The UK has complained to the Russian authorities about their barring the head of the largest foreign investment fund in Russia, which has invested billions of dollars in the country, a British Embassy official said on Friday.
William Browder, a British national who as CEO of Hermitage Capital Management is one of the most prominent foreign investors on the Russian stock market, has been based in the UK since late last year unable to re-enter Russia, an Embassy spokesman said.
"We are concerned about the case. We have made representations and asked them to reconsider, but we have received no explanation as to why this has happened," said the official, who spoke under customary condition of anonymity.
Hermitage has more than US$4 billion under management and acts on behalf of over 6,000 institutional and individual investors from over 30 countries.
"Hermitage has been working constructively with senior Russian government officials to resolve this situation and has received the full support of British government in these discussions," the fund said in a statement posted on its Web site.
It said Browder had been denied entry since mid-November but claimed that the problem "has had no impact" on its operations, which continue to run normally. It said the Fund had risen 43 percent since the incident, roughly in line with Russia's benchmark RTS index.
Browder has been a strident critic of the lack of transparency at top Russian companies, notably state gas monopoly OAO Gazprom, oil producer OAO Surgutneftegaz and the tate savings bank OAO Sberbank.
He did not respond to requests for an interview on Friday.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had raised Browder's case with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, said the Embassy official, who pointed out that the financier had contributed substantially to the growth of commercial ties between the UK and Russia.
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