Turning the tables on Russia’s power elite — the story behind the Magnitsky Act | openDemocracy

Turning the tables on Russia’s power elite — the story behind the Magnitsky Act | openDemocracy: At this point, instead of going after Putin’s enemies, I was going after his own personal economic interests. I imagine his team analysed how best to deal with me. They probably considered a number of options including arresting me like Khodorkovsky, but the problem with that approach is that they would have become just as much of a hostage to the situation as I would have been. Instead, they came up with a much cleaner way of shutting me down. As I was flying into to Moscow in November 2005, I was stopped at the border, detained for 15 hours, then expelled from the country. Several weeks later, I received an official note from the Russian foreign ministry saying that they had declared me a “threat to national security”. For a little while, I hoped that it was some mid-level corrupt decision that would soon be overturned. Once I realised that it wasn’t a mistake, it was clear that I needed to do everything possible to protect myself and my people. I didn’t assume that I was going to be any better off than Khodorkovsky. At that point I made two important decisions: to get my capital and my people out of Russia as quickly and quietly as possible.