PUTIN'S NEMESIS

How one man's courage is tightening the net on Western money laundering by Russian oligarchs.

- ANDREW ANTHONY

Bill Browder: "I'm alive because Putin has always kept one foot in the civilised world and one foot in the criminal world."

Bill Browder is almost alone in being a named enemy of Vladimir Putin who has not been either killed, had attempts made on his life, or imprisoned. Nonetheless, the Russian authorities have tried a number of times to have the fund manager extradited. Browder, who lives in London, explains that the purpose would be "to take care of me when I'm back in Moscow”, by which he means he would be killed.

As we sit in the glass-walled boardroom of his London offices overlooking Finsbury Square, he acknowledges the anomaly that he is still breathing. “I'm alive because Putin has always kept one foot in the civilised world and one foot in the criminal world," he says.

It's one thing to kill Russians in Russia, such as the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead near the Kremlin, or even to kill Russians abroad, like Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian intelligence agent who was poisoned with radioactive polonium in London. But to kill an American-born British citizen abroad may have damaged Putin's standing among his Western apologists - Browder mentions the likes of former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Prince Albert of Monaco, who have been cheerleaders for the Russian President.

The invasion of Ukraine has changed that calculus. “I would argue that my level of danger has increased exponentially since February 24 because now the gloves are off," he says.