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In today’s world, everyone should read Freezing Order
Book Review
By Derryll White
Browder, Bill (2022). Freezing Order.
Anyone who has read Bill Browder’s previous work, “Red Notice’, is familiar with his relationship to Russia, Vladimir Putin and the Russian oligarchs. Much of that subject matter is in the news today as the international community clamps down on assets and money movement from the same people.
Bill Browder speaks with some authority as in 1996 he moved to Moscow and established a hedge fund, the Hermitage Fund. At the height of his career in Russia he was responsible for managing $4.5 billion invested in Russian equities.
This is an intriguing account of money and power. Russia appears as the Wild West, unfettered individuals with base morals and huge wealth, looting and robbing across the world and tied to Putin. Every reader knows what Putin is doing, attacking and looting the Ukraine.
‘Freezing Order’, a non-fiction work in which Bill Browder pays $500 a night for a Swiss hotel and $50,000 just to attend the World Economic Forum, reads like a smooth mystery novel. Everyone knows who the bad guys are, but the reader cannot comprehend how they get away with their criminal activities. Putin ran Browder and his company out of Russia and has continued his attacks and pressure on Browder and his staff.
Browder takes the reader on a journey that uncovers hundreds of billions stolen from the Russian people and vested in Putin and his friends. This is a book that presents the unbelievable, documents it, and leaves the reader reeling. Perhaps the best fact to come out is that there are people in the world who are able to devote themselves and their considerable resources to a continuing an amazing fight for social justice. In today’s world, everyone should read ‘Freezing Order.’
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Excerpts from the book:
ECONOMICS – The official motto of the World Economic Forum is “Committed to Improving the State of the World,” but in reality, many attendees are billionaires, dictators, and Fortune 500 executives who have little interest in improving the state of the world. A few are interested in exactly the opposite.
THE SUBJECTS – In general, prosecutors open cases that they’re almost certain to win. Although the evidence was irrefutable, the Swiss knew that any case involving Russians was sure to be excruciating. The Russians are notoriously uncooperative, they throw up constant smoke screens, and they lie at every turn.
THE SWISS – Yes, the Swiss bring together warring countries to sign peace treaties, and Switzerland serves as headquarters for multinational organizations like the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Office, but they also abuse their “neutrality” to support some of the world’s most heinous dictators. Rarely a year goes by when you don’t hear about a scandal involving some African potentate, or Central Asian kleptocrat hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in Swiss banks. The Swiss almost take pride in the fact that they welcome everyone – good or bad, it doesn’t matter so long as the country continues to accrue the economic benefits.
GOVERNMENT – The reality is that the US government is so mammoth, siloed, and bureaucratic that in order for anything to happen, someone extremely important has to intervene and declares “This is unacceptable. Stop it, now.”
CANADA – The Canadian Magnitsky Act was a major milestone. It wasn’t so much that Russians bought villas in Toronto or kept their money in Montreal banks, but rather that other countries would follow Canada’s lead. Many nations are either too proud or too anti-American to follow the United States, but there’s no such thing as being anti-Canadian. I knew this move would open the floodgates and that a cascade of other countries would soon adopt Magnitsky Acts as their own.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
