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Eastern Europe
November 30, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
Putin foe Browder heads to Dublin to launch Irish Magnitsky Act
Jason Corcoran in Moscow
Financier Bill Browder will land in Dublin this week in a bid to introduce an Irish Magnitsky Act targeting corrupt Russian officials due to the city’s dubious reputation as a shadow-banking hub.
Browder, 54, is scheduled to meet in Dublin
with Senator Pádraig Ó Céidigh, a candidate
in Ireland’s recent Presidential election, about formulating an Irish Magnitsky Act, bne IntelliNews can reveal. Ó Céidigh, a co-founder of the Irish airline Aer Arann and an independent politician, has been in discussions with Browder for months about sponsoring legislation after leading frontbenchers from the ruling Fine Gael party and the main opposition Fianna Fail party had toyed with backing a new plan.
It is understood that Ó Céidigh has drafted a bill and Browder will travel to Dublin on Friday November 30 to canvass support from other lawmakers and to talk to local media.
“Currently, Magnitsky Acts are in place in US, Can- ada, UK, Estonia, Lithuania Latvia and Gibraltar,”
a spokeswoman for the campaign told bne Intel- liNews. “We hope to work towards Ireland being the eighth country to adopt this law. Similar initia- tives are currently taking place in France, Den- mark, Netherlands, Sweden and Australia.”
Browder, head of investment fund Hermitage Capital Management, is spearheading a global campaign to expose corruption and punish Russian officials he blames for the 2009 death in a Moscow prison of Sergei Magnitsky, who he employed as a lawyer.
Browder, whose firm was once the biggest foreign portfolio investor in Russia with $4.5bn in assets until his expulsion from Russia, has successfully
lobbied the US Congress, along with other European countries, to pass legislation freezing assets and denying visas to Russian officials allegedly involved in the Magnitsky case.
US-born Browder, who spends more time on activism these days than managing money,
said he is concerned by recent research by
Trinity College Dublin that 125 Russian-linked companies have raised about €110bn through the IFSC [Irish Financial Services Centre] since 2007.
“The main issue is that there are a lot of people in Ireland who are doing the Russians’ bidding and who are feeding at the trough servicing Russian money,” Browder told bne IntelliNews earlier
this year. “We have the same problem in the
UK where we have accountants, lawyers, estate agents, restaurateurs, jewellery sales people and others who are wholly surviving off the crumbs of Russian oligarchs’ table.”
Research by the Trinity academics shows that major Russian banks, such as MDM and Binbank (aka B&N Bank), are using Dublin's financial centre and “insider dealing schemes” to create fictitious assets and hide losses on their balance sheets.
Browder also believes Ireland is vulnerable to Russian hackers as the “soft underbelly” of US tech multinationals.
“Ireland is the soft underbelly of the tech industry because they have access to Facebook, Google and Apple without the national security overlay in America, where they are under more scrutiny by US intelligence services,” he said.
A report by the Sunday Times suggested Russian intelligence networks have increased their