Freezing Order: A True Story of Russian Money Laundering, Murder,and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath

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Bill Browder has shown that one man with courage can make a difference, and that even the most powerful regimes have weak spots. There was a dining room, its table laid out with pastries, chocolates, and champagne on ice; then came the reading room, with a small private library; then a lounge with a glass-topped bar; then a little office with subdued lighting; and finally, the bedroom, which had a freestanding bathtub tucked under a high window. As I rushed to pack, I remembered something Elena had said to me after I’d been detained at Geneva Airport that February. I would then have 30 days to respond, and the Russians would have another 30 days to respond to my response. I hadn’t been in a fistfight since ninth grade, when I was the smallest kid at a boarding school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, but I was suddenly ready for a physical confrontation with these men if that meant avoiding being kidnapped.

Reading Bill Browder’s zesty new book about the theft, extortion, intimidation, lies and murder that are the Russian state’s daily levers of power can feel like reading several books at once. What concerned him was that his presidential suite would be unavailable so long as it contained my belongings.Then in 2003 Putin jailed Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at the time the richest oligarch in Russia, and instead of opposing corruption, began putting the squeeze on the duly intimidated oligarchy. By the glint in Prosecutor Grinda’s eye, I could see that he would take what I was telling him seriously. It asks what one person can do in the face of such insidious corruption, and what we can find in ourselves to stand up and resist those forces that would steal, deceive and murder for their own gain. When I arrived at my hotel that evening, the manager scurried over to the check-in desk and ushered the clerk aside. The Russians hired a lawyer who had previously worked for Browder, a conflict of interest that eventually had the lawyer barred, but not before Browder feared his personal information had been passed on to the people who were out to get him.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. The financial and legal complexities are challenging but set against the constant threat to the author’s life, his realities come clear and ever more frightening as he uncovers government connections, layers of criminality, money laundering and murder, all by one of the superpowers of our world currently waging a war in Ukraine (Nov 2023) and suspected of engineering the war in the Middle East. They expected some kind of reaction, but the Russians had been accusing me of much more serious crimes for such a long time that the sole accusation of “fraud” had almost no impact. A few minutes later, the senior officer who’d presented the charge sheet re-entered the room, translator in tow, both with heads bowed.

I explained how, in 2008, Sergei had been taken hostage by corrupt Russian officials and ultimately killed in jail as my proxy. When Putin came to power on New Year’s Eve 1999, promising to stamp out corruption, Browder was a relieved man. He stepped aside when the doors opened, making room for me to exit first, but once we were in the hall he shuffled past me, stopping in front of a white door.