Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice (33 page)

Eduard spent two nights there. The moving around was getting to him. Eduard was used to getting things done on his own, and now all of a sudden he was completely dependent on others. He couldn’t use his phone or send emails. All he could do was scan the news and pace the apartment like a caged animal, feeling more and more stressed.

Toward the end of the first week, Eduard received a message from one of his friends. It was grim. The number of men searching for Eduard had increased.

The people after him were closing in and Moscow was getting too hot.

He wasn’t ready to leave Russia and admit defeat, so he needed to find another city in which to hide. He considered going to Voronezh
or Nizhny Novgorod, which were both overnight train rides away. But in either place he would be on his own. He was a skilled lawyer, not a skilled fugitive, and he probably wouldn’t have lasted a week. He realized that he needed two things: a location far from Moscow, and someone trustworthy with the resources to hide him.

He looked through his contacts, and one stood out: a man named Mikhail who lived in the city of Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East. A decade earlier, Eduard had gotten Mikhail out of a major legal jam and saved him from a long prison sentence.

He called Mikhail on a prepaid mobile phone and explained the situation. When he was finished, Mikhail said, “If you can find a way to get to Khabarovsk, I can keep you hidden for as long as you need.”

Khabarovsk certainly satisfied the requirement of being far away. It was more than 3,800 miles from Moscow, nearly 500 miles
farther
than the distance between New York City and Anchorage, Alaska. The problem was getting there. Driving would take too long, and Eduard would likely get pulled over at some point along the way and shaken down by some corrupt local cops, which could end in disaster. The train was also problematic because he would have to buy a ticket and put his name into the system, then sit in a moving metal box for a week while the bad guys put two and two together.

The best option by far was to fly. Even though this would also put his name into the system, the trip would be over in eight hours, giving the people who were after him little time to react.

To increase his chances of doing this safely, Eduard decided to travel late on a Friday night. He hoped that the people who were monitoring him would already have started their weekend drinking, making it unlikely that they would receive the information, process it, and then act on it before he landed.

He arrived at Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, from where most regional flights operated, ninety minutes before the flight and went to the counter to buy a ticket. The desk agent told him the price—56,890 rubles, about $2,350—and Eduard got out his wallet and counted out the amount in cash. He handed it to the woman as nonchalantly
as he could, his heart pounding fast. It was a large amount of cash to be handing over, but she took it without any reaction, continued typing, handed him his ticket with a smile, and said, “Have a good trip.”

First hurdle cleared.

Next was security, then check-in at the gate, and then just getting off the ground. All of these hurdles were cleared too, but there was one more. The purchase of this ticket could have tripped a wire, and it was entirely possible that some of the bad guys would be waiting for him at the Khabarovsk airport when he landed. He tried to sleep on the overnight flight that crossed seven time zones, but it was impossible.

Finally, exhausted and frayed, Eduard landed in Khabarovsk. The plane taxied to a stop. A stairway on a truck was driven to the side of the plane. The door opened, and the few passengers got off and made their way into the terminal. When Eduard ducked his tall frame under the plane’s door, he saw a car waiting right there on the tarmac. His heart skipped a beat, but then he saw Mikhail standing next to it, a welcoming smile on his face.

Eduard walked down the stairway, his small carry-on in hand and, without ever setting foot in the terminal, was whisked to a nondescript hotel in a suburb where Mikhail checked him in under an assumed name.

•  •  •

We had no idea where Eduard was, what he was doing, or if he was safe. But while we were powerless to help him in Russia, that didn’t mean we couldn’t find out more about what was being used to frame him.

In early September, we received copies of materials from the court in Kazan. The most ominous document was a witness statement from Viktor Markelov, the convicted killer who’d stolen our companies. He’d sworn he’d done everything at the direction of a man named Oktai Gasanov, who’d died of a heart attack two months before the
theft. Furthermore, Markelov claimed that Gasanov took all of his instructions from Eduard Khayretdinov, and that Eduard received all of his orders from me.

We now understood exactly what would happen if Eduard stayed in Russia. The corrupt officers at the Interior Ministry would eventually find him and arrest him. Once in custody, he would be tortured until he gave testimony implicating both of us in the theft of the $230 million. If he complied, they might go easy on him and make him serve only a few years in a penal colony. If he refused, they would kill him, and everything Markelov, the convicted killer who stole our companies, claimed would be accepted as the official “truth” in Russia.

We had to find a way to get this information to him. Vadim gave some of Eduard’s contacts in Moscow a simple message in case they were in touch with him: “New information has come to light. Your life is in danger. Please leave as soon as possible.”

•  •  •

Unbeknownst to us, Eduard eventually received this message. But even then, he was not ready to give in. He thought that if our complaints about the theft of the $230 million were reviewed by someone high enough in the government, then everything could still be resolved.

But even Mikhail, his host, was getting nervous and thought that it was becoming too dangerous for Eduard to stay in Khabarovsk. He assigned Eduard two armed bodyguards, who moved him to Mikhail’s dacha in the woods, a hundred miles from town. There, Eduard had electricity from a generator, a satellite phone, and a car. It was picturesque country, blanketed by softwoods and birch, and dotted with fish ponds.

After two weeks in the country, Eduard got a message from Mikhail. One of Eduard’s most trusted confidants was making a special trip to Khabarovsk to deliver a message to Eduard in person. Eduard took this as a good sign—why would someone come all the way to the Far East only to deliver bad news? Two days later Eduard
and the guards got into the car and left the dacha to meet the man from Moscow at a café on the outskirts of Khabarovsk. When his friend arrived, Eduard’s hopes were almost immediately dashed. His friend shook his hand with a grave look of concern. They sat and ordered tea and began to talk.

“We’ve tried everything,” the man said. “There are some very powerful people involved. Nothing is going to change. This is not going away.”

“But why come all the way here just to tell me that?”

The man leaned forward. “Because, Eduard, I wanted to tell you face-to-face—you
must
leave Russia. You’re in danger of being killed. These people who are after you will stop at nothing.”

This shook Eduard to the core. After this meeting, he called Mikhail and said, “I need to get out of Russia. Can you help?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Mikhail said.

Since Russia is such a decentralized country, the power of an influential businessman in some areas could rival that of the Moscow Interior Ministry. Mikhail was one of the most important businessmen in the region, and Eduard had no choice but to put his faith in Mikhail’s influence. He had to hope that it would help him navigate the security and immigration checkpoints that every traveler had to pass through on their way out of the country.

Mikhail arranged to have a local fixer escort Eduard through the airport all the way to the gate. Eduard asked over and over if this fixer would be able to get the border agents to let him pass. Mikhail just told him not to worry. Of course, Eduard couldn’t help
but
worry.

On October 18, 2008, at 10:00 a.m., Eduard went to the airport and was met by the fixer, a short man with friendly eyes in a well-tailored, gray suit. Eduard already had a UK visa, so he went to the Asiana ticket desk and bought a round-trip economy ticket to London via Seoul. Eduard checked in and waited until an hour before the flight to go through security and passport control. When he couldn’t wait any longer, he and the fixer walked toward security.

They walked straight to the front of the security line and went through. The fixer stayed with Eduard the whole time, nodding and winking at the security people, and even shaking a few hands. Eduard put his bags on the scanning belt, presented his boarding pass, and went through the metal detector.

They then moved toward passport control, and when they reached the immigration booth, the fixer shook hands with the border guard and they exchanged pleasantries.

The guard then took Eduard’s passport. He placed it on his desk, looked at Eduard, looked back to the fixer, found a blank spot in the passport, slammed his stamp onto a red-ink pad, and punched the stamp onto the paper. He didn’t even bother to look at his computer. He closed the passport and handed it back. Eduard’s eyes met those of the fixer. He winked. “Thank you,” Eduard said. He turned and hurried to his gate. He had only a few minutes until the doors closed.

He made the flight, and the plane took off. Not until two hours later, when Eduard could see that the plane was flying over the Sea of Japan and was therefore out of Russian airspace, did he finally, after all these weeks, feel at ease.

He was out.

•  •  •

Later that day in London, Vadim’s phone rang with a number whose country code he didn’t recognize. He picked up. “Hello?”

“Vadim! It’s Eduard.”

Vadim jumped from his chair. We hadn’t heard from Eduard in nearly two months. Every day we’d swung between hope and despair, wondering if he was safe or dead or somewhere in between. “Eduard!” Vadim exclaimed. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m in Seoul.”

“Seoul?”

“Yes, Seoul. I’m coming to Heathrow on the next Asiana flight. I’ll be there tomorrow.”

“So you’re safe?”

“Yes, yes. We have a lot to talk about. I’ll see you soon.”

The next evening at 7:00 p.m., a car picked up Eduard at Heathrow and brought him straight to the offices on Golden Square. As soon as he walked through the door, we took turns giving him big, backslapping hugs. Though I’d met him only once before in my life, it was as if I were being reunited with a long-lost brother.

When we finally settled down, Eduard told us his story, with Vadim and Ivan taking turns translating. We were rapt, and when he finished, I said, “That’s amazing, Eduard. Truly amazing. Thank God you made it.”

He nodded. “Yes, thank God is right.”

That evening, I allowed myself a moment to savor that Eduard was safe, but our problems were nowhere near over.

While Eduard had been underground, Sergei was still fully exposed in Moscow. In late September, we’d come across an article in an obscure Moscow business weekly called
Delovoi Vtornik
. The title of the piece was “Purely English Fraud.” It repeated the now familiar claim—that Eduard and I were the masterminds behind the fraud—but it slipped in a name we’d never seen in print before: Sergei Magnitsky.

After this, Vadim tried to convince Sergei to leave, but Sergei steadfastly refused. He insisted that nothing would happen to him because he had done nothing wrong. He was also indignant that these people had stolen so much money from his country. He was so adamant and believed so faithfully in the law that, on October 7, he actually
returned
to the Russian State Investigative Committee to give a second sworn witness statement. Once again, he sought to use procedure to insert more evidence into the official record, and this time he provided a number of additional details about the fraud and who was behind it.

This was a bold move. It was also a worrying one. While I couldn’t help but be impressed by Sergei’s determination and integrity, given what they had tried with Eduard and Vladimir, I was terrified that they would just detain him on the spot. Remarkably, they didn’t.

On the morning of October 20, 2008, Ivan made another attempt to convince Sergei: “Listen, all of our lawyers are being targeted. Eduard is here. Vladimir is here. We’ve seen materials with your name on them. I believe that something very bad is going to happen to you if you stay, Sergei.”

“But why would anything happen?” Sergei asked, sticking to his guns. “I haven’t broken any laws. They’re only after Eduard and Vladimir because they fought the fraudulent lawsuits in court. I never did that. There’s no reason for me to leave.”

“But you
must
leave, Sergei. They’ll arrest you. Please. I beg you.”

“I’m sorry, Ivan. The law will protect me. This isn’t 1937,” Sergei said, referring to Stalin’s purges, when people were disappearing left and right at the hands of the secret police.

There was no changing Sergei’s mind. He was staying in Russia and we could do nothing about it. He was of a different generation than Vladimir and Eduard. Both of them had been adults during the Soviet era and had seen firsthand how capricious the government could be. If powerful people wanted you arrested, then you were arrested. The law didn’t matter. Sergei, on the other hand, was thirty-six years old and had come of age at a time when things had started to improve. He saw Russia not how it was but how he wanted it to be.

Because of this, he didn’t realize that Russia had no rule of law, it had a rule of men.

And those men were crooks.

Early on the morning of November 24, 2008, three teams of Interior Ministry officers reporting to Lieutenant Colonel Artem Kuznetsov moved out across Moscow. One team made its way to Sergei’s home. The other two were headed to the apartments of junior lawyers who reported to Sergei at Firestone Duncan.