Freezing Order
A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder, and Surviving Vladimir Putin's Wrath
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4.3 • 647 Ratings
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- $1.99
Publisher Description
Following his explosive New York Times bestseller Red Notice, Bill Browder returns with another “explosive and compulsive” (Stephen Fry) thriller chronicling how he became Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy by exposing Putin’s campaign to steal and launder hundreds of millions of dollars and kill anyone who stands in his way.
When Bill Browder’s young Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was beaten to death in a Moscow jail, Browder made it his life’s mission to go after his killers and make sure they faced justice. The first step was to uncover who was behind the $230 million tax refund scheme that Magnitsky was killed over. As Browder and his team tracked the money as it flowed out of Russia through the Baltics and Cyprus and on to Western Europe and the Americas, they were shocked to discover that Vladimir Putin himself was a beneficiary of the crime.
As law enforcement agencies began freezing the money, Putin retaliated. He and his cronies set up honey traps, hired process servers to chase Browder through cities, murdered more of his Russian allies, and enlisted some of America’s top lawyers and politicians to bring him down. Putin will stop at nothing to protect his money. As Freezing Order reveals, Browder’s campaign to expose Putin’s corruption was a factor behind Russia’s intervention in the 2016 US presidential election.
At once a financial caper, an international adventure, and a passionate plea for justice, Freezing Order is “mandatory reading for anyone who wants to understand the tactics of modern autocracy,” (Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Twilight of Democracy). It is a stirring morality tale about how one man can take on one the world’s most ruthless villains—and win.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Financier and political activist Browder returns with a riveting follow-up to his bestseller Red Notice, which recounted how his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, was "taken hostage by corrupt Russian officials and ultimately killed in jail" for exposing a $230 million tax fraud scheme. Through impressive financial sleuthing and with the help of a Barron's reporter, a Russian whistleblower (who was later poisoned), an East European watchdog, and others, Browder—who managed a hedge fund in Russia worth $4.5 billion from 1996 until 2005, when Putin expelled him as a threat to national security—traces the dirty money trail from bank accounts in the Baltics and Cyprus to posh real estate in Manhattan. His goal is to persuade European and American political leaders and bank chiefs to freeze Russian assets and to adopt measures like the 2016 Magnitsky Act, but as his successes mount, so does Russian pushback. Browder documents threatening encounters with lawyers, mobsters, and intelligence agents; the Kremlin disinformation campaign that accused him of stealing the $230 million; and his hiring of bodyguards and wielding of social media to protect himself and his family. Though some of the financial and legal matters are hard to grasp, this is an eye-opening exposé of the lengths Putin's cronies will go to hide their crimes and punish their accusers.
Customer Reviews
Freezing Order
I enjoyed reading this book. The author caused me to look at the on going events happening around from different points of view.
Supposedly Nonfiction but reads like fiction
I struggled with this book. It’s at times fascinating but otherwise overly self-aggrandizing. I had a hard time believing most of his claims. It would have been a much better and more impactful book if he’d had somebody else write it with a more discerning perspective. Still, it was a really detailed and interesting story of trying to follow dirty money.
Freezing order
I agree with “mooch” about BBBB, bills big brass balls. That’s what it takes to stand up to and call out the evil in power in Russia. which is part of a deeply entrenched system that will probably always be with us. And now includes a like mindedness in the White House.