Putin foe Browder slams jacked-up fee to attend Davos event

By JAMEY KEATEN
Associated Press

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Bill Browder, a leading critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized the World Economic Forum on social media for jacking up his entrance fee to the annual meeting in Davos that he has attended for the last 27 years. Browder told The Associated Press that it was wasteful to pay a quarter of a million dollars for a ticket and he thought organizers of the elite gathering in the Swiss Alps didn’t want him around. The former fund manager says he has set aside his commercial activities and devotes all of his time to getting justice for his former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who was killed in Russian police custody in 2009, and other victims of human rights abuses.