Born in America, Bill Browder is a citizen of Britain but works in Moscow as founder and CEO of the Hermitage Fund, ranked in 2000 “as the best performing emerging-markets fund in the world” (1). Its business is Russian investments. Over the years, Browder has fought against Russian corporate graft, especially by the oligarchs, a group of billionaires “who were reported to have stolen 39 percent of the country after the fall of communism” (2). This will come back to haunt him.

Every two weeks, Browder flies from Moscow to London to visit his son by a previous marriage, then goes home to his new Russian wife, Elena, who is pregnant with their first child. One weekend in November 2005, he makes the return flight to Moscow but is seized shortly after landing and taken to a crowded, smoke-filled room packed with sweaty detainees. He makes repeated calls to Elena, the British Embassy, and finally his security advisor, Ariel, and though they try their best, no one can find out what’s going on.

Browder thinks of Jude Shao, a fellow Stanford MBA grad who goes to work in China but refuses to knuckle under to the system of graft and gets thrown in prison.