The troubles he’s known

THE NAME Bill Browder has been in the news for years, but many first heard the name when he published a true-life page-turner in 2015 titled Red Notice, a book exposing the Russian regime as thugs and murderers.

Mr. Browder, once the biggest hedge fund operator in Russia, was expelled from the country for exposing widespread corruption under Vlad (the Impaler) Putin. One of his lawyers—Sergei Magnitsky—didn’t get out of the country in time, and was arrested. And tortured in prison. He died in a jail cell after being beaten by eight guards. (The Russians don’t leave anything to chance. Seven guards might not have done the trick.)

All of which encouraged Bill Browder to (1) write a book and (2) push Western governments to implement “Magnitsky Acts,” which the United States did. Such acts impose sanctions on Comrade Putin’s friends who were responsible for Mr. Magnitsky’s death. Canada is the latest country to pass such a law, much to the spitting chagrin of the current tsar in Moscow.

The latest? In a neat little trick that would make Uncle Joe himself smile, the Russian regime has recently found enough evidence to charge Bill Browder with his lawyer’s death. Even though Bill Browder wasn’t on the same side of the planet when his lawyer was beaten to death in Putin’s modern gulag.

But what, Vladimir Vladimirovich worry? He’s too busy planning the next criminal charge against a political opponent.

The only good news here is that the Western police agencies like the FBI and Interpol know better, and call this latest attempt to deliver Bill Browder into the delicate embraces of the Russian penal system wholly political. And not happening.

That hasn’t stopped President Putin in the past. Our advice to Mr. Browder: Keep your head down. And a bodyguard close.