An American-born banker and one-time Putin supporter builds the most successful investment fund in Russia. One day he is declared a threat to national security and kicked out of the country, his company seized by corrupt government officials perpetrating a massive tax fraud scheme. The banker himself is later convicted in absentia of the same offense. But a man he employs, who uncovers the scheme and dares to name names, is arrested. After serving a year in prison he dies under suspicious circumstances. To avenge his loss, the banker morphs from activist financier into an anti-corruption crusader amid death threats from the Kremlin.



This is the origin story at the core of a relentless campaign Bill Browder has spearheaded over the past six years to tighten Western sanctions against Russia. In public appearances, news articles (“The Kremlin threatened to kill me”, “Why I fear for my life”), a memoir, and on a dedicated website, the founder and CEO of Hermitage Capital Management has cultivated official support from London to Washington with astonishing results. In 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act—named after Sergei Magnitsky, the deceased Browder employee—which bans those who benefited from the alleged tax fraud from entering the United States or using its banks. A year later, the U.S. Justice Department doubled-down by opening a civil forfeiture case against a holding company owned by a Russian businessman allegedly linked to the stolen money. Some $22 million of property assets in Manhattan were frozen on charges of money laundering.



Few would dispute that Browder’s staggering success as an outsider money manager could make him a target in the murky realm of post-Soviet Russian finance. Many prominent Russian tycoons have fared worse. Yet attorneys for Denis Katsyv, the Moscow-based businessman who has been snared in the Justice Department’s case, counter that overzealous prosecutors have gone too far, accepting Browder’s account wholesale without independently verifying key details. They assert that a closer examination has revealed holes in his story, ones the government would rather avoid confronting given how much their case depends on Browder’s word.



Katsyv, the 38-year-old son of a former Moscow region transport minister, was first linked to the money-laundering scheme back in September 2013, when the U.S. district attorney for the southern district of New York alleged companies he controls had bought real estate in New York City with some of the $230 million looted from the Russian government. Prosecutors say the cash was siphoned through a tangled web of shell companies with bank accounts in Russia and Eastern Europe, before a portion made its way to an investment company based in Cyprus, Prevezon Holdings, which Katsyv subsequently purchased.

Previous media investigations and insider leaks have suggested the involvement of Russian tax officials in the purported treasury heist. However, no proof has yet surfaced that Katsyv or his family ever profited from, or knew about, the wide-ranging scam, according to his lawyers. They note that Katsyv had no reason to suspect any of the cash was potentially tainted because the transfers were relatively small and pre-dated his ownership of the company.

