Mr. William Browder:

When I showed up at the US State Department in April 2010 and asked it to impose sanctions on the people who killed Mr. Sergei Magnitsky because it had it in its law to do so, they basically threw me out of the office. The US State Department stated that it was resetting its relations with Russia and it had no interest in doing something like that. It was only after enlisting legislative pressure from elected law makers that I was heard.

What one has is realpolitik versus doing right. Law makers are elected by their constituents to do right. Persons who sit in the executive positions must weigh up doing right with all other considerations. What I was able to do was to leverage the way the US system is organised to have doing right ultimately trump realpolitik.

In Europe, I have been to a number of different parliaments. Essentially, I have had the will of the people, as expressed through their members of parliament, call on their governments to do something and so far the governments have not acted. The reason I believe that is the case is because everybody is afraid to act. Nobody wants to upset Russia because it is a highly vindictive and aggressive country. Having said that, among the people in Europe, and the people in Ireland and the members' constituents, there is not a person who would say Parliament has done wrong by banning Russian torturers and murderers from coming into Ireland.

A poll came out today in France because President François Hollande is visiting Russia. It asked French people whether they would support a French version of the Magnitsky Act, and 85% of the French population stated they would support it. This is one of those issues where the only ones who are against it are the Putin regime.

We are in a situation right now that is like the anti-Apartheid movement. There were many who said, "Listen, let us not get involved with that. They are doing what they are doing in South Africa but we just have to live with that. We need to trade with them." but, eventually, people said "This is outrageous. We just cannot allow Apartheid to carry on." That is what we are talking about here.

We are talking about a kleptocracy, which, basically, is stealing all the resources from its country, where 141 million are being stolen from for the benefit of a few; they commit murders and do terrible things, and we have a tool to fight them. It is not going to be easy. Doing right is sometimes not easy. Doing right in concert makes it less painful because it is in their economic interest as well. What really touched me when I went around talking to people here in Ireland is that they are saying, "Of course, we should do something because this is about basic human rights." I do not have that conversation in all countries I go to, but here I did.

In terms of the oligarchs and the Putin regime, President Putin wanted to crush anybody who was not reporting to him when he came into power and he crushed Mr. Mikhail Khodorkovsky as an example of what he would do to anybody else who did not report to him. As a result, everybody either reported to him or got crushed or was sent into exile.

I was not a big fan of the oligarchs in Russia when they were doing their oligarch stuff, but I am now a big sympathiser with Mr. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was actually one of the people I was least a fan of back in his business days. In fact, his son was there lobbying for the US Magnitsky Act. Khodorkovsky's son and his other people gave us names of persons to contact here in Ireland with whom they had been in touch. We all are working towards a common goal which is to stop this terrible stuff going on in Russia for many people because Mr. Sergei Magnitsky and his father are merely the tip of an iceberg. This stuff is going on everywhere in Russia.