Russians ‘used Interpol’ to arrest Putin adversary
BILL BROWDER, the Uk-based financier and anti-putin campaigner, was taken to a police station in Madrid yesterday morning after being detained on a Russian warrant.
Mr Browder, who describes himself as “Vladimir Putin’s number one enemy”, wrote on Twitter that he had been arrested by Spanish police on a Russian Interpol warrant, posting pictures from the back of a police car. He was freed two hours later.
The Us-born businessman, who has held British citizenship for the past two decades, was last year sentenced by a Russian court to nine years in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges.
The detention of Mr Browder – widely considered the creator of the Magnitsky Act, an international sanctions regime against Russian officials named for his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who died in Russian custody – drew immediate international alarm.
Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit negotiator, said it was “worrying that autocratic Russia can get democratic Spain to go after someone fighting to expose Putin’s crimes and those responsible for Magnitsky’s murder”.
Interpol later denied Mr Browder was ever wanted through its channels, saying in a statement that: “There is not, and has never been, a Red Notice for Mr Bill Browder”.
Mr Browder said he was in Madrid to give evidence to a top Spanish prosecutor “about the huge amount of money from the Magnitsky case that flowed to Spain”, and that following his release his “mission carries on”.