By Lucy Komisar
April 10, 2022

Today’s Dealbook article in the NYTimes “ ‘There Is No Reasonable Way for This to End’: Bill Browder on How to Stop the War” includes numerous fake facts that fact checking organizations devoted to exposing such media falsehoods should address. This article is going a number of them in the hope that some have the courage to examine this evidence at a time of extreme hostility to Russia.

See end of story for results.

They are repeats of falsehoods Browder has been telling for years. I list a few in the order they appear the article.

According to Browder, the U.S. should sanction Russian oligarchs because they are holding Putin’s money. “So when you see an oligarch worth $20 billion, $10 billion of that is Putin’s. He can’t hold any money in his own name.”

That’s not quite what Browder wrote in his book “Red Notice,” page 168. He said that after oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested, “most of Russia’s oligarchs went one by one to Putin” and asked what they could do to avoid MBK’s fate. Browder then on page 169 makes it up:

The article says Browder “become one of the Kremlin’s biggest enemies. Russia has tried several times to get Interpol to issue arrest orders against him.” It doesn’t mention that the Interpol charge was because Browder cheated the Russians of $100million in evaded taxes and illicit buys of Gazprom stock, all documented in western bank accounts. A pretty big omission.

The article declares that “his public battles against corporate corruption eventually prompted his expulsion from Russia in 2005 as a “threat to national security.”” No, it was the tax evasion and stock fraud. Journalists should be more than stenographers.

Browder’s biggest connection to corporate corruption was when he and partners bought Avisma, a Russian titanium company, and used an Isle of Man shell to siphon off profits and cheat minority shareholders (some westerners) and Russian tax authorities. They ran into difficulties when Peter Bond, who was shifting Avisma money into an Isle of Man account, ended up stealing some of it. (No honor among thieves.) Here is Browder’s phone call with Bond trying to get him to release the funds.

But then VSMPO, a Russian company that bought Avisma, discovered the scam and sued Browder and his friends. They used that transcript as evidence, which is why it has a legal marking. Browder and company were hoist on their own documents and ended up settling VSMPO’s RICO suit in New Jersey. Browder never publicly denied this story.

Then the NYT article says: “In 2009, his tax lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who was investigating government money laundering, was arrested…” No, Magnitsky was not a lawyer, tax or otherwise, and Browder admitted in U.S. federal court in 2015 that he didn’t go to law school, have a law degree or a law license. Evidence shows Magnitsky was the accountant who handled Browder’s tax evasion. For the full story, go here.

From Browder’s testimony:

See Browder say it on video:

The NYT article says: “In 2012, Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, which punished Russians involved in the lawyer’s death with sanctions.” The problem with that is the law is based on Browder’s lies. The Physicians for Human Rights of Cambridge, Mass., to which Browder sent 40 documents he hoped would get PHR to rule Magnitsky had been beaten to death, said instead in its report that he had died of badly treated illness.

My own efforts to get the State Department to send me evidence of how Magnitsky died have been in vain. FOIAs on the issue have been ignored for five years though some State Department documents I have confirm officials there knew Browder was a fake.

See how Browder changed his story from one year to another about how Magnitsky died, started with “I don’t know” and then a few years later, “riot guards beat him.” There’s never been any evidence for that, and it is contradicted by the PHR report.

Organizations concerned about stopping fake news should care when a major paper like the New York Times runs it. I would be pleased to supply any other evidence fact checkers require. For a lot more documentation, go here. And for many examples of fake MSM stories go here. I would hope (but I have to admit I doubt) that organizations committed to honest reporting will deal with this serious misinformation, acknowledge receipt of this communication and provide the results of their investigations.

April 29, 2022 – This story was sent to a list of self-proclaimed “fact checkers.” Nearly three weeks later, none has deigned to reply much less ask for more information, much even more less opine on the truth of the story. So much for alleged fact checkers! Honestly, they are fakes! Will they become sources for the new Ministry of Truth Homeland Security Disinformation Governance Board? Ask Winston Smith.

Poynter institute, nbrown@poynter.org, medianews@poynter.org.  They are the big guys. But there’s no place on their sites where people can send them misinfo. They do it with their partners, and focus is on social media and not the MSM. Poynter runs holan@politifact.com, truthometer@politifact.com and MediaWise, digital media literacy program which it claims teaches millions of Americans to sort fact from fiction online.
Snopes www.snopes.com via online submission.
LeadStories https://leadstories.com/contact.html tips@leadstories.com
Factcheck.org editor@FactCheck.org
Press Watch, Dan Froomkin, https://presswatchers.org/, froomkin@gmail.com
Check Your Fact brad@checkyourfact.com

Update Sept 2023: NONE OF THE “FACT CHECKERS” REPLIED. Seems “facts” don’t need to be true if they echo the government narrative.