bars at 9:30 a.m. trying to get their attention to take me to process me or whatever they’re going to do. And the officers beyond the cell just ignored me. And I thought, “That’s not good.” So at about 10:00 a.m., I decided to sort of make similar noise and they continued to ignore me. And I’m starting to get really nervous. I think, “OK, I’m not going to be deported. I’m going to be going to Siberia.” And 10:15 a.m. comes around, still nothing, 10:30 a.m. And at this point, with adrenaline starting to really pump through my veins, I’m thinking, “Oh my god. I could be locked up for the next 10 or 15 years.” 10:40 a.m., still nothing. And it’s like 10:45 a.m. or so, they come into the cell, they grab me, and at this point, I think they’re grabbing me to take me for the paddy wagon down to the courthouse to then charge me and send me off to Siberia. But instead, they grabbed me, frog-marched me to the airplane. There was no data processing or paper processing at all. They just threw me onto the airplane. They found a middle seat that was empty. They threw me into the seat. And I didn’t have my passport at this point, but I wasn’t going to complain. I figured that when I got to London, I would figure out what to do. But I just wanted to get out of there. And when the plane took off... I don’t know if you’ve ever watched the movie Argo . There’s this great scene at the end of Argo where a bunch of Canadian diplomats are trying to get out of Iran. And when we took off, I had the same feeling of just absolute and total relief, which was: “Whatever’s going to happen next, at least it’s not going to be happening to me in a Siberian prison.”
Dan Ferris: And your lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, he seems to have been blindsided, too. Rarely have I seen in my life a story of someone who stood on principle literally to the moment of his death and endured such horror and never recanted. Did you see any of this coming? That ability to stand on principle – it’s kind of one thing in a typical Western country, but it’s another in a place like Russia, isn’t it?
“”
'Whatever’s going to happen next, at least it’s not going to be happening to me in a Siberian prison.'
Bill Browder: Well, I haven’t seen a lot of principle in the West either. It’s very unusual in any situation. So Sergei Magnitsky was my lawyer. After I was expelled from the country, the first thing we did was I evacuated my staff, which didn’t include my lawyer because he worked for a foreign law firm. And we liquidated our portfolio, which we were able to successfully do strangely without any trouble. So we got our people out, got our money out, and I thought that was the end of the story. However, it wasn’t. Eighteen months after I was expelled, on June 5, 2007, 25 police officers raided my office in Moscow, and 25 more police officers raided the office of the American law firm that I used in Moscow. And they were specifically looking for the stamps, seals, and certificates for our investment holding companies that at this point were empty, but the authorities didn’t
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