That is why I know we HAVE to hit Putin where it hurts – in his wallet.

By BILL BROWDER, former British financier in Russia From Mail On Sunday

• When I got the call about Sergei Skripal’s poisoning, it confirmed my worst fears:
• Russian government now feels so comfortable that it can kill at will on British soil
• I am determined to hold the Russian state and its puppet-master to account

When I got the call about Sergei Skripal’s poisoning, it confirmed my worst fears: the Russian government now feels so comfortable that it can kill at will on British soil.

I know a great deal about Russian murder squads because of my own experience with Vladimir Putin over the past 20 years – and, in particular, the fate of my lawyer in Moscow, Sergei Magnitsky, who was beaten to death with rubber batons by the President’s goons.

Before his desperate end, Sergei was tortured and deprived of sleep. He almost froze to death in unheated cells in Moscow in December. Often, the only toilet was a hole in the floor with sewage bubbling up.

By the night of November 16, 2009, Sergei was terribly sick, in urgent need of operations for pancreatitis and gallstones. But he was not taken to hospital, he was taken to an isolation cell, chained to a bed and murdered by eight riot police.

His only ‘crime’ was to tell the truth. I had been running an investment trust in Russia and asked him to investigate a £150 million tax fraud from which Putin’s associates had benefited – and he had bravely named the guilty men.

Once, I was the biggest foreign investor in Russia. Today, I am determined to hold the Russian state and its puppet-master to account.

It is no exaggeration to say I am at the top of Putin’s hit list. So I am more than dismayed by last week’s assassination attempt in Salisbury and, in particular, by the feeble response from the British Government.

It is not acceptable for Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to discuss a boycott of the World Cup in the same sentence as the use of chemical weapons on civilians in the UK, as if these things were even remotely equivalent.

Nor do I agree with old-school diplomats when they suggest such tired responses as kicking out Russian embassy employ-ees, as if Putin would care.

We are talking about a state- sponsored act of terrorism. We must respond in a way that affects Putin and his cronies personally. And what they care about is money. It only takes a stroll through Belgravia in West London to see this. Every self-respecting member of the Putin regime has an expensive home in Britain.

They like our property ownership laws, which guarantee them title and give them a safe and valuable asset abroad should they ever need to flee.

For them, there is no greater status symbol than a townhouse in Belgrave Square or Eaton Terrace. They send their children to public school and enjoy shopping on the Kings Road.

It is important to remember that Putin’s cronies have bought these grand houses with billions stolen from the Russian state. In many cases they have killed, tortured and maimed to get their hands on these dirty roubles. Our response should be to seize these houses, bank accounts and shares.

It’s not even as if the Salisbury poisoning is the first Russian outrage here. Indeed, the attack on Sergei Skripal is a direct consequence of the woeful response to the state assassination of Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006 with radioactive Polonium.

An inquiry chaired by Sir Robert Owen found that Litvinenko was killed in a plot organised by the FSB (Russia’s secret police) with the possible involvement of Putin. And Britain’s reply? Hardly even a slap on the wrist.

Theresa May, who was Home Secretary at the time, promised only that Prime Minister David Cameron would raise the matter with Putin.

In 2015, as the public inquiry was proceeding, Litvinenko’s suspected assassin Andrei Lugovoi was awarded a Russian government medal for ‘Achievements on Behalf of the State.’ I imagined Putin and his FSB cronies in the Kremlin laughing, while drawing up their next list of targets.

In 2012, another Russian, Alexander Perepilichnyy, dropped dead jogging outside his home in Surrey. I knew Perepilichnyy because he had come forward with information that helped me expose the Russian officials who benefited from fraud uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky.

Thanks to Perepilichnyy, millions of dollars of assets held by Russian officials were frozen in a major money-laundering investigation by the Swiss.

Perepilichnyy received threats. Discovering his name was on a hit list in Russia, he bought £5 million of life insurance policies. After he died I contacted Surrey Police and advised them to conduct urgent and detailed toxicology tests because I believed he, like Litvinenko, had been poisoned for blowing the whistle on a major Putin-connected fraud.

They ignored my letter and later announced there was nothing suspicious. Again I pictured Putin and his FSB lieutenants smirking in Moscow. Now we are once more glued to our television screens as the spectacle in Salisbury unfolds, and again the official reaction is feeble.

It might be convenient for some in Britain to carry on diplomatic relations with Moscow and lubricate business with Russia. But this weakness has given Putin’s hitmen a licence to kill – and I’m a potential target.

Ever since the murder of Sergei Magnitsky, I have been pressing Western governments to introduce legislation named after Sergei that would allow freezing the assets of those involved in institutionalised crime in Russia and elsewhere.

Last May, the Criminal Finance Act was passed, including a section known as the Magnitsky amendment, which allows the British Government to freeze the UK assets of foreign human rights violators. What greater violation of human rights could there be than a terrorist attack on British soil?

Similar legislation has already been passed in the US and Canada. Such laws have already upset Putin more than just about any other Western government initiative.

We must go after the assets of the Putin regime, including bank accounts and real estate. We must do so in a determined and methodical way.

That would be a fitting tribute to Sergei Magnitsky’s bravery. And it would wipe the smile off Putin’s face.

IMAGES:

It is important to remember that Putin’s cronies have bought these grand houses with billions stolen from the Russian state Alexel Druzhinin/TASS

When I got the call about Sergei Skripal’s poisoning, it confirmed my worst fears: the Russian government now feels so comfortable that it can kill at will on British soil Alamy Live News

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