Red Notice
Bill Browder's journey started on the South Side of Chicago and moved through Stanford Business School to the dog-eat-dog world of hedge fund investing in the 1990s. It continued in Moscow, where Browder made his fortune heading the largest investment fund in Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse. But when he exposed the corrupt oligarchs who were robbing the companies in which he was investing, Vladimir Putin turned on him and, in 2005, had him expelled from Russia. In 2007, a group of law enforcement officers raided Browder's offices in Moscow and stole $230 million of taxes that his fund's companies had paid to the Russian government. Browder's attorney Sergei Magnitsky investigated the incident and uncovered a sprawling criminal enterprise. A month after Sergei testified against the officials involved, he was arrested and thrown into pre-trial detention, where he was tortured for a year. On November 16, 2009, he was led to an isolation chamber, handcuffed to a bedrail, and beaten to death by eight guards in full riot gear. Browder glimpsed the heart of darkness, and it transformed his life: he embarked on an unrelenting quest for justice in Sergei's name, exposing the towering cover-up that leads right up to Putin.
Stats for nerds
22recommend
37mentions
30people
2015–2026years
73% recommend24% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I just finished Red Notice by Bill Browder - highly recommend it. It's super interesting to get a peak into what business in other parts of the world looked like in the early 80s - 2000s. I don't want to spoil but it's got some heavy/moving stuff in it. Reads like a novel!
- You need to read both Red Notice, and Freezing Order by Bill Browder. Truly eye opening, and in line with this type of thing.
- I guess you aren't too familiar with the context. The Chechens wars were major post-USSR wars fought by Russia, extremely bloody and violent, and an awkward point in Russia's self image as a major power. In the first Chechen war, the tiny, remote breakaway region declared, and maintained on battlefield, it's independence from Mighty Russia. The Second installment undid that, and was what you would consider the first major popularity booster for Putin - regardless of whether the FSB was bombing its own people. Either way, the stakes were high, these weren't obscure wars.
As for the "pure psychopaths" bit... Russia has a long history of sacrificing its citizens for the Greater Good. The "meat grinder" in Ukraine is one example. Another, quite unambiguous one, is the Dubrovka theatre hostage crisis: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_theater_hostage_crisi... . Terrorists (Chechen actually, though there is speculation, again, about FSB involvement) took a whole Moscow theatre hostage. The anti terrorist units attacked, killing all 40 terrorists but also over 120 of the hostages. A combat gas was injected into the theatre, which incapacitated the terrorists and allowed an armed attack, but also killed lots of the bystanders.
As for books, I can't recommend any "latest history" books on Russia, but you could do a lot worse than "Red Notice" by Bill Browder for general context. It's a great book, about a Western (American?) guy who goes to Russia in the 90s, sets up an activist hedge fund, and makes a killing. All was well so long as he was useful to the government, but when their paths diverged, all got rather messy.
- Bill Browser's Red Notice and then Freezing Order.
They read like fiction and gave me a whole new appreciation for how Russia works, plus international politics and investing.
- You'll have an absolute blast reading Red Notice by Browder. It's about a hedge fund guy that ends up in Russia during the privatization period, quickly realizes the country is getting looted and wants a big slice for himself. It's a true-ish story, written like a spy novel, with many fascinating details about this unique period in history.
- The book Red Notice by Bill Browder discusses this period. I wish the Netflix movie of the same name was based on it instead!
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