Ohh, that Atlantic article about the Magnitsky Act explains a lot. I hadn't grasped how it all fitted together.
So according to that, Bill Browder ran an investment company in Russia. And after the trial of Khodorkovsky in 2003, the oligarchs started paying Putin a cut of their corrupt take.
In 2007 corrupt officials misused state powers to steal from Browder and divert to themselves £230 million tax paid by Browder's companies, and Browder hired a lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, to find out what had gone on. The officials arrested Magnitsky and he died in jail, having documented the abuse he suffered there.
Corrupt officials like to bank their ill-gotten gains somewhere safer than Russia, for example in real estate in the US. So after Browder raised the issue in the US, the US passed the Magnitsky Act to prevent this.
Because of his own ill-gotten gains, Putin "has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions.
"The second reason why Putin reacted so badly to the passage of the Magnitsky Act is that it destroys the promise of impunity he’s given to all of his corrupt officials.
"There are approximately ten thousand officials in Russia working for Putin who are given instructions to kill, torture, kidnap, extort money from people, and seize their property. Before the Magnitsky Act, Putin could guarantee them impunity and this system of illegal wealth accumulation worked smoothly. However, after the passage of the Magnitsky Act, Putin’s guarantee disappeared. The Magnitsky Act created real consequences outside of Russia and this created a real problem for Putin and his system of kleptocracy.
"For these reasons, Putin has stated publicly that it was among his top foreign policy priorities to repeal the Magnitsky Act and to prevent it from spreading to other countries. Since its passage in 2012, the Putin regime has gone after everybody who has been advocating for the Magnitsky Act."
Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin of the Donny Jr meeting have long been part of the Russian govt effort to repeal the Magnitsky Act. And may be in breach of the US's Foreign Agent Registration Act for failing to disclose this.
And now the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday want to hear all about it, in the context of Foreign Agents Registration Act enforcement. Browder is scheduled to turn up, but the committee have also called Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Glenn Simpson.