Putin’s nemesis Bill Browder calls on South Africans to push for a Magnitsky Act in the lead-up to 2024 elections

Bill Browder speaks at The Gathering Twenty Twenty Four held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on 14 March 2024. (Photo: Shelley Christians)

By Tamsin Metelerkamp

14 Mar 2024

Bill Browder, architect of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign, called on South Africa to adopt a Magnitsky Act during his address at Daily Maverick’s The Gathering Twenty Twenty-Four.

The US passed the Global Magnitsky Act in 2016, a piece of legislation that authorises the government to sanction foreign government officials worldwide who are human rights offenders, as well as freezing their assets and banning them from entering the US. Since then, more than 30 countries have adopted some form of Magnitsky mechanism. South Africa is not one of them.

In his video address at Daily Maverick’s The Gathering Twenty Twenty-Four, architect of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign Bill Browder expressed his hope that South Africa would come to adopt a Magnitsky Act in the near future.

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“I understand that there’s an election coming up in South Africa. I understand that there are political candidates and other people politically connected in the audience today. And so my message to you, my main message to you, is that South Africa should have a Magnitsky Act,” he said.

Browder is the CEO and cofounder of Hermitage Capital Management, and the bestselling author of two books, Red Notice and Freezing Order. He is also a major long-time critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“It all started when Putin and his regime murdered my lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in Russian police custody. Sergei had uncovered and exposed a $230-million Russian government corruption scheme. In retaliation, he was arrested, tortured for 358 days and killed at the age of 37 on November 16 2009,” Browder said.

“Since his murder, I have taken up his cause to fight for justice and that cause has led to something which has turned out to be far bigger than anything I could ever have imagined.”

Upon realising that there was no possibility of getting justice for Magnitsky’s death inside Russia, Browder looked for other justice mechanisms he could turn to and found that none existed.

Bill Browder speaks at The Gathering Twenty Twenty-Four held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on 14 March 2024. (Photo: Shelley Christians)

“I said to myself, that’s just unreasonable. I can’t live in a world like that. And so I came up with an idea, which was that the people that killed Sergei Magnitsky killed him for $230-million. And the people who get that money don’t keep that money in Russia. They keep that money elsewhere, in attractive places – in the south of France, they buy properties; in Aspen, they get ski chalets.

“We may not be able to prosecute them for torture and murder in America or France or the UK. But we can absolutely freeze those assets that they have in the West and we can prevent their travel. And that idea became known as the Magnitsky Act.”

The first Magnitsky Act passed in the US Senate in November 2012, and later passed in the House of Representatives with 89% on 14 December 2012, becoming a federal law in the US, he continued. The initial act was intended to punish Russian officials responsible for the death of Magnitsky.

“Putin went out of his mind. Putin retaliated by banning the adoption of Russian orphans by American families. He made it his single-largest foreign policy priority to repeal the Magnitsky Act, and then he started going after me with death threats, kidnapping threats. I’ve been the subject of eight Interpol arrest warrants, extradition requests from the UK where I live,” said Browder.

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The introduction of the Global Magnitsky Act in the US a few years later expanded the legislation to encompass human rights offenders worldwide. This legislation has since been replicated in countries across the globe.

Browder noted that there were some people in the South African government who were “chummy with Putin and with Russia”, a political position he described as “shameful”.

“My hope is that chumminess, that friendliness, stops. And that the politicians who are sitting here today will push forward on something which will be good for South Africa, bad for Russia and, of course, bad for other corrupt kleptocrats and dictators from around the world,” he said.

Read more in Daily Maverick: ‘Non-alignment’ is not a real ANC policy, just a useful tool

Read more in Daily Maverick: Untangling the narrative web surrounding South Africa’s stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict

The South African government has attracted widespread criticism for its “non-aligned” stance on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has never condemned Russia or Putin for the aggression and has abstained from all the resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly which did condemn them.

Read more in Daily Maverick: The Gathering 2024

‘A global effort to promote accountability’

Daily Maverick editor Branko Brkic highlighted that in those countries that have adopted the Magnitsky law, the executive authorities have the authority to impose sanctions based on credible information, enabling a swift response to proven human rights abuses and corruption anywhere in the world. The executive must also provide full transparency in their actions.

“None of these points violates any of the tenets of the South African Constitution – quite the opposite. It speaks of a global effort to promote accountability and close avenues for human rights abuse, money laundering and influence peddling. The Global Magnitsky Act is the strongest tool anywhere that can help promote human rights and fight corruption. So, why would the South African government not actively promote and ask our Parliament to pass it with great haste?” he said.

South Africa is currently greylisted in the global financial system because of problems with access to accurate beneficial ownership information; increasing law enforcement use of financial intelligence; inadequate investigations and prosecutions of money laundering and terrorism financing; low-quality asset recovery efforts; inaccurate terrorism financing risk assessment; and the effective implementation of targeted financial sanctions, among other issues.

Read more in Daily Maverick: 2024 elections

Brkic continued: “These are most of the issues covered by the Magnitsky Act. By early 2025, the South African government must fix all these problems to do with greylisting or else. We all seem to want to live in a better country governed by a competent, responsible and accountable state. How about we actually prove that commitment by officially passing the Global Magnitsky Act? What is stopping us? What are we afraid of?” DM

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‘A global effort to promote accountability’