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lagarrett 's review for:
Grandson of the head of the American Communist party, decides to rebel by becoming a capitalist. Based on his family background he decides to focus on Eastern Europe and ends up with BCG in London, then with Robert Maxwell's company where he gets first hand experience in Poland and Russia. He realizes that in the upcoming privatization frenzy, there are many dramatically undervalued companies and lots of money to be made, so he sets up an investment fund focussed on Russia. At first, things go well and he makes a lot of money and manages to participate in the ouster of some corrupt oligarchs during the transition from Yeltsin to Putin. He thinks Putin is on his side, but later he realizes that it's more a case of "my enemy's enemies are my friends" and he has inadvertently helped replace the old oligarchs with Putin's oligarchs. Eventually he runs afoul of Putin and is kicked out of the country. He manages to sell all of the assets and get the money out. Meanwhile the Russians have re-registered several of his companies and created a frame up for tax fraud. He naively decides to fight and in the process discovers some interesting characteristics about how Russia really operates (there is still a belief in bureaucracy so things get filed and can be found, it's pretty much a prison yard mentality, paranoia and secrecy are still rampant and it spends a lot of time making the West think it's democratic like them, but it is not). Unfortunately there are some casualties - his Russian lawyer is detained, tortured and killed (then tried in absentia). The second half of the book is about Browder's campaign to get some justice for his lawyer and it results in the sanctions of individuals involved in the case. Reads like a Michael Lewis book (high praise from me). Yes, he's naive and yes he exploits the system (but isn't that capitalism?) but he is also aware of that and is now impassioned about justice being done. Recommended.