Steve LeVine has a blog post up about the William Browder and Hermitage lawsuit against Renaissance … yet points out that the foreign investors will keep on going back for more abuse.
We’ve seen this movie before. For instance, BP keeps returning for more despite its own experience with the rough-and-tumble Russian system.
To his credit, Browder’s stratagem at least in part is meant to free one of his Moscow lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, who was jailed after filing a court statement alleging official corruption in the seizure of the subsidiaries.
Yet BP and Browder stuck around because of the money — in BP’s case, despite it all Russia remains one of its main profit centers. As for outsiders, there’s the entertainment value of gaping at the road wreck.