Hem
Bill Browder. (Tomas Oneborg/SvD/TT / TT NYHETSBYRÅN)

Ryssland kräver att Interpol griper visselblåsare

Ryssland kräver att Interpol griper finansmannen och visselblåsaren Bill Browder och att han utlämnas, rapporterar Reuters.

Till SvD Näringsliv säger Browder att Ryssland inte har något att förlora och att Interpol väntas ta ställning till det ryska kravet på måndag.

– Om Ryssland skulle få gehör för sin sak hos Interpol på måndag skulle mitt liv vara i fara, säger han till tidningen.

Det är sjunde gången som Ryssland framför krav på att Browder grips. Interpol har avvisat kraven vid alla tidigare tillfällen, med undantag för ett felaktigt gripande i Madrid i maj förra året.

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Bill Browder
Wikipedia (en)
William Felix Browder (born 23 April 1964) is an American-born British financier and economist. He is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, an investment fund that at one time was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. He gave up his U.S. citizenship in 1998 to avoid paying taxes related to foreign investment. After having business in Russia for ten years, Browder was refused entry to Russia in 2005 as a threat to national security; he has said it was because he exposed corruption. After the death in prison in 2009 of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer and auditor who had represented his company and conducted an investigation into massive tax fraud related to it, Browder lobbied for Congress to pass the Magnitsky Act, a law to punish Russian human rights violators, which was signed into law in 2012 by President Barack Obama. In 2013, Browder was tried in absentia in Russia for tax fraud, jointly in a posthumous prosecution of Magnitsky. He was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison. Interpol rejected Russian requests to arrest Browder, saying the case was political. In 2014, the European Parliament voted for sanctions against 30 Russians believed complicit in the Magnitsky case; this was the first time it had taken such action. In July 2017, Browder testified to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election through use of persons in Washington, D.C. On October 19, 2017, Canada enacted its own Magnitsky Act, which allows for the freezing of assets and visa bans on officials from Russia and other nations considered to be guilty of human rights violations, and prohibits Canadian firms from dealing with foreign nationals who have grossly violated human rights. Other countries including Estonia, Lithuania, and the United Kingdom, have also enacted their own version of the Magnitsky Act.On October 21, 2017, as part of a criminal conviction for tax evasion, the Russian government attempted to place Browder on Interpol's arrest list. After a protest by U.S. Congressional leaders, his visa was restored the following day. Russia's arrest-warrant request was rejected by Interpol on October 26, 2017. While visiting Spain in May 2018, Browder was arrested on 30 May 2018 by Spanish authorities on a new Russian Interpol warrant and transferred to an undisclosed Spanish police station, yet he was released two hours later, after Interpol confirmed that this was a political case.
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