What has become clear to me is that there's not a single person in Russia who goes into public service,
into the government, with the intention of doing anything other than stealing.
Not one from the lowest traffic cop right up to the President.
Everybody goes to make money.
They don't go there to do their job.
And of course, the higher you get into the hierarchy, the more money you get to steal.
And Putin did that like everybody else.
So once he arrested the richest oligarch in Russia, all the other oligarchs went to him and said,
what do we have to do so we don't get arrested?
And he said, real simple, 50%.
So he gets 50% of all the oligarch's money, and then every single deal that ever gets done,
every single crime that ever gets committed, he gets 50% of that.
If the world has come to learn one thing about President Vladimir Putin of Russia,
it is that he bears grudges.
One of his longest standing vendettas concerns this week's guest, Bill Browder.
Browder was among the cohort of buccaneering capitalists who went to Russia to seek their fortunes in the post Communist chaos of the 1990s.
Browder certainly found his fortune.
At one point, his investment fund, Hermitage Capital, was.
Was managing over US$4 billion in assets.
Browder and Hermitage eventually attracted the attention and the ire of Russian authorities vexed by his campaigns of shareholder activism against corruption.