“We’re ready to send another request to the U.S. authorities to grant us permission to question these very employees of the U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as a number of other U.S. government officials and businessmen, in order to charge them for the crimes committed by Browder,” said Alexander Kurennoy, head of the Russia’s Office of Prosecutor General’s Mass Media Department, per the state-run Sputnik News.

Browder has been a gadfly for Putin’s team for years, dating back to his tenure as a high-profile investor in state-owned companies. Those clashes continued until Russian officials barred him from the country and shut down his investment company, a series of steps that culminated in Russian officials using his then-destroyed company to apply for a $230 million tax refund. One of Browder’s attorneys, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered the fraud, only to be arrested and then to die in Russian government custody in 2009.

Three years later, Congress passed a law named after Magnitsky to impose sanctions on Russian government officials involved in causing the lawyer’s death. “The Russian authorities have had years to investigate this terrible crime and punish those responsible, but they have instead devoted their efforts to protecting the guilty and taking reprisals against those who insist on pursuing the case,” Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., who shepherded the bill through the Foreign Affairs Committee, said at the time.

A year later, Russian authorities convicted Magnitsky of tax evasion in a posthumous trial, and convicted Browder in absentia. Putin revived those charges during his joint press conference with Trump.

“They never paid any taxes, neither in Russia nor in the United States, and yet the money escaped the country,” Putin said in Helsinki. “So we have a solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions.”

Putin offered to allow Mueller’s team to attend a questioning, in Russia, of the Russian cyber-spies in exchange for access to those U.S. officials. President Trump seemed to look favorably on the idea.

“President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial [of election interference] today,” Trump said. “And what he did is an incredible offer; he offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer.”

But the White House didn’t say if Trump would accept the Russian officials’ request.

“While the administration will continue to hold Russia accountable for its malign activities, this meeting is the beginning of a process between the United State and Russia to reduce tensions and advance areas of cooperation in our mutual interest,” a National Security Council spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “We are reviewing the discussion between President Trump and President Putin, considering possible next steps, and have nothing further to announce at this time.”

The Russian government is determined to punish Browder. “We won’t let [Browder] sleep peacefully,” Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said in June.