Kremlin critic Bill Browder wants governments to step up efforts to get to riches squirreled away by Russian oligarchs linked to President Vladimir Putin by forcing accountants, lawyers and others who set up murky legal and financial structures to become whistleblowers.

Browder, author of the nonfiction best-seller “Freezing Order: “A True Story of Money Laundering, Murder and Surviving Vladimir Putin’s Wrath,” says Russia’s war in Ukraine has raised the focus on how the oligarchs are custodians of the Russian leader’s wealth.

He told The Associated Press on Tuesday at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that “oligarchs are not naïve.” He says they have lawyers, asset protection specialists and shell companies.

The founder of Heritage Capital, an early investor in post-Soviet Russia, Browder raised the alarm after his Russian tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky died in a Russian prison in 2009.

Browder credited U.S. efforts to put a squeeze on the Kremlin since the war began, by putting a freeze on the assets of Russia’s central bank, chasing the oligarchs, halting exports of technology to Russia and supplying weapons to Ukraine.

But when it comes to getting Russian oligarchs’ money, Browder says “we’re only scratching the surface.”

Citing a “quite radical” solution, Browder says “what would solve the problem … is to force the people who set up these structures, the enablers, the lawyers, the accountants, the trustees under law to become whistleblowers for the...

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