kris. said:

Video of the testimony via C-SPAN

Click to expand...

BrassDragon said:

Summary of Bill Browder's main points in this interview:

- Dealing with Vladimir Putin requires understanding he is not like other heads of state but rather a criminal running a criminal regime comparable to Pablo Escobar.

- With enrichment as his main goal, Putin has been running different schemes to take money out of the Russian state and its citizens. One example of such a scheme is international pipelines being built for 10 billion USD against a real cost of 1 billion USD.

- Totaling up the profits form all these scams means Putin is likely the wealthiest man in the world

- One reason he has been in power for 17 years is because rising oil prices meant the standard of living in Russia was improving which citizens associate with his authority.

- By 2013, this positive perception was fading and Putin switched to painting his country as besieged by enemies from all sides, within and without and he effectively became a war president (sending military into Ukraine, Syria etc.)

- Putin controls all media and the electorate through ballot stuffing, there is no parliamentary oversight so he is effectively a dictator but his control is tenuous since he has to keep his populace docile.

- Powerful oligarch Michail Chodorkovski was made an example by Putin in 2003 with a very public arrest and corruption trial. The other 22 oligarchs fell in line after this; Browder claims Putin personally demanded 50% of their earnings in exchange for protection.

- There is no rational end goal behind Putin's accumulation of wealth; to stay on top, he has to be richest, always.

- He can't keep these riches in his own name because then it becomes a liability so he created a network of 'oligarch trustees' to hold and spread his money around in the west (banks, hedge funds, trophy properties etc.)

- Short recap of Sergei Magnitsky's investigation into the theft of Browder's Russian holdings and his arrest, torture and death at the hands of the perpetrators.

- After Browder convinced US Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, Putin was 'apoplectic' and he banned the adoption of Russian orphans by American families in response.

- Browder has taken multiple (secret) security measures to protect himself and his family but the most important one is getting this story out into the world.

- There are 'hundreds of thousands' of Russian businessmen sitting in jail because the state wanted to seize their assets.

- 'If you fight the regime and you're in Russia, there is a pretty good chance you'll die.'

- The average Russian, with no business interests, only sees the positive and nationalist image of Putin offered up by the state media.

- Putin is 'a very small, insecure, angry man' who will hugely overreact to any perceived threat or slight. Browder calls him a sociopath with no understanding of other people's pain.

- Anyone reporting on Putin's two daughters gets arrested so we barely know anything about them or his grandchildren. He has no wife anymore is apparently a loner living in the presidential palace.

- There is no actual relationship between Trump and Putin. The Russian president has a wishlist (end the Magnitsky Act, dismantle NATO and the EU, project military force with impunity) that he would like Trump to acquiesce to; it's unclear what Trump gets out of going along with this and calling Putin a great guy.

- Russia definitely intervened in the 2016 US election, the only question mark is whether it was unilateral or with the cooperation of forces inside the USA.

- Browder is formally a fugitive from Russia and they want they have him extradited so they can put him in a gulag. He is currently under the protection of the UK as a newly minted British citizen.

- Magnitsky's surviving family is living in London and protected.

- Putin's regime, by its very nature, cannot sustain itself indefinitely and must eventually collapse.

Click to expand...

The Russian government has also used its resources and assets to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act. One of the most shocking attempts took place in the spring and summer of last year when a group of Russians went on a lobbying campaign in Washington to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act by changing the narrative of what had happened to Sergei. According to them, Sergei wasn't murdered and he wasn't a whistle-blower, and the Magnitsky Act was based on a false set of facts. They used this story to try to have Sergei's name taken off of the Global Magnitsky Act that passed in December 2016. They were unsuccessful.

Who was this group of Russians acting on behalf of the Russian state? Two men named Pyotr and Denis Katsyv, a woman namedNatalia Veselnitskaya, and a large group of American lobbyists, all of whom are described below.

Click to expand...

Skinny Pete said:

Everyone should read this. Very powerful stuff.

Click to expand...

pantsattack said:

Apparently it is must read because OP didn't include a single quote or context.

That's a long statement too. Any choice bits?

Click to expand...

pantsattack said:

Apparently it is must read because OP didn't include a single quote or context.

That's a long statement too. Any choice bits?

Click to expand...

FF Seraphim said:

This is insane stuff. Everyone needs to read it. If nothing happens to Trump or those around him it will be a grave injustice.

Click to expand...

pantsattack said:

Apparently it is must read because OP didn't include a single quote or context.

That's a long statement too. Any choice bits?

Click to expand...

pantsattack said:

Apparently it is must read because OP didn't include a single quote or context.

That's a long statement too. Any choice bits?

Click to expand...

The Russian government has also used its resources and assets to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act. One of the most shocking attempts took place in the spring and summer of last year when a group of Russians went on a lobbying campaign in Washington to try to repeal the Magnitsky Act by changing the narrative of what had happened to Sergei. According to them, Sergei wasn’t murdered and he wasn’t a whistle-blower, and the Magnitsky Act was based on a false set of facts. They used this story to try to have Sergei’s name taken off of the Global Magnitsky Act that passed in December 2016. They were unsuccessful.

Who was this group of Russians acting on behalf of the Russian state? Two men named Pyotr and Denis Katsyv, a woman namedNatalia Veselnitskaya, and a large group of American lobbyists, all of whom are described below.

Click to expand...

Since none of these people registered, my firm wrote to the Department of Justice in July 2016 and presented the facts.

Click to expand...

FF Seraphim said:

Natalia Veselnitskaya

Click to expand...

Pyotr Katsyv, father to Denis Katsyv, is a senior Russian government official and well-placed member of the Putin regime; Denis Katsyv was caught by U.S. law enforcement using proceeds from the crime that Sergei Magnitsky uncovered to purchase high-end Manhattan real estate (the case recently settled with the Katsyv’s paying $6 million to the U.S. government). Natalia Veselnitskaya was their lawyer.

In addition to working on the Katsyv’ s money laundering defense, Ms. Veselnitskaya also headed the aforementioned lobbying campaign to repeal the Magnitsky Act. She hired a number of lobbyists, public relations executives, lawyers, and investigators to assist her in this task.

Her first step was to set up a fake NGO that would ostensibly promote Russian adoptions, although it quickly became clear that the NGO’s sole purpose was to repeal the Magnitsky Act. This NGO was called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation (HRAGI). It was registered as a corporation in Delaware with two employees on February 18, 2016. HRAGI was used to pay Washington lobbyists and other agents for the anti-Magnitsky campaign. (HRAGI now seems to be defunct, with taxes due.)

Through HRAGI, Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet intelligence officer naturalised as an American citizen, was hired to lead the Magnitsky repeal effort. Mr. Akhmetshin has been involved in a number of similar campaigns where he’s been accused of various unethical and potentially illegal actions like computer hacking.


Veselnitskaya also instructed U.S. law firm Baker Hostetler and their Washington, D.C.-based partner Marc Cymrot to lobby members of Congress to support an amendment taking Sergei Magnitsky’s name off the Global Magnitsky Act. Mr. Cymrot was in contact with Paul Behrends, a congressional staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time, as part of the anti-Magnitsky lobbying campaign.

Veselnitskaya, through Baker Hostetler, hired Glenn Simpson of the firm Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky in advance of congressional hearings on the Global Magnitsky Act. He contacted a number of major newspapers and other publications to spread false information that Sergei Magnitsky was not murdered, was not a whistle-blower, and was instead a criminal. They also spread false information that my presentations to lawmakers around the world were untrue.

As part of Veselnitskaya’s lobbying, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Chris Cooper of the Potomac Group, was hired to organize the Washington, D.C.-based premiere of a fake documentary about Sergei Magnitsky and myself. This was one the best examples of Putin’s propaganda.

They hired Howard Schweitzer of Cozzen O’Connor Public Strategies and former Congressman Ronald Dellums to lobby members of Congress on Capitol Hill to repeal the Magnitsky Act and to remove Sergei’s name from the Global Magnitsky bill.

On June 13, 2016, they funded a major event at the Newseum to show their fake documentary, inviting representatives of Congress and the State Department to attend.

While they were conducting these operations in Washington, D.C., at no time did they indicate that they were acting on behalf of Russian government interests, nor did they file disclosures under the Foreign Agent Registration Act.

United States law is very explicit that those acting on behalf of foreign governments and their interests must register under FARA so that there is transparency about their interests and their motives.

Since none of these people registered, my firm wrote to the Department of Justice in July 2016 and presented the facts.

Click to expand...

Vladimir Putin said:

"50%."

Click to expand...

Alucrid said:

jesus fucking christ

Click to expand...

LeadProtagonist said:

This feels like something from a spy-thriller novel, holy shit.

So the fact that Jr. talked about how the meeting was only about discussing adoption is perhaps the biggest smoking gun here, as that ties into exactly the false front that Russia set up.

Click to expand...

dynamitejim said:

Fusion GPS certainly seems shady as fuck. They (allegedly) ran a smear campaign against Browder and Magnitsky, but also got Steele to create a dossier on Trump's Russian connections? That's certainly some "playing both sides" shit right there.

Click to expand...

I estimate that he has accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains from these types of operations over his 17 years in power. He keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation. Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions.

Click to expand...