# Hermitage Capital Management Investment fund co-founded in 1996 by [[Bill Browder]] and banker Edmond Safra, which at its peak was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia. Hermitage built returns partly on shareholder activism — publicizing corruption and asset-stripping at large Russian companies such as Gazprom — a strategy that initially aligned with the early Putin government's interest in disciplining the oligarchs but later put the fund in direct conflict with state-connected interests. Browder was barred from Russia as a "threat to national security" in 2005, and in 2007 Russian authorities raided Hermitage's offices and seized corporate documents later used to perpetrate a $230 million tax-refund fraud. The fund's tax adviser, [[Sergei Magnitsky]], exposed the scheme and died in Russian custody in 2009 — the event that transformed Hermitage's founder into a global anti-kleptocracy campaigner and produced the [[Magnitsky Act]].