Robert Amsterdam: Interview with Jamison Firestone: “I would be a fool not to leave”

February 19, 2010

Over the years on this blog we have ded­i­cat­ed con­sid­er­able cov­er­age to what we per­ceive as a war against lawyers occur­ring in Rus­sia, rang­ing from Boris Kuznetsov, to the jail­ing of Svet­lana Bakhmi­na, the med­ical black­mail of Vasi­ly Alek­sanyan, the shoot­ing of Stanislav Markelov (who used to be a guest con­trib­u­tor here), the mur­der by tor­ture of Sergei Mag­nit­sky, and sev­er­al oth­er instances.

The most recent indi­vid­ual to be fea­tured in the news as he was forced to flee the coun­try for his own safe­ty is 44-year-old Jami­son Fire­stone, a found­ing part­ner of Fire­stone Dun­can, a law firm active in Rus­sia since 1991. Fire­stone Dun­can was the law firm where Sergei Mag­nit­sky had been employed pri­or to his arrest, tor­ture, and death in prison as relat­ed to the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar fraud thefts against their clients. So although the mur­der of Mag­nit­sky seized the world’s atten­tion and out­raged many Russ­ian cit­i­zens, Fire­stone’s requests for jus­tice went unan­swered, and after pub­lish­ing numer­ous mate­ri­als alleg­ing those respon­si­ble for these thefts and acts of vio­lence, the machin­ery of the cor­rupt police turned against him, steal­ing the cor­po­rate char­ters and stamps, and seek­ing to get anoth­er unprece­dent­ed tax rebate in the name of a com­pa­ny he directs — the same method­ol­o­gy used against Hermitage.

I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch up with Mr. Fire­stone by tele­phone today for a quick inter­view. What fol­lows is a rough tran­script of our conversation.

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