Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice

With Russia no longer available, more clients send redemption requests, and the fund drops in size by 30%. Browder directs Hermitage’s energies toward other third-world markets and discovers several interesting investment opportunities: “I didn’t need to be in Russia to succeed” (191). He develops a new fund called Hermitage Global and presents it at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2007.

At Davos, Browder buttonholes Russian deputy prime minister Dmitri Medvedev, a candidate for president after Putin steps down. Medvedev agrees to look into Browder’s visa situation. Browder’s team assembles the necessary documentation, and Elena gets it into the hands of a high-level Russian diplomat, who promises to forward it. A few weeks later, Interior Ministry colonel Artem Kuznetsov contacts Vadim and hints that, for a bribe, he can make the visa problem go away. Browder always avoids such graft situations, so he ignores the offer.

The Hermitage Global fund attracts investors, which meant Browder “had stopped the bleeding and that [his] company would stay in business” (196).

In June, Colonel Kuznetsov’s men raid the Hermitage Moscow office on a phony warrant and take nearly everything. The office contains no important documents pertaining to Hermitage’s foreign investors—they had long since been removed—but the colonel’s men also raid the offices of Browder’s Moscow lawyer, Jamison Firestone, where they take nearly everything and severely beat one of his junior lawyers.