by Bill Browder
Andrei Pechegin from the Prosecutor’s Office replied, “There’s no reason for the prosecutor to intervene.”
Judge Yelena Stashina, one of the judges who ordered Sergei’s continued detention, said, “I rule that your request to review the medical records and conditions of detention is irrelevant.”
While Sergei was being systematically tortured, he began to receive regular visits from a man who refused to identify himself or his organization. Whenever this man came, the guards would drag Sergei from his cell to a stuffy, windowless room. The meetings were short because the man had only one message: “Do what we want, or things will continue to get worse for you.”
Every time Sergei would stare across the table at this man and refuse to do what he wanted.
Nobody knows how much hardship one can endure until one is forced to endure it. I don’t know how I would have handled this situation, and Sergei probably didn’t know either until he faced it. Yet at every turn, no matter how bad it got, he refused to perjure himself. Sergei was religious, and he would not violate God’s ninth commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” Under no circumstances would he plead guilty to a crime he did not commit, nor would he falsely implicate me. This, it seems, would have been more poisonous and painful to Sergei than any physical torture.
Here was an innocent man, deprived of any contact with his loved ones, cheated by the law, rebuffed by the bureaucracy, tortured inside the prison’s walls, sick and becoming sicker. Even in these most dire circumstances, when he had the best possible reasons to give his tormentors what they wanted, he wouldn’t. In spite of the loss of his freedom, his health, his sanity, and possibly even his life, he would not compromise his ideals or his faith.
He would not give in.
30
November 16, 2009
As Sergei endured this living nightmare, I was living in a daze. Saturday mornings were the worst. I would wake early and roll over to look at Elena in our comfortable king-size bed. Beyond the edge of our bed was a window, and beyond that London. I was free and comfortable and loved. I could still touch and feel what love meant, while Sergei could only remember. It made me feel sick. My desire to reconcile my family’s communist background with my own capitalist ambitions had brought me to Russia, but, naively, I never imagined that this pursuit would result in a human tragedy.
On these days, I would get up, shuffle to the bathroom, turn on the shower, and get in. The hot water was meant to be cleansing, only it wasn’t. The dirt fell free, but the guilt coated me like tar. Sergei got to shower once a week at most, sometimes having to wait as long as three weeks. The water falling over his body was cold, and the soap, if there was any, was rough. His prison cells were rank and his health was failing. More than once I fought back fits of nausea. Even today I can’t step into my bathroom without thinking of Sergei.
But I did shower, and I did get up on Saturdays, and I did love my family, and after getting more dire news about Sergei’s condition, I fought even harder for him. His situation was becoming grave.
In October 2009 I returned to Washington and New York to continue advocating for him. Nobody was particularly interested, but I kept trying. Somehow I needed to find a way to make what was happening to Sergei important for the whole world. For the life of me, though, I couldn’t see how.
Then, as I was boarding an overnight British Airways flight back to London, my phone rang. It was Elena.
I answered, and before she could even speak, I said, “Sweetie, I’m just getting on the plane. Can this wait?”
“No, it can’t. The Interior Ministry just issued a formal indictment!”
I stepped aside to allow the other passengers by. “Against Sergei?”
“Yes.” She paused. “And you. They’re going after both of you.”
This scenario had always been lurking, but to hear the words was still shocking. “They’re actually going through with it?”
“Yes. They’re going to have a big show trial.”
I took a moment before asking, “Do we have any idea what happens after that?”
“Eduard thinks Sergei will get six years and you’ll get the same in absentia. He said Russia will then issue an Interpol Red Notice for you and try to extradite you from the UK.”
An Interpol Red Notice is an international arrest warrant. If one was issued in my name, I could be detained at any border crossing the moment I presented my passport. The Russians would then apply for my extradition, which would most likely be granted. I would then be sent to Russia to face the same type of ordeal as Sergei.
“Bill, we need to put out a press release to contradict their lies right away.”
“Okay.” The idea that I was going to be put on trial had a physical effect on me, and I was jittery as I rejoined the throng of people making their way onto the plane. “I’ll write something in the air and we’ll go over it as soon as I land.”
“Have a safe flight, sweetheart. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
I found my seat and stared in front of me, lost in thought. I knew what was coming: a bunch of unpleasant headlines that would say things like “Browder and Magnitsky on Trial for Tax Evasion,” or “Russia to Issue Interpol Red Notice for Browder.” Any rebuttal we offered would be found in the last paragraph of these articles, which almost always goes unread. That, in essence, was the beauty of how corrupt Russian police worked—they abused their official status to steal money and terrorize their victims. They hid behind a wall of legitimacy granted by their status as law enforcement agents. The press would always report official statements as if they were the truth because in most countries law enforcement agencies don’t openly lie. This was a big problem for us. Somehow, I had to find a way to get the real story out.
The plane reached cruising altitude, the lights went out for the night, and I tried to get comfortable in my seat. As I stared at the dim light of the NO SMOKING sign, I suddenly remembered the YouTube video we’d made. Sergei had given us the green light only a week before, and it was ready to go. I thought, Why issue a press release when we have a much better way to tell the story?
When I landed in London, I got in a cab and rushed to the office. I pulled the hard drive with the video on it off the shelf and uploaded the film to YouTube. I named it “Hermitage Reveals Russian Police Fraud,” and it quickly spread everywhere. By the end of the first day, it had eleven thousand views; after three days, over twenty thousand; and after a week, more than forty-seven thousand. For a video about a complicated crime and human rights case, these were big numbers. In the past, I’d had to brief people one by one about our case in an endless series of forty-five-minute meetings. Now thousands were learning about it all at once.
As soon as the video was posted, I began fielding calls from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Each of them expressed their amazement at just how twisted the tale was. They’d heard about Sergei’s situation, but they didn’t really understand it until they saw that video. Mixed in with these calls were others from reporters. The film quickly became the story. For the first time people understood that the Russian Interior Ministry was not a reputable police organization, but rather a collection of officials abusing their positions to perpetrate massive financial frauds. With this one film, we gained our first foothold in explaining the truth of what had happened and were able to push back against our enemies.
From inside his prison cell, Sergei was also bravely trying to explain the truth even after all the torture he had been subjected to.
On October 14, 2009, he submitted a formal twelve-page testimony to the Interior Ministry in which he documented the full extent of the financial fraud. He provided names, dates, and locations, and left nothing to the imagination. At the end, he wrote, “I believe all members of the investigation team are acting as contractors under someone’s criminal order.”
It was a remarkable document, and he was incredibly brave to have filed it. It’s hard to describe to someone who doesn�
�t know Russia just how dangerous it was for him to do this. People in Russia are regularly killed for saying much less. That Sergei was saying it from jail, where he was at the mercy of the people who had put him there and whom he had testified against, showed how determined he was to expose the rot in the Russian law enforcement agencies and go after his persecutors.
In the middle of all this, I’d committed to giving a big speech at Stanford about the dangers of investing in Russia. I decided to take my son, David, who was twelve at the time. He’d never been to my alma mater, and with all these bad things going on, I wanted to share with him one of the places where I had spent some of the happiest years of my life.
We boarded the flight to San Francisco, and I tried to take my mind off everything going on in Russia. But it didn’t matter what time zone or part of the world I was in. Sergei’s situation followed me everywhere, shrouding me with sadness and guilt. The only thing that would give me any respite was seeing him free.
I gave my speech the day after we arrived. I told the audience my story of doing business in Russia, culminating with the events that had been consuming my life for the past year. I also showed the Hermitage YouTube video, which even elicited a few tears.
David and I left the lecture hall and walked into the warm California air, and in that moment I felt slightly better. Even though the video had been viewed tens of thousands of times on the Internet, I’d never interacted with the people who were watching it. Sharing Sergei’s story with a roomful of people, and then being able to see on their faces and hear in their voices just how appalled they were, made me feel less alone in this fight.
But then, as David and I walked across the campus, my phone rang. It was Vladimir Pastukhov and he didn’t sound good. “Bill, something really awful just happened.”
“What is it?”
“I just got a text message on my BlackBerry. It’s in Russian. It says, ‘What’s worse, prison or death?’ ”
I began to pace. “Was it directed at you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Could it be directed at me, Vadim . . . Sergei?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Who’s it from?”
“It’s not clear.”
“How’d they get that number? Nobody’s got your BlackBerry number.”
“I don’t know, Bill.”
David stared at me, concerned. I stopped pacing and tried to reassure him with a weak smile. “Can we trace it? Figure out who sent it?”
“Maybe. I’ll try. I’ll call you back as soon as I hear anything more.”
“Thank you.”
Any positive feelings I had evaporated in that sixty-second call. The return trip to London was long and bleak. I had no idea how to assess this threat, whom it was directed at, or what to do about it. It sounded serious, and it was extremely worrying.
Within days, Vladimir received a second text message, also in Russian. “Trains, trains through the night, trains, trains never stopping.” Vladimir explained that it was a line from a famous Russian prisoners’ poem that alluded to trains running endlessly to the gulags in the Urals, their packed cars carrying human fodder to their ultimate deaths.
A few days later I got an unexpected call from an old client named Philip Fulton. He’d been my friend and confidant since the Gazprom days. He and his wife were in London and wanted to see Elena and the kids. We had a lovely brunch at the fifth-floor restaurant at Harvey Nichols, and I managed to put aside my worries for a couple of hours. Philip and his wife fawned over my small children and we had a great visit. I hated to admit it, but for a little while I felt okay. I knew our problems weren’t going away, but I also knew that it was acceptable—maybe even preferable—to forget about them for a few moments and pretend I had a normal life.
When we were leaving, though, Vladimir called again. “A new message came in, Bill.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a quote from The Godfather: ‘History has taught us that anyone can be killed.’ ”
I paused. “Fuck!” I said, my hands starting to shake.
We hung up.
I was completely spooked. Early the next morning I gathered the three messages from Vladimir’s BlackBerry, with time stamps, and reported them to SO15, the antiterrorism unit at Scotland Yard. It sent in a team of investigators to interview me and Vladimir, and its technicians traced the calls. Each call came from an unregistered number in Russia, which was unusual. Steven Beck, our security specialist, later told us that the only people in Russia who had access to unregistered numbers were members of the FSB.
• • •
Sergei was due to appear in court on Thursday, November 12, for another detention hearing. Getting to court was never straightforward. It usually started at 5:00 a.m., when the guards pulled the men from their cells and brought them to a prison transport. Twenty or so prisoners were then herded into a van that was designed for half as many people. For the next few hours, the truck would sit in a parking lot as some clerk filled out paperwork in the detention center’s office. Sergei and the other prisoners were forced to stand in this tightly packed van and wait. They had no access to water, fresh air, or a toilet. This same process would be repeated after their day in court, and the men wouldn’t get back to their bunks until after midnight. Throughout the day, they would be given no food, and often prisoners would go without eating for up to thirty-six hours. In essence, going to court was itself a form of torture designed to break and demoralize the prisoners as they fought for their all but nonexistent chance of being acquitted.
That day, Sergei arrived at court in midmorning. He was taken to a hallway and chained to a radiator. As he sat there going over the petitions he’d spent the previous two weeks preparing, Silchenko appeared and said with a smirk, “I’ve given the court the documents you’ve been asking for.”
Sergei had requested a number of case documents on five different occasions over the previous six weeks. He needed them to put up a proper defense, but now, with only ten minutes to go before the hearing, Silchenko was finally adding them to the case file, and Sergei would not be able to see them before the hearing got started. Before this could sink in, the guards unchained Sergei, walked him into the courtroom, and put him in the defendant’s cage.
As Sergei sat, he saw his mother and his aunt in the first row of the gallery. He gave them a small wave, trying to put on a brave face. They hadn’t seen him in the two months since his last court appearance.
The judge, Yelena Stashina, brought the hearing to order. Sergei first read his complaint about not receiving adequate medical care. Judge Stashina rejected it. He then read his complaint about the fabrication of evidence in his case file. She rejected this as well. As he began to read the complaint about his false arrest, Stashina cut him off midsentence and rejected it too. In total, she rejected more than a dozen of Sergei’s complaints. When Sergei asked for more time to go over the “new materials” that Silchenko had brought to court, Stashina told him to be silent.
But Sergei wouldn’t be silent. Instead he stood in the cage and, in a booming voice that defied his physical state, accused her of violating the law and his rights. He finished his speech by saying, “I refuse to take part in and listen to today’s court hearing because all my petitions to uphold my rights have been simply ignored by the court.” He sat and turned away from the judge, and the hearing proceeded without him. Stashina was unmoved. She went through a few technical issues and then coldly extended Sergei’s detention. The hearing ended and the guards came into the cage for Sergei. He couldn’t muster the strength even to smile at his family as they led him away.
He was taken back to the hallway and chained to the same radiator. Neither his lawyer nor his family was allowed to see him for the rest of the evening. His mother and his aunt waited for hours outside in the cold for the van that would take him back to Butyrka, so that they could try to give him a little wave and tell him that they loved him. But by 9:00 p.m. the prison v
an had still not emerged. The cold, the despair, the sadness, ate into them. Finally, they gave up and went home.
• • •
I found out about all of this the next morning. When I told Elena, she became distressed. “I don’t like this, Bill. I don’t like this one bit.”
I agreed.
“We have to get someone to Butyrka,” she insisted. “Someone needs to see Sergei—today.”
But no one could. His lawyer, who was the only person permitted to see him, was out of town and wouldn’t be back until Monday.
That night, at 12:15 a.m., the voice mail alert on my BlackBerry vibrated. Nobody ever called my BlackBerry. No one even knew the number. I looked at Elena and dialed into voice mail. There was one message.
I heard a man in the midst of a savage beating. He was screaming and pleading. The recording lasted about two minutes and cut off mid-wail. I played it for Elena. Afterward, we sat in bed, unable to sleep, pondering all sorts of gruesome scenarios.
As soon as the sun came up, I called everyone I knew. They were all okay. The only person I couldn’t call was Sergei.
• • •
On Monday, November 16, 2009, Sergei’s lawyer, Dmitri, went to Butyrka to see him. However, the prison officials said they wouldn’t bring Sergei out because he was “too unwell to leave his cell.” When Dmitri asked for Sergei’s medical report, he was told to go to Silchenko. He called and asked for a copy, but Silchenko told him that the report was “an internal matter for the investigation” and refused to give Dmitri any details.
They were deliberately giving Dmitri the runaround; Sergei was more than “unwell.” After months of untreated pancreatitis, gallstones, and cholecystitis, Sergei’s body finally succumbed, and he went into critical condition. Although the prison officials at Butyrka had previously rejected his numerous requests for medical attention, that day they finally sent him to the medical center at Matrosskaya Tishina to receive emergency care.
However, when he arrived, instead of being taken to the medical wing, he was taken to an isolation cell and handcuffed to a bedrail. There, he was visited by eight guards in full riot gear. Sergei demanded that the lead officer call his lawyer and the prosecutor. Sergei said, “I’m here because I’ve exposed the five-point-four billion rubles that were stolen by law enforcement officers.” But the riot guards weren’t there to help him, they were there to beat him. And they laid into him viciously with their rubber batons.
