The teenage son of British-Jewish investor and self-proclaimed “number one enemy” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Bill Browder, has been sanctioned by the Kremlin after exposing a cryptocurrency money laundering scheme fuelling Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Alexander Browder, 17, compiled a database listing crypto trades carried out by Russians, which he alleged broke UK sanctions rules.
The sixth-form student launched the database in Parliament earlier this year and has now been banned from entering Russia, with its foreign ministry listing “involvement in circulating defamatory speculations and false information about the policy of the Russian authorities” as the reason for the sanction.
Browder told The Telegraph: “I am not bothered at all. In fact, I am going to be wearing it [the sanction] as a badge of honour. It shows me that I touched a nerve – I am looking in the right places.
“Russia can add my name to whatever list they want – it won’t change the facts; it won’t change my work and the pressure that we need to put them under.”
Browder said the use of cryptocurrencies as an alternative to traditional currencies gives the Kremlin a “financial lifeline” by allowing it to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
Browder’s father, Bill, has long been involved in the campaign against the Kremlin. Having once been the county’s largest foreign investor, first as an American citizen before relinquishing his passport in favour of British citizenship in 1998, he began targeting corrupt officials linked to Putin in the early 2000s.
As a result, he was subjected to strict sanctions by Moscow and has received death threats for his outspoken campaign against Russian interference in US elections and its evasion of financial rules.
He moved to London in 2005 and has been a driving force behind multiple countries tightening sanctions against Russia.
Perhaps most notably, he successfully lobbied in favour of the Magnitsky Act, which was signed into law by US President Barack Obama in 2014.
The act, named after tax auditor Sergei Magnitsky, who investigated a raid on Browder’s company, Hermitage Capital Management, in Moscow.
Magnitsky’s probe revealed that, while sensitive documents were in the possession of the police, Hermitage had been fraudulently re-registered, allowing Russian gangs to illegally reclaim £140 million in taxes paid by the firm, allegedly with the collusion of the police.
He was later arrested and held without charge for eleven months, before dying due to multiple untreated medical conditions developed while in custody just days before he was due to come to trial.
In 2024, just after the murder of Putin’s number one critic inside Russia, Alexei Navalny, Browder told the JC: “I suppose I am Putin’s public enemy number one outside Russia and Ukraine.
“The dangers for people like me have increased a lot after the murder of Navalny. Navalny was the biggest and most important critic of Putin, and Putin showed no worry about killing him. That means he calculated that there is no consequence.
“Putin has lost all restraints. He will embark on an international killing spree and that includes people in the UK. Including people like myself.”
Now, after his son’s sanctioning, he told the Telegraph: “This is the first time in history that Russia has sanctioned a high school student. My son is 17 and studying for his A-levels. Putin’s skin is getting so thin they are going after A-level students now.”
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