Sergei Magnitsky

Go on.

Well, Alexander's father's campaign, so Bill Brown, after Sergei Magnitsky died, produced an entire architecture of targeted sanctions that's now adopted in dozens of countries.

It did.

Yeah.

On paper, the request can therefore resemble an ordinary criminal case, but the political context may be far more complicated.

Let me give you an example of financier and Kremlin critic Bill Browder, who became a driving force behind international Magnitsky sanctions after the death of his lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, in Russian custody.

Russia repeatedly sought Interpol action against Browder.

Interpol rejected multiple attempts, determining that they were predominantly political in nature.

In your own personal history, you experienced a version of that where Russia blamed you for its own crimes.

Tell me more about your personal history with the Russian state and your friend and former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky.

After Putin won his war with the oligarchs and became the richest man in Russia, I was no longer useful to him.

And in November of 2005, I was expelled from the country, declared a threat to national security.

They seized all of our documents.

And then in 2008, they committed a very complex crime, a financial crime in which they stole $230 million of taxes that I paid to the Russian government from the Russian government.

I had a lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky.

He was 35 years old at the time, very smart guy.

Uh, they kicked him out in 2005 and declared him a threat to national security.

Um, and my father's lawyer, a brave man named Sergei Magnitsky, uh, was arrested, uh, who, who was helping him expose this corruption, was arrested, tortured in prison for 355 days, and killed in November 2009.

He left a wife and two kids.

And that murder has cast a shadow over my life.