The consequences of inaction

As it turns out, Pereplichnyy had been the financial manager for one of the tax officials responsible for the $230 million fraud. The information he provided directly implicated this official, who had sent the stolen money to Switzerland, and enabled the Swiss authorities to open a criminal money-laundering investigation.  Pereplichnyy was preparing to testify for the Swiss investigation when he suddenly dropped dead outside his home in Surrey in 2012. He was forty-four years old and in good health. Two post mortems failed to identify the cause of his death.

While Litvinenko was killed with radioactive polonium, leaving nuclear traces of the crime all over London, Pereplichnyy’s killers were more subtle. Traces of a rare poison were found in his stomach. The inquest into his death is still ongoing. What is clear, however, is that Putin will continue to silence his dissidents, by any means necessary.  And if the West’s lack of reaction to the Litvinenko Inquiry is anything to go by, these Russian state-sponsored killings will continue to go unpunished. 

Since I’m still fighting to expose these crimes, there is a real possibility that I will be next on Putin’s hit list. There is very little I can do to protect myself, but one thing I have done is to write my book, Red Notice: How I Became Putin’s No. 1 Enemy. At least if I’m killed, everyone will know who is responsible, and why I was silenced. The effort required to deflect blame for my murder could be enough to keep me alive. But the only way to truly protect critics of the Putin regime like myself is for the world to wake up to the evil of Putin, rather than trying to appease him. Until there are real consequences for the murders, thefts, and criminal activity inherent in the Russian kleptocracy, many people will continue to die all over the world.