Page:Simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf/50

Glenn SimpsonPage 50 A. I'll just finish with one last thing and I'm happy to answer that question.

So in the course of this, you know — I mean, one of my interests or even obsessions over the last decade has been corruption in Russia and Russian kleptocracy and the police state that was there. I was stationed in Europe from 2005 to 2007 or '8. So I was there when Putin was consolidating power and all this wave of power was coming. So it's been a subject that I've read very widely on and I'm very interested in the history of Putin's rise.

You know, in the course of all this I'll tell you I became personally interested in where Bill Browder came from, how he made so much money under Vladimir Putin without getting involved in anything illicit. So I read his book and I began doing other research and I found filings at the SEC linking him quite directly and his company, Salomon Brothers at the time, to a company in Russia called Peter Star, and I had, as it happens, vetted Peter Star and I knew that Peter Star was, you know, at the center of a corruption case that I covered as a reporter at the Wall Street Journal. When I went back into the history of Peter Star I realized that 1-800-FOR-DEPO