Quotes from Bill Browder

Ever since Barack Obama had become president, the main policy of the U.S. government toward Russia had been one of appeasement.

My grandfather was an American Communist, and he married my grandmother, who was a Russian Communist. During the 1950s, the McCarthy era, my family was viciously persecuted.

I'm not an American citizen.

Well, I mean, Russia was responsible for shooting down MH17. Russia was responsible for invading Ukraine. Russia is responsible for taking away the chemical weapons in Syria that they didn't take away. Russia was responsible for having honest athletes in the Olympics when they did the whole doping program.

On November 13, 2005, as I was flying into Moscow from a weekend away, I was stopped at Sheremetyevo airport, detained for 15 hours, deported, and declared a threat to national security.

And most worryingly, it wouldn't surprise me if Putin ends up starting a major military conflict with the West at some point in the future to save his own skin as head of state in Russia.

My grandfather was a justice fighter. I go to Russia and I find worse injustice than he had ever discovered. My task was investing people's money. But this was far beyond that. I became this sort of crusader.

I am definitely not under British protection. I have to protect myself. I am not M.I.6. I am not C.I.A. I am not anything.

Vladimir Putin has to create foreign enemies, and he also has to justify... he has to claim... he can't acknowledge that there's a legitimate protest against his authoritarian rule, so he's got to blame it on Hilary Clinton.

If you want to go after Putin, go after his money and if you want to go after his money go after the oligarchs.

The Russian government doesn't like me; Vladimir Putin doesn't like me.

Interpol was set up to catch fugitives, not act like the long arm of Putin going after his enemies.

While most people in the world probably haven't heard my name, Vladimir Putin thinks about my name on a very regular basis. He really dislikes me because I'm the guy responsible for the Magnitsky Act.

I'm very realistic about who's coming to my defense. I am my defense.

The story started over a decade ago when I ran Hermitage Capital Management, the largest investment firm in Russia. I was very successful, but when I started to complain publicly about corruption at the companies in which my fund invested, President Vladimir Putin had me expelled from the country and declared a threat to national security.

One thing I can tell you: with the threat of death hanging over you, you live life to the fullest.

I much more enjoy the company of freedom fighters and justice campaigners than I do the company of hedge fund managers.

I've never made a political donation to Hillary Clinton or any other political candidate.

Denmark and Estonia both refused to prosecute the Danske Bank case when we filed in 2013.

We have Russia, on a serial basis, abusing Interpol... The moral of this story is that if a country wants to abuse Interpol they can just keep abusing Interpol and it doesn't really matter how many times they do it.

Getting rid of the Magnitsky Act is one of the top, if not the top, priorities of the Putin regime.

Our top targets are the people who tortured and killed Sergei Magnitsky. But our secondary targets are those people who profited from the crime that he was killed over or facilitated the money laundering for those people.

If there was one senator who could truly empathize with being tortured in prison, it was John McCain.

Putin is a totally inscrutable guy. He gives nothing away. People interpreted what they wanted to see in him.