I found this extremely unsettling. I thought I was being clever by hiring Steven and playing the spy, but it turned out that I might just have sat down with an actual spy. I decided then and there that this would be the end of my naive foray into cloak-and-dagger tradecraft.
Sagiryan was a dead end, and we were no closer to understanding what the bad guys were up to. All of our hopes now rested with the complaints we’d filed with the Russian authorities.
The day after the Sagiryan meeting, we received our first official reply from the Saint Petersburg branch of the Russian State Investigative Committee. Vadim printed it, skimmed the legalese, and got to the punch line. «Listen to this, Bill. It says, ‘Nothing wrong happened in the Saint Petersburg court, and the request to open a criminal case is declined due to lack of a crime.’ »
« ‘Lack of a crime’? Our companies were stolen!»
«Wait, there’s more. They helpfully point out that they won’t prosecute our lawyer, Eduard, for filing our complaint», Vadim said sarcastically.
The next day we received another response. This time it was from the Internal Affairs Department of the Interior Ministry, which should have been very interested in Kuznetsov’s and Karpov’s dirty business.
«Get this», Vadim said, reading over it. «Internal Affairs is passing our complaint to Pavel Karpov himself to investigate!»
«You can’t be serious».
«I am. It says so right here».
Over the next week we received three more responses, all of them equally unhelpful.
By the New Year, only one complaint was left outstanding. I had no reason to think the response would be any different. But on the morning of January 9, 2008, Eduard got a call from an investigator named Rostislav Rassokhov from the Major Crimes Department of the Russian State Investigative Committee[12]. Rassokhov had been put in charge of dealing with the complaint and asked Eduard to come to the Investigative Committee’s headquarters to go over it.
When Eduard arrived, he was greeted by a man roughly his age. Rassokhov wore a wrinkled polyester suit and a cheap watch and had a bad haircut — all encouraging signs in a land as corrupt as Russia. They walked to Rassokhov’s office, sat down, and went line by line through the complaint. Rassokhov asked detailed questions with a look of stone-cold seriousness. At the end of the meeting he indicated he was going to open a preliminary investigation into our allegations against Kuznetsov and Karpov and bring them in for questioning.
This was excellent news. I could only imagine the looks on Kuznetsov’s and Karpov’s faces when they were invited to the Investigative Committee for questioning. After all the terrible things they had done to us, it felt as if the tables were about to be turned.
I enjoyed this feeling for nearly two months, until one evening in early March when Vadim walked into my office looking very anxious. «I just got a message from my source Aslan».
«What about?» I asked nervously. I was getting uncomfortably used to Vadim being the constant bearer of bad news, especially when it came from Aslan.
He thrust Aslan’s message in front of me and pointed at the Russian words. «This says, ‘Criminal case opened against Browder. Case No. 401052. Republic of Kalmykia. Tax evasion in large amounts.’ »
I felt as if someone had just knocked the air out of me. It looked as if Kuznetsov and Karpov were getting their revenge for being called in for questioning. I had a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but it was 7:30 p.m. and, annoyingly, Elena and I were obligated to be at a dinner in half an hour that had been planned for months. An old friend from Salomon Brothers and his fiancée had made a big deal of securing an impossible-to-get reservation at a new London restaurant called L’Atelier de Joёl Robuchon, and I couldn’t cancel on such short notice.
On the way to the restaurant I called Elena to share Aslan’s message. For the first time since this crisis started, our emotional rhythms were in sync and we panicked simultaneously. When we arrived at the restaurant, our friends were already there, sitting in a booth and smiling. They announced that they’d taken the liberty of ordering the seven-course degustation menu for the four of us, which would take at least three hours to consume. I soldiered through dinner, trying to hide my raw panic as they blithely talked about wedding venues, honeymoon plans, and other fantastic London restaurants. I couldn’t wait to leave. The moment the second dessert course was served, Elena squeezed my knee under the table and made an excuse about getting home to our children. We rushed out. On the way home, Elena and I just sat in the cab in silence.
This new criminal case against me required immediate attention. The next morning, I told Eduard to drop everything and go straight to Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, to find out as much as he could.
Early the next day Eduard flew to Volgograd, hired a taxi, and made the four-hour trip to Elista. The landscape of Kalmykia — a southern Russian republic on the Caspian Sea populated by Asiatic Buddhists — was the most desolate he had ever seen. It was flat and barren with no grass or trees, just brown land and gray skies for as far as the eye could see. The only breaks in the monotony were a few dilapidated buildings every ten or twenty miles.
When he arrived in Elista, he went straight to the Interior Ministry building on Pushkina Ulitsa. The clean, modern four-story building was across from a public square containing a golden pagoda.
He entered, introduced himself to the receptionist, and asked if he could see the investigator in charge of criminal case number 401052. A few minutes later, a short, middle-aged Asiatic man with bowlegs and a leather vest emerged and said, «How can I help you?»
Eduard shook his hand. «Do you have a case opened against William Browder?»
The investigator, Dmitry Nuskhinov, gave Eduard a searching look. «Who are you?»
«I’m sorry. I’ve just come down from Moscow. I’m Mr. Browder’s lawyer». Eduard then showed the investigator his power of attorney and asked, «Can you please tell me about the case against my client?»
The investigator relaxed. «Yes, yes, of course. Please come to my office». The two men walked down a long corridor to a small and cluttered room, where the investigator allowed Eduard to inspect the case file.
The Russian authorities were charging me with two counts of tax evasion in 2001. Kalmykia had tax breaks not unlike those in Delaware or Puerto Rico, and the fund had registered two of our investment companies there. The case was clearly trumped-up. Inside the file Eduard found audits from the tax authorities that showed that everything had been correctly paid.
Eduard pointed this out to the investigator, who sighed heavily. «Listen, I didn’t want to have anything to do with this. They forced me back from vacation to meet with a high-level delegation from Moscow».
«What high-level delegation?»
«There were four of them. They demanded that this case be opened. They said it was an instruction right from the top, and it had to do with worsening relations between Britain and Russia. I didn’t have any choice», Nuskhinov said, clearly worried about all the laws he’d broken by following their orders. We later learned that the delegation consisted of Karpov, two of Kuznetsov’s subordinates, and an officer from Department K of the FSB.
«So what’s the status of all this?» Eduard asked.
«It was opened here and we issued a federal search warrant for Browder».
When Eduard got back to Moscow the next evening, he called and told us everything. Aslan had been absolutely right. The criminal case against Ivan was just the beginning, and we had to believe that many more would follow.
26. The riddle