Bill Browder went to Russia in the 1990s because nobody else wanted to. The country was in chaos. Privatization was creating billionaires overnight. Corruption was rampant. Western investors stayed away. Browder saw opportunity. He founded Hermitage Capital Management and became, for a time, the largest foreign portfolio investor in the country.
The first half of the book reads like a financial thriller. Browder made money by buying shares in Russian companies that were being looted by their own managers, then publicly shaming the managers into stopping. This worked until it did not. The Russian government, under Putin, decided that Browder’s activism was a threat. He was expelled from the country in 2005. Then things got worse.
Russian officials seized Browder’s investment companies and used them to commit a $230 million tax fraud against the Russian treasury. Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer working for Browder, investigated the fraud and identified the officials responsible. He testified against them. He was arrested and held in pretrial detention for nearly a year. During that year, he was beaten, denied medical treatment, and moved between increasingly brutal facilities. He died in custody on November 16, 2009. He was thirty-seven years old.
The second half of the book describes Browder’s campaign to hold the officials responsible for Magnitsky’s death accountable. Unable to pursue justice through Russian courts, he lobbied the U.S. Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a law that allows the United States to freeze assets and ban visas for human rights abusers anywhere in the world. The act passed in 2012 with bipartisan support. Similar legislation has since been adopted by Canada, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and other countries.
Browder writes with the pace of someone who knows the story is almost too dramatic to be believed and wants to make sure every detail lands. The book moves fast. Chapters are short. The stakes escalate continuously. Browder does not pretend to be modest or dispassionate. He is angry, and the anger drives the narrative.
Red Notice became an international bestseller and has been widely credited with raising awareness of the Magnitsky Act and the broader issue of kleptocratic regimes using the international financial system to hide stolen wealth. Browder has continued his advocacy and has described receiving ongoing threats from the Russian government.
