Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice

When Bill Browder’s 2015 nonfiction book Red Notice begins, he is a naive investor; when it ends, he is a crusader for human rights. In between is a narrative of ambition, greed, corruption, violence, death, and, finally, retribution and justice. Red Notice chronicles the life of a financier and his quest to repair the terrible damage done to him and his business team by Russian operatives, and, most of all, to get justice for Sergei Magnitsky, who gives his life in order to protect others from the violence of a corrupt political regime.

The first seven chapters portray Browder’s youth and early career. His grandfather is a famous communist who runs for the American presidency in the 1930s; his father and brothers are noted mathematicians. Browder is a rebel who tweaks the noses of his family by becoming a capitalist investor. With a Stanford MBA in hand, he works at major investment banks, focusing on the emerging markets of Eastern Europe. He travels to Poland to try to save a bankrupt bus manufacturer; in the process, he suffers from communication difficulties, freezing hotel-room nights, greasy food, and the failure of the bus company itself.

In Chapters 8-15, Browder writes of forming Hermitage Capital, an investment fund that makes huge profits in newly-privatized Russian firms, especially oil companies, whose assets are priced at a fraction of their worth. In the process, he runs headlong into a shadowy group known as “the oligarchs”—men who have become billionaires by taking over nearly 40% of Russian industry, and who think nothing of bribes, extortion, and even murder to achieve their aims.

Browder resists the oligarch’s attempt to ruin the Hermitage fund and files official complaints. For a time, this pleases Russian ruler Vladimir Putin, who can use the help, as he tries to corral the newly-powerful oligarchs, but soon Browder’s usefulness evaporates. Chapters 16-21 explain Browder’s increasing troubles with a Russian government that now resents his whistleblowing and wants him gone. His company suffers losses and he is expelled from the country.

Things then get worse. In Chapters 22-31, Browder writes of Russian agents raiding his team’s Moscow offices, threatening team members—most of whom manage to escape to the West—and framing Browder for bogus crimes. The agents arrest, torture, and murder one of his Russian attorneys, Sergei Magnitsky.

Browder and his team, having relocated to London, must lick their wounds, but they are determined to get redress for these offenses. Browder campaigns for a US law, the Magnitsky Act, that would sanction those involved in the crimes against Browder’s team and, especially, the killers of Magnitsky. Browder quickly discovers that the American political “sausage-making” system grinds slowly, as everyone with interests in the process must be placated. The Magnitsky Act finally becomes law, and other countries soon follow suit. The victory is hard-won but satisfying. In the end, however, the criminals are still free, and the Russian government continues to harass Browder from afar.