission to find out who got the 230 million dollars that my lawyer Sergey magnitsky exposed and was killed over so that that came out last year but most importantly what I'm doing right now is two things um one very personal uh in getting the magnitsky Act pass which was named after my murdered lawyer a Russian opposition activist named Vladimir caramurza came and tried to help me do that he was he showed up at different parliaments around the world with me and testified how the Russian people would support the magnitsky act because they don't like their leaders stealing uh killing and doing all that type of stuff in the magnitsky ACT freezes their assets and bans their visas and he was such a persuasive Advocate that um I think we've now passed this law in 35 countries and um Putin hates it more than anything and um and Putin tried to kill him he tried to kill him in 2015 with a chemical nerve agent he nearly died he was in coma multiple organ failure they tried to kill him again in 2017 and and thankfully the same doctors that treated him in 2015 were able to get to him and then recently he went back to Russia and um uh to protest the war and he went on to CNN and called Putin a murderer and a war criminal and he was arrested shortly thereafter and he was now convicted in sentenced to 25 years in jail and so I now have another hostage that I'm trying to free and I'm traveling around the world trying to get governments to put pressure on the Russians to free him perhaps in some type of Hostage Exchange and then the more broad thing that I'm working on is since I've spent the last 13 years working on freezing Russian assets there's now a lot of Russian assets Frozen in particular there's 350 billion dollars Russian Central Bank Reserves Frozen and um Russia has has created a trillion dollar at least a trillion dollars of damage to Ukraine and so I'm campaigning to change the law so that the those frozen assets can be used to rebuild Ukraine that can be confiscated to rebuild Ukraine and both of these projects take up almost all of my time so that's my main activity sure and the magnitsky acts the various laws that exist around the globe now thanks in a large part to your work they're really a foundation a precursor to the whole sanctions regime that exists now um earlier today we opened the conference with a speech from Robert Amsterdam the lawyer and geopolitics commentator and his view of sanctions this current sanctions museum is that is not a positive one let's let's put it that way and he feels it's an authoritarian answer to an authoritarian problem he asks is the situation we have now with regard to Russia better or worse than previously before the sanctions regime really started to bite what's your response to that question um I'm a friend I'm a friends with Bobby Amsterdam um uh and and we worked together on he was the lawyer for Mikhail hortikovsky when he was in jail for some period of time so we we've worked on common interests but he's absolutely completely and utterly dead wrong on on this particular um and let me just start out with the most simple um analysis so Russia invades a foreign country um what do you do not sanction them just let them carry on invading without any consequence of course you sanction them um and moreover so so that the person that wants to convince us that sanctions aren't working more than anybody is Vladimir Putin and he says look we're so tough sanctions don't we don't care um Etc but I can tell you they're absolutely apoplectic about these sanctions and I can tell you they're apoplectic because after the the magnitsky actress passed Putin made it his single largest foreign policy priority to repeal the magnitsky ACT he sent his uh his own Emissary a lawyer to Trump Tower after Trump was elected I mean after Trump was nominated before he was elected to meet with Donald Trump Jr or Jared Kushner and Paul manafort Trump's son son-in-law and campaign manager specifically to repeal the magnitsky ACT he made it his single largest foreign policy priority to repeal the magnitsky ACT he chased me around the world with death threats kidnapping threats Interpol eight interpolar arrest warrants because he's so mad about the magnitsky act as I mentioned he tried to kill Vladimir karamorza he killed Boris nemsoff who was also Boris namsoff the former first Deputy Prime Minister he kills he hates this thing because Vladimir Putin values money more than human life he's ready to kill for money and so there's nothing more powerful than to take his money away from him and looking at it very objectively there's two ways to fight this war in Ukraine one is militarily and we're supporting the ukrainians probably not as well as we should be but pretty well and the second is to starve Putin of his financial resources to fight the war and we've done this in a number of ways Putin before the war he was very self-confident because he had a huge War chest he had accumulated 650 billion dollars of Russian Central of Russian Central Bank Reserves in foreign Banks and in one Fell Swoop we we froze 350 billion so he doesn't have access to that um we also cut off Russia from access to the international Capital Market so they can't issue bonds or borrow money that way we have Frozen and the assets of about 45 of the top oligarchs and I should point out that it's not just if you want to if you want to go after Putin's money you go after the oligarchs money because Putin because the oligarchs hold the money for Putin and these oligarchs sure they find ways around it there there's all sorts of sanctions of Asian going on right now but they're also sitting sitting lonely in their Villas staring at the walls talking to their lawyers and no longer conducting business no longer able to get access to their money to send over to Vladimir to fight this war there's one huge gaping hole which is that we still I should say we the west or in the East buys oil from Russia that's a lot there's a lot of money like 500 million to a billion dollars a day of oil um that's sold and that money is used to finance this war in Ukraine and so if we really are serious about stopping the war we need to suck up our guts ban the Embargo the oil stomach a higher oil price for some period of time because that will truly bankrupt Putin some people might say it's not enough that it hurts Putin and that he doesn't like it it may have unintended further reaching consequences that in the long term are deleterious to our own utility as the West um do you think about those unintended consequences the sort of the lack of cooperation between nations in the world the greater geopolitical ripples that may come because of this so there's two two big um I wouldn't even call them unintended consequences possible consequences to all these sanctions the first one that everybody talks about is well if you're going to mess around with these guys in their dollars um then they're going to or the Euros they're going to go look to China for their well we have a room full of financial advisors and financial professionals how many of you would advise your clients to put their money in China can I see a show of hands how many people would advise their clients to put their money in China um maybe you're just shy but there's always one um nobody would and you're not going to put your money in Iran and you're not going to put your money in South Korea I mean in North Korea you're not going to put your money in in uh in any of these places because whatever whatever we're doing which might appear arbitrary to a dictator um is is a hell of a lot more arbitrary what Saudi Arabia is going to do if you put your money in Saudi Arabia or China or whatever so no of course nobody's going to put their money in those places so I completely reject the argument that we're going to by doing this with Euro and the dollar and the Sterling there's going to be some new currency that emerges between the the South Africans the argentinians and the Chinese that that everyone's going to use they're not going to it's just not going to happen and and I can say that with 100 certainty um and then the other argument is okay but um now we have this thing where we have the like the global South that's not cooperating we have the you know actually let me before I get to that the one thing we do have which nobody expected is the developed economies of the world hugely cooperating which never happened before we were also narrowly focused on our our economic interests that nobody um you know we were not cooperating on sanctions we were everybody was just trying to play their own game and all of a sudden we found when there's a major military Invasion redrawing the maps of Europe we have to cooperate and so all of a sudden the G7 the European Union Japan South Korea Australia everybody is now cooperating really strongly then then of course the other uh sort of counter argument as well what about Brazil and Indonesia and South Africa et cetera and and the answer is um they're all playing a short-term game right now that is going to get ironed out very quickly because South Africa does less than one percent of their trade with Russia they do 40 of their trade with the Allied countries that are imposing sanctions um it would be very easy for us to have a conversation with the South African government and say um if you value your your economy and your trade don't mess around because we can mess around very badly with you and um and it's very interesting because we started to see this happen now so in India was buying a lot of military equipment from Russia and buying a lot of oil from Russia but they refused to pay the Russians in any other currency than the Indian rupee because they didn't want to be in violation of U.S treasury sanctions and the Russians have stopped supplying military equipment to them because they don't know what to do with these rupees they can't they're stuck with their rupees in in in Indian Banks um the Chinese just last weekend stopped clearing Uh Russian wire transfers um through the Bank of China it's all going to get ironed out and so you know this is the time when we have to have a muscular foreign policy when a country is doing such a terrible thing as invading another country in Europe and and it's just starting to happen and it will continue to happen so um I I don't you know yes there are there are there are all sorts of consequences the main consequence is that all countries that think should that have any thought in their mind about invading their neighbor should should look at the pain that Russia is suffering from and come to the conclusion it's probably not worth it sure one more objection if you don't mind I'm happy um throw them at me what about this idea that it's an authoritarian solution it's sort of asset seizure estate overreach exactly the kind of behavior that authoritarian states carry out with the West democratic governments in the west are now engaging in that same behavior with the with the rationale the ends justifies the means but you know is is that a reasonable position it's it's it well first of all it's just it's it's it's not um uh arbitrary and second if if it is arbitrary um it's judicially reviewable and so uh pagosian's mother um felt like she was unfairly sanctioned by the European Union she applied to the European court of justice they found in their in her favor which I disagree with and she released they released her her uh her from sanctions if you feel like you're you're um being mistreated you can go to court we have we have a rule of law in the west that which they don't have in these authoritarian regimes and you can go to court and and I'm dealing with the British government on a daily basis on sanctions and um and they're so timid about the whole thing and wanting to get it so right and being so careful because they don't want to get it wrong in court and so this is not arbitrary stuff where where you know someone you know someone is is like you know creating a list of enemies and then just taking all their money away and there's very clear criteria um uh and these people who are subject to sanctions are in violation of that criteria if they believe that they're not they can go to court the courts here are very independent and and um it's not at all authoritarian and what about this idea that in acting sanctions bringing them to bear it's difficult to choose when to do this I mean you might say there's a clear case to do this against Russia and Russian individuals connected to Vladimir Putin because of the war but what about when authoritarian states do something short of invading another country would the sanctions regime such as it exists and is available to us is it still a useful tool in those instances or should it not be used unless certain bars are left over well so so my whole um uh life for the last decade and a half has been creating sanctions for authoritarian regimes that commit gross human rights abuse torture mass murder Etc so that and and where there's no rule of law where those tortures murders Etc can be prosecuted and um and that's the purpose that's what the magnitsky ACT is and and it's uh it now exists it exists um and any human rights filer can be sanctioned and it's created unbelievable amount of Hope for victims so if you're if you're a you know a uyghur whose relatives are in the concentration camps in in China which they've set up there there used to be no recourse whatsoever and the uyghurs set up a campaign um to expose the crimes committed against their their people they brought it to the U.S and various other countries and and they have sanctioned the four Chinese generals who are in charge of of running these concentration camps um I would say that it's it's hard and and my big one of my big complaints is that it's very difficult to get people sanctioned who do terrible things but it is possible and it does create hope for victims which they never had before and you mentioned you'd been in touch with the British government about what's happening here and the response what's your assessment of what is going on right now what would you like them to do in the near future well so um you have these um oligarchs who stole so most Russian oligarchs got their money dishonestly through graft and theft and embezzlement and various other things um corruption and so these guys knew a long time ago that their money might be um someone's going to come after their money they didn't they didn't think the people who are coming after their money would be the ones coming after their money they thought the Russian the new Russian government might come after their money or their competitors might come after their money or extortion artists artists may come after their money and so they spent the last 20 years putting together the most watertight asset protection schemes available and perhaps they're people in this room that were maybe there's even a session on these things here I don't happen haven't listened to the whole thing I mean the health care is good and everything but um and and uh and the asset protection schemes um have have allowed oligarchs to evade many of them to evade sanctions and so what what's what's happening right now is we're saying well we found these oligarchs we found these people that are Putin cronies that helped support the Putin war effort we've sanctioned we've Frozen some of their money but there's a lot of really complex stuff that we can't understand because these are the best asset protection schemes that money can buy and so the next step is is going after this this type of stuff and and um uh it's not going to be easy because the very best Minds in the world have put these things together and that's that's going to be the big challenge for for Western governments sure but what about this idea that until certainly 2014 and Crimea Russian oligarchs were an accepted part of London life the Russian government was engaged with by several British prime ministers the money was not especially questioned 2014 happened that changed the music a little bit but Roman Abramovich still owned Chelsea Football Club and and away we go so then things changed dramatically and it seems that there's a sort of retroactive moral judgment in place over what happened in those years previously do a think that's true and B think it's problematic or confusing the situation now well I mean so so um I I fell victim to the Russian government long long before um anyone else did and I had an opportunity to see up close and personal that Putin is a murderer and a and a thief and a very bad man and I tried to explain to people in the government here in the government in the United States and the European Union that we needed to have a tougher policy towards Russia and and nobody wanted to hear a word of it there was too much money sloshing around too many people benefiting too much economic interest the Germans were buying all this gas and the same with the Italians and here in London oh my God the real estate agents and the you know the private bankers and everybody was just cleaning up and um nobody and and I was really not welcome my message wasn't welcome the robust response to the crimes committed against me and my colleagues was was weak um and uh and then Russia invaded Georgia and everybody everyone said no this is you know uh we don't know whose fault it was um Crimea they they did they they called they described it as russian-backed separatists some as a civil war not our business um Syria you know nobody even said a word you know after Salisbury you know we were people were going to the World Cup in Moscow and and so um and it's it must be very confusing for Russian oligarchs right now to like to see and and for Putin Putin thought you know that there's no way he could go into Crimea I mean into Ukraine and there'd be no problem and um uh and he and he's like wait a second there's never been a problem I've done all this terrible stuff and there's never been a problem before now why all of a sudden there's this problem um and so it is it is confusing for him um I I find it very upsetting that that it took us this long because I think if we had been tough on Russia um before or after Crimea or after Georgia or after uh any of them a number of things um Putin might have had a different calculus but he thought there would be no no problem and in your view does blame lie with various different parties I mean I suppose you would say that government should have acted more quickly should a property advisor who facilitated the purchase of a Highgate mansion in 2012 would be looking at their shoes right now I'm sure a lot of them are um you know it's it's um well first of all the the blame is 95 Putin's he's a bad man and then five percent the west and and mainly the government I mean you know a guy who's working in Highgate doing on a man working on a mansion you know he's just looking for signals from the government which way to go um and so but there was this one interesting documentary it was on channel four it was maybe some of you saw it it was called From Russia with cash I think and and it was produced by a um a Russian opposition fellow a friend of mine who is a big Jolly Guy and um uh he's he looks like a big Russian and um he got so he got a um uh a female journalist who very very beautiful woman and he pretended he was the deputy minister of Health and um in in this very much younger beautiful woman was his mistress and um and he went around with a hidden camera um going with real estate agents um to look at the most beautiful um you know flats and houses in London um with a hidden camera boasting about how he was um he was stolen all the money from the AIDS drugs that was supposed to be distributed as Deputy minister of health and yeah and we're not wanting anyone to know it was his and and you had all these obsequious um estate agents explaining to him how he could avoid um any kind of um I mean you know really trying to help him and so I'm sure that there are some very honest people in in selling those houses in Highgate and I'm sure there's a few dishonest ones that the ones who we saw on that show and uh uh you know it's I I think it's hard to generalize but but um yeah I mean definitely some people the the dollar signs were bigger than their morality and when should Western governments have acted then to send those signals to private businesses that you know do have bottom lines to worry about when should governments have done what they've done now if you think it would have been the right action several years ago well I think that that's um Russia invaded Georgia I don't see how how sort of if you were to look at it relative to what's happening right now it's a foreign it's a sovereign state it's a neighboring country it was it was a peaceful neighbor um they took over 20 of the country they killed a lot of Georgian troops that should have been the moment when we um got tough and that was the moment in 2008 that would have been very helpful to all the people who are now trying to extricate themselves from this stuff sure and thinking again about the advisory firms that are part of the world that we cover and um represented in the audience today can you sympathize with people who say that it's it's still difficult it's still not clear our friend Bob earlier said he wouldn't know where the bright line was he wouldn't know where the black and the whites parted and he thinks there are many Shades of Gray I mean we can think about you know a sanctioned individual fairly clear that uh in many cases it wouldn't be desirable to work with them but someone who's Russian and has happened to lived in have lived in the UK for the last 20 years and had their own business that's made money legitimately of course you could you could work with them but then you know humanity is messy personal connections are messy business connections are messy there are all kinds of cases between those two ends of the spectrum well so what I can tell you is that um uh since Putin came to power there's no such thing as as an independently wealthy Russian in Russia everybody who is wealthy is wealthy with the permission of Vladimir Putin he's come to everybody and he says you can continue to hold some of your wealth or maybe all of you or half your wealth or whatever but I'm going to want you to do this this and this for me and some people said no and they ended up losing their money and some people ended up dying and then most of the people said yes and so I think that one can pretty much generalize to say that anybody who was a wealthy Russian oligarch in Russia and that doesn't apply to your example of somebody living here for the last 20 or 30 years but somebody who got wealthy in Russia and maintained their wealth during the Putin regime is somebody who you should terminate business relations with because um they may maybe have gotten all the way down the list and maybe they never will but if they do get down the list and they and they get sanctioned it's an absolute nightmare to be looking after somebody who's sanctioned and it's even worse if they're sanctioned somewhere else or not here so I remember in 2017 uh one of the big oligarchs was sanctioned in the United States for being involved in in uh election interference that he was caught one of the seven oligarchs called and he had a huge cash balance at one of the big Swiss banks um I think it was like a billion dollars and he thought it would be better to probably move that money to gasprom bank and so he puts in his transfer money transfer order and so the Swiss bank has got a big problem because um uh if he's if they move the money they're potentially in violation of us ofax sanctions and if it's a billion dollars then they could potentially be subject to a three billion dollar fine from the US government so not a great idea to move the money at the same time Switzerland hasn't sanctioned this oligarch the United States has sanctioned the oligarch and so the oligarch could say you know I was planning on investing this billion dollars in this startup that's that went up 27 times so I'm going to sue you for 27 billion dollars in Swiss court because that was the loss that I because you didn't move my money and so the Swiss bank is in an absolutely impossible situation they're damned if they do and damned if they don't and so what's the what are the Swiss the CEO of the Swiss bank do the very next day he gathered up all of his account officers and said I want you to fire any client that has anything to do with with any kind of stuff going on in Russia because there's just not worth it and um uh you know I think that's the for anybody interested in I mean whatever the current income flow is you have to look at the huge down the road liability that could come from this thing and it just seems like a smart move to just get rid of these people altogether in a way treating people in that way making individuals collateral damage in the quest of a higher goal is you know isn't is a sort of thing that uh that Vladimir Putin is doing isn't it like rather than looking at the individual cases yeah well if you take your guy who's been here for 20 years and made all their money in the UK that's an individual case no no one needs to be prejudiced because they have a Russian last name but if they made their money in Russia um if you if you believe my logic um uh then there you go yes I suppose that might be the problem that having a blanket rule according to sort of a logical formula like that people slip outside it and that and people get treated unfairly because of it yeah I mean you know life is not not fair I mean it's that's what it comes down to I mean you know imagine that that that we're dealing with terrorism um you know and um uh somebody had some dealings with Osama Bin Laden is that unfair to like get rid of them like or should you like really pick apart to make sure that maybe they were honest people dealing with Osama Bin Laden I mean that's that's what we're talking about here sure [Applause] um on the topic of treating people in a certain way because they have a Russian last name you're married to a Russian and so you have a clear view of this problem or uh emergence of what one might call rossophobia I mean do you do you think that that is active in society today do you think that people are treating all Russian people in a certain way because of the actions of the the president of the country well I I think that that um so um my my wife and my colleagues who work for me are all Russian and we're very actively trying to punish and oppose the Putin regime I'm working with Vladimir Karen morza's wife who's Russian and we go around actively opposing the Putin regime and there's many other Russians that do that and I am and I don't think that those people are subject to any kind of uh risophobia but I do think and I've seen this myself that that there are many Russians that are that are living in London who um uh who are really like keeping their heads down and not saying anything uh and this is one of those moments it's like uh where you have to say something it's you know it's like uh you know Germans during during the Nazi you know which you know if you know I think you should probably be ANSI anti-german and anti-nazi during during the second world war that was perfectly reasonable and if any Germans were standing out against Hitler then they were the good ones but but uh anyone who keeps their heads down tries just trying to avoid uh trouble um I don't think that they deserve you know huge sympathy right now this is this is a terrible thing that's going on it's a fascist regime that's doing terrible stuff and and uh you know I'm I'm uh I'm not hugely sympathetic to people who are like whining about um you know uh not being able to travel as easily or whatever these are minor problems people are being bombed overnight every night killed just going to sleep and then waking up dead um or not waking up because because of bombs being being robbed at them they the Vladimir Putin just created the most extensive environmental disaster that's been seen in this continent ever with the explosion of the dam he's threatening to blow up a nuclear power plant the zaparosa nuclear power plant I think that all these issues are such you know minor ripples in the water compared to what's going on it's it's hard to even think about them sure we have a chance to put some questions to Bill we have a hand in the front row Matthias have you got a question for Bill so so Bill he said we have to blame ourselves in the west that we um stood up so late against Putin and also when you look at how slow the West Was to arm Ukraine in this War I mean that's that's another thing to be ashamed of so in your talks right so so the U.S was supplying those high mass Rockets right and then the other Rockets the Army tactical missiles that go much faster they haven't been supplied yet even though right the ukrainians are begging for it do you see that coming is there a way that you know this war can be ended for also by better equipping Ukraine also with the F-16 Jets and all that well you remember at the start of the war so and by the way thank you for your support from the very beginning on on all this stuff um this this gentleman here has been on my side long before anyone ever believed in me um the um uh I can remember when we first started this whole thing Germany wouldn't let us fly British aircraft into Poland with supplied with um equipment um because they were so scared of upsetting the Russians now Germans are supplying tanks and so everything they keep on committing more and more atrocities and every time they commit an atrocity Things become more and more uh uh you know everybody gets more and more angry and by the end of this whole thing I think we'll be supplying the ukrainians with everything they they possibly need my big fear is that um and this is what Putin is holding out for is that if he can just wait until November 2024 there's a chance that Trump becomes the next U.S president and if Trump becomes a president then all U.S support for Ukraine stops on that day and that's his big you know long shot bet and if that happens then you know who knows who wins the war you have other questions please just here in the third row your voice may carry if you've got a booming voice thank you um what are the legislative changes that need to be made in the UK to sell the Frozen asset in the UK do you think that's going to happen and what does it look like so so my feeling is that um so if you were to so the prime minister here and the president in America have all looked at these this these frozen assets and said and ask their Chief legal advisor can we see this at these assets and and the chief legal advisor says no not possible however if the Prime Minister asks a different question to say how can we seize these assets then they say well actually you do this this and this way because every legal question it's it's there's no there's no black and white legal answers to anything the um the key to this whole thing is that we're going to get tired of spending money you know we have our all we have you know cost of living crisis mortgage crisis this crisis that crisis and we're going to get tired of spending money and it's going to be the money that drives the um decision to do that and I don't know how quickly that's going to happen um but I think it's going to happen reasonably quickly in the same way as we wouldn't Supply tanks a year ago and now we're supplying tanks and so it just seems to me and I'm involved in these conversations and you can see that you can absolutely see the way first of all the momentum building of like experts and credible people saying this is the right thing to do politicians saying it's the right thing to do legal arguments being made that is a legal thing to do and so it's really a political issue not a legal issue and I think it will be resolved I can't predict exactly how long it takes politics particularly when it comes to International agreements because you can't do this by yourself you have to do this all the countries have to do this together and and the the pace at which this happens I think pretty much will be determined by how terrible Putin is in future the most terrible stuff he does the more likely it is to happen and the quicker it is to happen and one just there as well there might be people in back we just don't see them it's quite possible and I wanted uh at the beginning of your talk you spoke about one of the things that will really have an impact is the embargoing of oil and I wanted to know how realistic you think that is as a solution and if we do that if there are any knock-on effects I.E the oil coming via other countries or from Russia to another country than to whoever and thank you and then also then us buying oil from other countries that perhaps has their own issues well so it's it's really really hard to um uh embargo oil when oil prices are high when inflation is Raging and so I think it's going to be a hard thing to stomach first of all it's physically it's physically very simple to embargo oil you could basically say that any ship that moves Russian oil can never dock in in a in a western Port again any insurance company that ensures a ship can never insure again or be sanctioned you can lean on any country that where you can spot them buying Russian oil and it'll stop but of course nobody wants to exacerbate the current inflation crisis but if we are going into a recession which I you know I'm not a macro Economist so I can't say that with any certainty but if we if we if we were to go into a recession one of the biggest victims of recessions or commodity prices and oil prices could go down and if they would if they did go down um and inflation goes down then I think it's a totally different ball game and as the war continues to rage on and as we're looking for more and more solutions if it's not as painful to do it may very well be a policy that's pursued but I don't think it's going to happen anytime in the near future there is a question about Rupert Phelps or or sorry as the microphone I do sorry thank you you had mentioned three possible scenarios where Russians may have either acquired or maintained their wealth the third scenario you mentioned was out of fear of their life right you mentioned that I did sorry could you speak up would you like me to where would you like me just the last three the last part the the last scenario you gave you said sometimes they they went along with you know to fear of their lives right okay but then later on you lumped everyone together is there anything any thoughts that you would have in terms of how one could perhaps treat these people they're acting on the duress it would appear well so so the um it there there a lot of people say are there any good oligarchs out there and I I've known some of these oligarchs for a very long time I was there when they before they ever became oligarchs so some of them seemed like nice guys at the very beginning but you know um and I can remember like the German Graf who is the head of spear Bank he was like really a good man and sort of spoke English and was sort of helpful and our caddy dwarkovich who was the president's economic advisor was went to Duke University and then all these guys went off into the dark side they really they really did and so I I don't want to um uh be too generous to them now um you know uh you know everybody made a choice you could you you could have abandoned your wealth you could have said I'm not going to do business with with a a dictatorship I'm not going to do business with these people and left and um some people did do that not very many most people said I'm ready to I'm ready to um go to the dark side um for money and I I I I I I I don't often speak to wealth management conferences but I do speak often to like um schools and high schools and University uh and and um I know there's always or used to be there always was some kid from Russia who was like inspired by my story and said you know I want to go and change I want to go back to my home and change the country and I say don't because um you have two choices you can either go back and be in opposition and become a dissident and then you'll probably end up in jail or dead or you go back and you decide not to do that and then you become part of part of the criminal Enterprise They want you to stay out until until something changes because it's just you're not going to change the country in a criminal dictatorship and so all these people made their choices and and they have to they made their bed they have to live in it did we have one at the back that really puts yep thank you Bill what's your response to people who ask the following question what's the difference between the Allies so-called invading a sovereign country and Putin invading a sovereign country um well the um the first is that um they shouldn't have invaded Iraq um the the the the the way I mean that that's something that that a lot of um uh the global South puts out there saying well you know it's everybody is just it's all terrible so let's just let it all go um I I'm not a big fan of the war in Iraq um uh that doesn't mean that that I should um excuse Putin for doing what he's done in Ukraine it's um you know there there's no I mean and by the way I mean you know this is a much bigger discussion but um you know what Putin did in in in Ukraine was completely different than what America did in Iraq Saddam Hussein was a monster was it was a terrible idea to go in and just try to do regime change but Putin oh actually let's let's go back one Putin or Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and and it was a totally justified war going in free in Kuwait and we did um the second time we went invaded Iraq that was a totally unjustified War based on false false premises but not but um uh what Putin has done with Ukraine is there's there's no way of justifying it and we need and we need to punish him badly for doing it and by the way if he succeeds in Ukraine he doesn't stop in Ukraine he needs to be at War he'll go on to Estonia and then we have a much bigger problem because then we have to fight him uh ourselves instead of having the ukrainians fight him gentlemen the blue shirt it's almost there thank you I was just wondering what role you think uh Lexi navalny has in the Russian situation at the moment so Alexi navalny for those of you probably everyone knows his name but in case you don't he was the um opposition activist very popular among young people very technologically savvy made these beautiful YouTube videos about Putin showing his palaces and all billions of dollars and all this crazy stuff of Putin in his regime he was tolerated for some period of time he was very popular he got two popular Putin tried to kill him with Nova chalk he didn't die he went into a coma was in Germany and then returned to Russia um to basically be imprisoned and so he and my friend Vladimir and another one named Ilya yoshin are what I would call the sort of ANC Nelson Mandela type of characters in in Russia right now and they they have there is potentially um uh a moment for them if my my sort of optimistic scenario and this I don't put a high probability on this but my optimistic scenario is that if Ukraine succeeds in expelling Russia from their territory including Crimea um the the Putin regime will completely fracture if they fracture um all these people will get be getting on their Jets to leave Russia and the people will look for new leadership and the new leadership will be could be in a low probability scenario Alexi navalny Vladimir karamorza and Ilya Yashin are the people who are reasonable people they're they're they believe in democracy Free Speech Free Press Etc that that's the dream scenario not a high probability scenario but what's what's the more likely scenario the more likely scenario is what we saw last weekend a warlord scenario you know a nationalist who's more vicious than than Putin coming in um and everybody I should point out that that the entire Western sort of elite are all breathing a big sigh of relief that Putin is still in power and um uh I mean pagosian is the most monstrous man and I understand why everybody is so uh scared of him and he maybe is the most scary guy but um he he announced before he was doing this that the war in Ukraine was an unjustified War um he said it was done on false pretext you know I I how is Putin a good guy when he's invaded Georgia to Crimea went into Ukraine went into Ukraine took Syria bombed Syria threatened nuclear war blow up a dam poisoned people all his appointments opponents around the world he's a monster uh I think that the main issue we shouldn't be worrying about too much about I mean which monster it is we should just put up our biggest defenses around these monsters and just you know we're now in a war we had the Cold War we had the Iron Curtain during the Soviet times I think we need a new Iron Curtain for for these guys and you know let the chips fall where they may but we shouldn't be doing anything to support Putin at this point okay so you would if someone said to you this could get worse what would the path we're going down could lead to more hostile leader of Russia more division between countries less cooperation more well you'd say well I'm saying there's no there's no worse we're already at the worst um the the way that Putin is behaving is based on what are his opportunities and constraints every dictator every strong man that comes into Russia would face the same type of opportunities and constraints it's not like he's a you know pagosian is a worse man than Putin they're both monsters they're both murderers they're both killed many people you know progression happens to make videos with using a sledgehammer on people's skulls but otherwise he's the same as Putin and so let's try and end on us somewhat uplifting night if we can um what chain of events briefly if we can if you can bill um to answer a complicated question what chain of events or conditions would need to be met in order to bring about a navalny presidency or something of that order so a solution that's not not just as bad or Worse well I think I think that if if the Ukraine wins the war the Russians are not going to tolerate um Putin but they're not and it's not just Putin it's going to be all this the whole stuff around him everything they're going to say why why did we sacrifice you know I don't know I mean right now they've lost 225 000 men by then who knows how many will be they're going to ask the question why do we lose so many people for a war that we lost why did we um why are these this unbelievable economic damage who are these losers who did this we don't want any of them and then then you know my my fantasy is that the the you know the marauding people go and break into the prison where Alexian of only is is being held and bring them out on their shoulders and you know foist them out to the Kremlin and and he's the one who who uh you know repairs Russia repairs the relations with the west and and tries to bring Russia back into the you know the international fold in a reasonable and decent way Bill Browder thank you very much indeed for being with us it's been a great pleasure [Applause]

Channel: Spear's Magazine

Views: 342,678

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Id: 31n65G2KI4k

Length: 51min 10sec (3070 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023