Hitting Putin where it hurts? How to sanction "a very rich man"
Kyiv, Ukraine – If Vladimir Putin genuinely has decided against invading Ukraine, it's likely because the U.S. and its allies have made the costs too high. It's done that by supplying weapons to Ukraine, and by threatening Russia's leader with unprecedented sanctions that would target not only his government, but his inner circle and their family members.
As White House press secretary Jen Psaki has noted, many of those people "are particularly vulnerable targets" for sanctions because of their huge financial holdings in Western nations.
"Vladimir Putin is a human rights violator, and a kleptocrat, and a very rich man," Bill Browder told CBS News. The British-American financier was once one of the biggest foreign investors in Russia — until he started campaigning against Russian corruption.
Browder's Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison at the age of 37 after accusing officials of stealing $230 million via tax rebates. In 2012, the U.S. adopted a law, named the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows the American government to freeze financial assets of human rights violators.
The law, which Browder helped lobby for in Washington, has been used to sanction Russians and others for years, and the businessman says it's seen him subjected to death threats and regular legal harassment, including a brief detention in Spain in 2018, on behalf of Putin's regime.
Browder told CBS News that Putin has been treated too softly by the West, and that has sent a dangerous message.
"He invaded Georgia. He . … He bombed civilians and hospitals in Syria. He cheated in the Olympics," Browder said. "He then sent in mercenaries and Russian soldiers into the eastern Ukraine area to occupy more territory … and in response to that, the West sanctioned some Russian companies, did some things, put a few military people on a sanctions list, but effectively didn't touch Vladimir Putin."
"From his standpoint, he's gotten away with everything," said Browder, "and unless we can actually prove to him that we're serious, he'll think he can get away with it again."
With their consistent warnings of "swift and severe" sanctions, the U.S. and its allies may finally be getting the point across, but Browder says threatening the man himself with financial punishment may not be enough as much of his money is managed in the shadows by his extremely wealthy friends who own property and other assets all over the world.
Even threatening Putin's cronies might not do the job, according to Browder.
"Instead of hanging the threat of sanctions over them, I would make a list of the 50 oligarchs who look after Putin's money and I would sanction five of them today," he suggested. "And then I would make a threat to say, 'If you don't pull back within two weeks, we'll sanction another five,'" and so on.
In other words, he said, right now, "Putin doesn't believe we're serious, and the only way to show him we're serious is to give him a little taste of what's to come."
–Erin Lyall and Tucker Reals contributed to this report.