There is irony in this tale as Bill Browder was following in his grandfather’s footsteps in some ways but was also radically poles apart. Browder’s grandfather had stood for Presidential election in the USA on a Communist ticket. Bill Browder was drawn to business possibilities behind the Iron Curtain and in the post Cold War, post Soviet Union Russia, Browder’s Hermitage fund became the biggest foreign investor in Russia and also the fund, with at its peak over $1 billion in assets under its control, the best performing investment fund in the World. The start of his career was interesting. After good qualifications at Stanford University in the United States, Browder set himself up in the European financial capital of London, with a view to exploring trade in Eastern European markets, made possible by the fall of the Berlin Wall. Among early experience he worked for the notorious Robert Maxwell, shortly before his controversial yacht death just as a huge pension fraud Maxwell had been operating was being exposed and investigated. Despite this career blip, Browder went on to form his own fund, Hermitage Capital Management. He headed off to Moscow and with careful research began to take advantage of the huge available margins made in the wake of privatisation of former Soviet Industry. This was the age of emerging gangster oligarchs and widespread corruption. Browder, ever in a quest for justice and a moral code which rejects corruption began to flag the eyes of Russian potentates and in 2005 he was refused entry to Russia as Moscow airport and put back on the plane for repatriation in the U.K. Thus ends the high profit-yielding business honeymoon and the start of a quest to recover his money, keep his business afloat and expose the enemies and corruption that threatened his destruction. The whole saga spirals out of control and the Russian authorities launch a massively corrupt scheme involving police officers who tried stealing his businesses and ran a massive tax fraud amounting to about $230 million. The path led to the very top with Kremlin officials supporting every move against the Jewish American businessman. His Russian lawyer, an honest Russian gentleman by the name of Sergei Magnitsky becomes embroiled in situation and is thrown in jail and due to health complications, torture and refusal of necessary medical care, Magnitsky suffers a brutal early death in jail. Browder is deeply upset and affected by this and his role as venture capitalist businessman changes into human rights campaigner. Browder irks even the highest power in Russia and becomes the biggest public enemy of Vladimir Putin. The U.K. government were relatively unbothered in their assistance so Browder ends up campaigning with the US politicians and at the very highest level dealing with the likes of Senator John McCain, Senator John Kerry among other Washington players to take up the cause. Ultimately Browder flukes hi sway into getting President Obama to pass legislation called the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act which restricted and placed travel bans on all corrupt officials involved in the crimes and death of Browder’s lawyer and was part of a general move of sanctioning Russia and its excesses. In return Putin decided to punish sick Russian orphans by denying them access to adoptive American families. A bit sort of in tow with Vladimir’s current international reputation as a bit of an ogre…. The book is a whirlwind exploration of big business, exposes the realities of modern Russia and also in the wake of unbelievable corruption and human rights atrocities a sense of justice is achieved.