Mykola Swarnyk, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
We had a look at Earl Browder, one time leader of the Communist Party of the USA who was up to his neck in all kinds of espionage for the Soviets. Of course being a good lefty he denied it all. His three sons all became professors of Mathematics at US Universities.
One of these sons was Felix Earl Browder, born in 1927 in Moscow, and he had a son named William Felix Browder born in 1964 in Princeton. William is better known as Bill. In 1999 he was naturalised as a British citizen citing the mistreatment of his family and especially his grandfather. In 2024 he was awarded a KCMG and is now Sir William Browder. Such awards are often preceded by contributions to a political party even though this is (in theory anyway) illegal.
Bill’s wife, though American, has a maiden name of Molokowa, his mother Eva Tislowitz was born in Vienna and his paternal grandmother, Earl’s wife, was born in Moscow. It should come as no surprise to see where his dabbling in things Russian comes from.
In 1996 Bill and Edmond Safra founded Hermitage Capital Management for the purpose of investing seed capital of $25 million in Russia. These were the heady days of Boris Yeltsin where investing in Russia was akin to the Wild West or even a Democrat funding spree. As old Soviet factories were privatised and shares given to the workers, many a scoundrel made his fortune in that period. His partner, Edmond Safra was a Lebanese-Brazilian billionaire banker of Syrian descent, in 1957 he had been accused of drug trafficking though the charges didn’t stick. His name, and his father Jacob’s, figured prominently in quite a few scandals and poor old Edmond died in 1999 in his penthouse in Monaco in a fire that was alleged by many to be arson and all the usual suspects were in the frame, the mafia, the drug cartels, money launderers and even gold speculators. The convicted arsonist was one of his nurses, an American former Green Beret (as a nurse ?) who is one of the 20 or so prisoners locked up in the Principality.
Initially HCM made its money as an investment fund and asset manager mainly in Russia. Their speciality was finding undervalued companies and rooting out the corruption. Remember these were the days when the likes of Abramovitch made his billions.
This Hermitage Capital Management became a hedge fund. I think hedge funds have inherited the mantle of the old asset strippers of yore, Jim Slater and Peter Walker MP of Slater-Walker fame being two of our most famous though the Americans have their own pantheon of such people. During his business dealings in Russia Bill Browder has become one of the biggest enemies of Vladimir Putin. One of HCM’s investments was Gazprom. Bill claimed to have found management corruption and corporate malfeasance in several of the companies he had invested in. One of these companies counter sued Browder alleging he had siphoned company assets into offshore accounts from whence they need up in the US.
In retaliation Browder was deported from Russia to the UK and declared a threat to Russian national security. In 2007 the Moscow offices of HCM were raided by Russian Interior Ministry officers and Hermitage’s holding companies were fraudulently re-registered in the name of an ex-convict. After which a fraudulent $230 million tax refund was awarded. This is almost as corrupt as the Democrats.
The trials and allegations against Browder made it impossible for him to continue working in Russia. He also came up against Vladimir Putin who is not in favour of people who poke their noses in too deeply.
Business in Russia was good with Browder earning well north of £100 million a year.by 2006-7. In 2005 he had a big bust up with the Russian government and was blacklisted for corruption and went from supporting Putin to removing him from his Christmas card list.
In 2013 Browder and a deceased colleague were convicted of tax fraud. Requests to Interpol for an arrest warrant were rejected but this request happened 5 times.
In 2018 HSBC, by then a trustee of HCM, reached a settlement with the Russian government and paid a £17 million fine for alleged tax avoidance.
At the WEF conference in Davos in 2022 Browder criticised Germany for its dependence on Russia, blamed Putin for the Ukraine War and laid much blame at the door of our favourite Angela Merkin. He can’t be all bad is he is no fan of the Merkin.
Browder was also up to his neck in the Russia Collusion hoax that dogged Donald Trump’s first term. He has also alleged that Putin is the richest man in the world and gets a 50% cut of the profits of Russian oligarchs. I find this hard to believe, these are not the sort of people who would pay out 50% just to survive.
There was also the question of the $400 million Putin says Browder gave to Hillary Clinton’s election campaign in 2015.
While I don’t doubt President Putin has made a nice little nest egg from his stint as President, I doubt he is the richest man in the world. We can also see from the company he keeps that Browder is in league with the WEF and its minions.
Not bad for the grandson of the one time head of the USACP who lied his head off his entire life.
Bill, as he likes to be known, has a son called Jason. Jason has developed something called DoNotPay dot com which is an online legal service that provides a robot lawyer and uses AI to provide various legal services. I fear one or two puffins may be close to losing their jobs to m’learned AI friend. DoNotDespair, it’s efficiency and accuracy has been much maligned along with a $193k for from the FTC for false advertising.
This company originally started as a way to contest parking fines but has branched out into other legal issues. Doubtless this type of thing will take over but it may take a bit more time to mature.
Since 2015 HCM has turned to being a Family Office Hedge Fund managing the personal wealth of the Browder family concentrating on emerging markets. The days of meddling in Russia have long gone and they no longer seek outside investors.
© well_chuffed 2025
