Is it- can it recur again as quickly as it appeared last time?

First of all, thing, revolutions in Russia h- tend to happen quickly.

You can see what happened in 1917 twice.

[laughs] And you can see what, uh, what happened in 1991.

I, I think the thing is, look, people are willing to cede power to dictators when things are good.

Like the United States right now, if you look at what's happening.

Things are good.

It sounds like you say you think we're closer to that, and that will obviously enormously help the Ukraine war and restoration effort.

Yeah.

To the Russians, their week in the sun.

But then it got...

You don't normally, you know, you- I, I guess w- if, if we had the internet back then, and we, we didn't have the internet, we had email, but you wouldn't put on your website, you know, "Father's a criminal, raised in a brothel," [laughs] uh, around a bunch of mafiosi.

But it turned out that Russia went all mafia in the '90s, and so you have all these mafia groups that are protection rackets running around, and if your business looks like they're doing good, all of a sudden you got a bunch of thugs telling you gotta pay them every, e- every week, right? And I had clients who were telling me, "Jam, would you come down? Like, we're, you know, we, we, we're having problems with our mafia group," which they would call the, the Roof.

A- and I would, like, go down and talk to the boys, and I could talk to the boys, and I would tell them how they're disappointing, and occasionally I would fire groups of killers, right? [laughs] And they'd be like, "What did you just say?" I'm like, "You're s- we-- I, what I said is, uh, you've explained everything very nicely, and you guys are great, and we love you.

Um, but it's not the service we thought we were getting, so we're gonna have to let you go." And they were just, "Well, wait, no, no, no, you don't understand.

Talk to us a little bit about that situation.

Each time was an opportunity to leave.

So in 91, I thought about leaving.

I was actually, I called my dad.

I said, there are tanks in the streets and I couldn't get a plane ticket out anyway because everybody else was leaving and they had money so they could actually pay for the really expensive flights.

And my dad was like, look, I don't think their priority is going to be shooting Americans.

So just be nice to guys with guns.

which I followed.

How did you handle him and what did the whole incident teach you about the overall functioning of the Russian police and legal system for protecting honest business people?

Could you describe the book, the purpose behind it, and the themes it covers?

Sure.

So there are two ways to look at this book.

Um, there's the, the surface read, which you don't have to be interested in Russia or Ukraine to read it.

Um, it's basically a 24-year-old kid, me, um, who was absolutely broke, fresh out of school, uh, had been raised by a criminal, um, surrounded by mafia, who went to Russia, uh, to get away from all that, uh, in 1991 when it was Gorbachev and building, uh, perestroika and glasnost, and found myself right back in it, in this highly criminalized, uh, mafia-ridden society where, strangely enough, I could play that, that game, so to speak.

I was...

I found myself, um, firing mafia protection groups for my clients, um.

But it seems to be the Magnitsky case and the scheme that eventually led to his tragic murder, um, that scheme is still incredibly important to understand how this kleptocratic architecture works and, and, and, and how Russia has turned into this, uh, essentially criminal enterprise.

Tell us more.

Yeah.

So, um, look, I, uh, you mentioned my, my dad, uh, was, was con man.

He did time.

Um, but before he did his time, uh, he was awaiting trial, right? He was accused of defrauding investors in the US government.

A- and during that period, when people are awaiting trial, especially criminal, you know, when they're, when they're awaiting criminal trials, they tend to go a bit nuts.

So my dad became, uh, a drug addict, started doing coke, then he started doing crack because he-- it was easier, easier on his nose, right? He, uh, too much coke.

What can we learn from his story? What does it take to expose corruption? How is it done? And how do you stand up to these evildoers?

Take us through the middle and lower class uncertainty, right? 'Cause they, they were used to a certain structure for, you know, seven, eight decades, and now you have, uh, no structure.

structure.Right.

So we had kind of two revolutions almost one after another.

So when I got off the plane, um, the, it was still the Soviet Union, and a lot of people didn't like what, uh, a lot of people in the government didn't like what Gorbachev was doing.

So they kidnapped him, and they rolled in the tanks, and they said, "This is over." A- and all of a sudden, all these people came out on the streets.

A- a- and they kind of surrounded the tanks a- and they surrounded, uh, the, [camera clicks] Yeltsin's office building, and they were yelling at these 20-year-old kids in the tanks.

I mean, it was like grandmothers, babushki, right? [laughs] Yelling at them, "We're your mothers.

And now back to the show.

Oh, God.

Um, but when you're on the other side and you kind of look at what you've done, you're like, "Wow, I've actually done something." It, it, it has been an amazing ride and I'm very proud of, of many of the things, uh, that we've accomplished.

Um, a- and as for the book itself, you know, I just wanted to tell this story, my story and Russia's story because it's all one.

A- and I wanted to just put people in the shoes of a 24-year-old kid who went to Russia with nothing, deeply in debt.

Um, a- and who made something of himself and then got caught in this crazy thing where Russia tries to take everything you have and kills all your friends.

Um, and when you read my book, you really understand just what's happened to Russia.

You get to watch this wannabe democracy get taken over and criminalized.

Right, right.

... of Hermitage Capital, right?

Right.

So Bill was the fore- the largest foreign investor, uh, in Russia, and he was buying all these shares and making all this money.

But one of the things he would do is he would expose corruption, force the corrupt management out, and then the share price would go up.

And that worked until he started attacking Putin's people who were stealing, and then Putin forced him out of the country.

So once Bill was forced out of the country, he said, "I'm selling everything.

Uh, Jamie, shut my companies." And the guy we had running all the tax calculations for how much Bill had to pay, uh, was a guy named Sergei Magnitsky.

What's your take?

And do they feed that to you while you're learning, or how is it you find that ability to move things when others don't?

Yeah, that's not taught to you in law school.

Law school generally teaches you how to do sometimes amazing things in courts, but this is something different.

I would just say it's the school of life, right? In my particular case, I accidentally became a lawyer in Russia, and of course, after a while, Russian law ceased to work.

If you wanna hear an oxymoron, it's Russian law.

So what do you do when you're a lawyer in a place where law doesn't work? You find other ways to get it done.

Now, in the 1990s, that at times meant that I had to store my own office with a private SWAT team to get it back under control, or bug the offices of corrupt Russian police to catch them at their dirty game.

But if we don't find a solution here and start making things move, then we're going to be here in 25 years doing the same complaining.

Was there ever a moment in Russia where you looked across a table at someone powerful and thought, I've met this person before? I mean, not literally, but you know what I mean? Like in your head, in your heart.

Yeah, look, I'll tell you a really funny story.

So you alluded to my childhood.

So my dad was a was a con man, very rich con man who eventually went to went to prison.

And while awaiting prison, he went kind of crazy and he bought a brothel, did a lot of drugs and was hanging out with all of these contract killers and loan sharks.

And so I grew up with contract killers, loan sharks and their kids.

And I learned how to talk to them and deal with them to show them respect while at the same time being able to say no and get out of not doing things that they didn't want to do and staying alive.

Do you remember the exact moment you realized Russia wasn't bending toward democracy anymore? It was moving, in fact, somewhere darker.