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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]New poster here.  I believe Browder's story about his dealings with Putin and the oligarchs.  But I skimmed through his book earlier this summer, and the same thought kept occurring to me.  He didn't have the success he had in Moscow without being thoroughly corrupt himself.

Both things can be true - that Putin is a murderous and election-meddling thug who should be stopped AND that Browder is seeking vengeance for having his lawyer/friend killed and his assets stolen.  His book made clear that he is certainly an egomaniac.

Why do I think all this?  Because I worked in Moscow throughout the 90s.  By 1995 (a year before Browder ever showed up), you couldn't even sign a contract to buy candy without being pressured for serious kick-backs.  I was asked to fold the cost of new Land Rovers into the contract and have them delivered to the decision-makers in the Russian organizations.  Our proposals were disqualified based on technicalities because we hadn't paid the bribes. The big corporations all hired middlemen to handle all the corruption for them and then pay "commissions" for representational services.

I was just a small-time nothing who eventually had to leave because I wouldn't play by the new rules.  So no way is Browder virtuous in all this.

All the same, I'm grateful he pushed for the Magnitsky Act.  His massive ego has helped to raise awareness and maybe something will come of it.

[/quote]

Finally someone whose thinking isn't entirely immersed in cliches!

I was there too, working in i-banking in early and mid-nineties.  Russia at that time was a veritable Wild Wild West where big boys with global names were all too happy to play to collect incredible profits - for a while.  Let it just be said, and sunk in, that for as long as the going was good, all the usual suspects - Credit Suisse, Warburg, Citibank, ABN, EVERYONE - were willing to play ball and go along.  The ballers like Boris Johnson, Steve Jennings and, I suppose, Browder, once they saw how much money can be made, eagerly broke out of the corporate shells to open their own shops because they didn't want all the money to go to Zurich.  When Russia was selling GOVERNMENT T-bonds at double-digit rates, all the Browderesque i-bankers were happy to buy, knowing full well that it had to be bogus and corrupt, because only junk bonds pay that much.  But they were happy to pay and underwrite numerous conferences and panels touting Russia as the next emerging market darling.  When the utterly, wholly corrupt shares auctions were organized, selling off some of the greatest mineral deposits in the world for a song, Western banks were all too happy to facilitate and make money on this.  When Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi played a prank and called Burson Marsteller, pretending to be chiefs of St Petersburg police who wanted a PR campaign to counteract the "myth of police brutality", BM was happy to jump.  They were all whores, drinking from the hose.

Until the game turned against them and said, thank you very much, we stole enough from the other people with your help, now we will steal from you.

Carve this on your cortex: Browder and Co. were perfectly willing to close their eyes to corruption[b] as long as someone else was getting robbed.[/b] Corruption was the fact of life until it touched them personally.  Then it was "I am a VICTIM!"

Please, bitch.  Please.  There are no clean hands in this game.

Putin is clearly corrupt as hell and people who cross him are doomed.

But Browder?  Please. [/quote]

I was thinly on the periphery of this in dealing with HCM.   Browder is as dirty as Putin.  The US is so gullible that they don't see Browder's scheme to blackmail Putin with the Magnitsky Act.  [/quote]

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