When my enemies read this book, they will know that you know. Like anyone else, I can’t mention most of the countermeasures I take, but I will mention one: this book. I have to assume that there is a very real chance that Putin or members of his regime will have me killed someday. A central, unforgettable, message of Browder’s book is just how dangerous and immoral Putin’s government is.īrowder concludes his book with a dramatic statement that despite years of speaking truth to mafia power, he’s not brave, he’s fearful. His lawyer Sergei Magnitsky 2 was arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and killed.

Nearly every in-country business associate of Browder’s received threats from the Russian state and quasi-state mafia. Unlike what most investors would do – either leave Russia completely or just participate in the corruption – Browder doubles down on his tactics.įrom here, Browder’s narrative gets very, very dark.īrowder attempted to embarrass corrupt members of the business elite, including eventually Putin, through exposure. While this made him and his funds money in the beginning, eventually his methods bumped up against the corrupt mafia of the Russian state, the Oligarchs, and their Capo, Vladimir Putin. The central problem is that he became a thorn in the side of Russian businessmen by attempting a version of “corporate good governance” campaigns within Russia. Browder handles the narrative mood changes well. The fun turns to concern, then fear, and then horror. His greatest success, becoming the largest foreign investor in Russia by 2005 with Hermitage Fund, also begins the dark chapters of his life, and of the book. Then Browder creates his big breakthrough – as maybe the only American to figure out how to profit from the vouchers that privatized Russian national wealth and created the Oligarchs – as a Salomon Brothers Vice President. His novelistic details of quoted conversations, what people wore, and what they ate over meals – these experiences cannot be literally true based on memories from 20 years ago – they have the ring of truth and the flow of narrative. Valuing an aging ship fleet above the Arctic Circle for Salomon Brothers, and finding tremendous value in what others thought was a scrap heap.īrowder writes breezily, humorously, humbly, even about the years in which he gained financial experience and stature – just as Lewis did. The terrible job working for soon-to-indicted Robert Maxwell.

The consulting gig failure in rural Poland. He describes hilariously and ruefully the characters he meets and the insights he gets into early opportunities following the fall of the Berlin Wall. The first half of Red Notice reads not unlike a 1990s emerging market version of Michael Lewis’ Liar’s Poker: 1 Browder the investment ingenue learns about the quirky world of Eastern European finance in the early 1990s.

Red notice bill browder book review