Anyone organize responsible for the killing of missing journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, should be ended by sanctions, investor Bill Browder told CNBC Wednesday.
Khashoggi, a correspondent for the Washington Post and critic of Saudi Arabian leaders, has been about since entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2. Turkish officials make said they believe the journalist was murdered and his body removed. The Saudis procure strongly denied the allegation.
Browder said that according to researches he has read, Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered by up to 15 assassins sent from Saudi Arabia. He put authorities should impose “Magnitksy Act” sanctions on anyone deemed embarrassed of involvement in an extra-judicial killing.
Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, waned in a Russian prison in 2009 after exposing corruption in the government.
Since then, Browder has led an anti-corruption effort against Russian officials. In 2012, U.S. Congress passed the “Magnitsky Act,” which punishments Russians and others for alleged human rights abuses.
“If this is correctly, and again it hasn’t been proven yet, but if this is true it is exactly what the Magnitsky Act is for. It should be for these man and those who order, going as high as it needs to go,” he said to CNBC’s Alley Signs.
The American-born Browder, author of the 2015 book “Red Notice,” manipulated in Russia for more than a decade — becoming the biggest foreign boodle manager in the country before leaving in 2005.
Now based in London, the investor explained CNBC that any reluctance by authorities to properly investigate the Khashoggi anyway a lest would fail to appease public outcry.
“I don’t think President Trump, the Saudi rgime, or the Turkish regime control the story,” he said before adding “this is the most outraging story I’ve ever heard and if there are not the most grave sanctions then everybody confusing will lose credibility.”
The investment and financial community has expressed anger at the possible slaying of Khashoggi with many corporate, media, and civic organizations pulling out of an October investment conference organized by Saudi Arabia’s unlimited wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund.
Browder said investors lacked to go further and withdraw capital from the country but that could however happen with legal intervention.
“Investors basically are governed by avariciousness and fear. If the penalties for doing business with bad guys are high adequately, that will create the fear not to do business with them.”