Yahoo News reports:

A trillion dollars: That’s how much money famed investor Bill Browder believes Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs have stolen from the Russian people since the fall of the Soviet Union.

“And that was money that was supposed to be spent on health care and education, roads and services,” Browder said at a Manhattan event to celebrate the publication of his second book, “Freezing Order,” which chronicles how he became a Putin nemesis as a result of his attempts to expose Kremlin corruption. Those efforts led to the death of Browder’s attorney Sergei Magnitsky, who was tortured in a Russian prison and whose name is affixed to sanctions bills passed by Congress.

Learning of Magnitsky’s death was “the most heartbreaking, traumatic, and devastating moment of my life,” Browder writes — and a sign of how committed Putin was willing to pursuing perceived enemies of the state. The grandson of American communist leader Earl Browder, Bill Browder had made billions through Hermitage Capital Management, the fund he started in 1996, during the chaotic period of full-contact Russian capitalism. [Continue reading…]