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.

Robert Ams­ter­dam: Do you plan to return to Rus­sia in the future, or are you con­sid­er­ing a per­ma­nent relo­ca­tion to Lon­don fol­low­ing this seri­ous attack against your law practice?

Jami­son Fire­stone: It had become appar­ent five months ago when noth­ing was done, and even more so when a sec­ond, more seri­ous attempt was made to steal $21 mil­lion from the state bud­get and using my name to do it, that I would be a fool to sit in Rus­sia any longer when the police could show up at my door and arrest me. I think the police are behind this, and I want to resolve this issue for safe­ty, and then go back to my practice.

RA: Medvedev has ordered mass fir­ings of prison offi­cials and oth­er ges­tures, yet you are lit­er­al­ly back in the same posi­tion as before the death of Mag­nit­sky. What are we to take away from this in terms of the posi­tion of the Krem­lin on these issues? 

JF: Well I can’t tell you what’s going on inside the Krem­lin, but I can talk about what’s going on inside the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office. I can specif­i­cal­ly con­firm that there are indi­vid­u­als with­in the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office, such as Andrei Peche­gin, who have obstruct­ed the inves­ti­ga­tions into the Her­mitage cas­es and the Mag­nit­sky case and the attacks against me at every sin­gle turn. I think that Medvedev has a gen­uine inter­est in at least Mag­nit­sky’s death, but any real attempt to inves­ti­gate the MVD offi­cers who were behind the theft of Her­mitage com­pa­nies and the theft of state bud­get, as well as those respon­si­ble for the arrest, tor­ture, and even­tu­al killing of Mag­nit­sky has been com­plete­ly obstruct­ed. So what Medvedev did is fire a bunch of prison offi­cials are tan­gen­tial­ly respon­si­ble for the wel­fare of all pris­on­ers, but he com­plete­ly missed the MVD offi­cers who had orches­trat­ed all of this.

RA: And why is that?

JF: From what I can see right now is that there is a gen­tle­men in the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office who is mak­ing it impos­si­ble to inves­ti­gate this case. Peche­gin is respon­si­ble for deter­min­ing what cas­es are inves­ti­gat­ed and who inves­ti­gates them, and what he has done in effect is that when­ev­er some­body com­plains about Mag­nit­sky, and asks them to re-inves­ti­gate and look into the details of the case based on the total­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion, the com­plaints are divided.

For exam­ple, the fact that the arrest­ing offi­cers who took the Her­mitage mate­ri­als that were used to com­mit a crime were hold­ing those mate­ri­als at the time the crime was com­mit­ted; the fact that sus­pect whom the offi­cers caught for com­mit­ting the crime had pre­vi­ous­ly been accused of kid­nap­ping peo­ple along with the same offi­cer; the fact that when Mag­nit­sky tes­ti­fied against the same offi­cers, a direct sub­or­di­nate of that per­son arrest­ed him; the fact that an attempt was made against the com­pa­ny I man­age to steal mon­ey in the exact same way which had been per­pe­trat­ed against Her­mitage — if you take any of these sin­gle instances sep­a­rate­ly you might miss the big pic­ture, but tak­en all togeth­er, it’s clear who’s involved and what’s going on.

And so Mr. Peche­gin has con­sis­tent­ly not allowed any new inves­ti­ga­tions into the Mag­nit­sky mat­ter, and con­sis­tent­ly made sure that the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office nev­er inves­ti­gates these cas­es togeth­er, but rather sends them piece­meal all around Moscow to all these dif­fer­ent inves­ti­ga­to­ry bod­ies where they can’t see the whole pic­ture, so the cas­es basi­cal­ly die. That’s what’s going on right now, and that’s why I left: the orga­ni­za­tion that is sup­posed to be pro­tect­ing me, the Pros­e­cu­tor Gen­er­al’s Office, is dys­func­tion­al, or per­haps I should say crip­pled inter­nal­ly right now. And if it can’t pro­tect me right now, and if it can’t pro­tect the Russ­ian state bud­get from anoth­er theft of $21 mil­lion, which is what is in process right now, then I would be a fool to just sit there because they also failed to pro­tect Mag­nit­sky, who was arrest­ed and then killed.

RA: While you are iden­ti­fy­ing this one indi­vid­ual, in fair­ness, isn’t this sit­u­a­tion sys­temic? If you weren’t Fire­stone, but rather a reg­u­lar Russ­ian busi­ness­man, isn’t the bot­tom line that you would still be in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion across the board, that this is dai­ly life for busi­ness in Moscow?

JF: Yes, you are right about that, and in fact I will share some­thing else. What is real­ly crazy here is that while nobody cared about the $230 mil­lion theft from the bud­get, the only real rea­son why any­body is lis­ten­ing to any­thing we say any­more is because the arrest of Mag­nit­sky was so egre­gious, and the tor­ture of Mag­nit­sky was so egre­gious, that they [took notice]. Let me put it his way: peo­ple are arrest­ed all the time by police, with­out tri­al, held, pres­sured, and some of them die. But what was unprece­dent­ed with Mag­nit­sky was that here was a guy, a lawyer, who was doc­u­ment­ing it every sin­gle step of the way. So for the first time we were able to see every sin­gle step, how the police abused their pow­er and tor­tured some­body — so that’s the dif­fer­ence, but if you are ask­ing if this hap­pens all the time, yes, it hap­pens all the time.

RA: From the broad­er polit­i­cal per­spec­tive, how do you see these enor­mous prob­lems of rule of law in terms of the U.S. deci­sion to pur­sue the “reset” pol­i­cy? From your per­spec­tive and har­row­ing expe­ri­ence in Russ­ian busi­ness, do you believe that this focus on reset­ting rela­tions while the rule of law lan­guish­es beneath the sur­face, makes sense?

JF: I think that the U.S. has to jug­gle a lot of dif­fer­ent things, such as coop­er­at­ing on ter­ror­ism, coop­er­at­ing on nuclear dis­ar­ma­ment, and human traf­fick­ing or what­ev­er, so rule of law often gets left out. The prob­lem with rule of law in Rus­sia is that it is so bro­ken down, that it’s not even clear to any­body that there is such a thing as the Russ­ian state any­more, it seems that there are a bunch of fief­doms that con­stant­ly fight, and one won­ders whether those fief­doms can real­ly con­trol anything.

I mean, you make a deal with one fief­dom over drug traf­fick­ing, and then there is some­one else in the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment who is mak­ing all their mon­ey off of drug traf­fick­ing, or you make a deal on nuclear pro­lif­er­a­tion with one group but that does­n’t mean that there are oth­ers in the state who are inter­est­ed in mak­ing mon­ey by sell­ing ura­ni­um to North Korea or Iran. So real­ly rule of law is crit­i­cal to mak­ing that reset effort work, but I don’t know if you can make it con­tin­gent upon that. You can ‘reset’ the rela­tions but you aren’t going to achieve any­thing real, because rule of law is so out of con­trol, that even if you agreed on some­thing I don’t think that the Krem­lin can con­trol it anymore.

RA: Pres­i­dent Medvedev has cer­tain­ly made a lot of speech­es and com­ments about address­ing reform, cor­rup­tion, and legal nihilism con­cerns. Is it all hot air, or do you actu­al­ly see him doing something?

JF: Look, I think that Medvedev actu­al­ly wants to do what he says, but I also think that he is hemmed in. Nobody real­ly knows how much pow­er he real­ly has, and even if he is ful­ly in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion, the sys­tem is so out of con­trol — every­body is dirty, every­body has got some­thing on every­body. I think that as a human being and as a lawyer he is out­raged by what hap­pened to Mag­nit­sky, how could he not be? He says he wants to fight cor­rup­tion, well sure that’s great. But on the oth­er hand if you real­ly fight cor­rup­tion and you make the courts inde­pen­dent and make the legal sys­tem work, then the Krem­lin can’t call down and say ‘hey, we need this one result’ in this or that case, and that’s a hard pow­er to give up. It’s got to be one way or the oth­er — you can’t have it both ways.

RA: Before Mag­nit­sky’s death, just how hard was it to oper­ate your law firm in Rus­sia in the face of such deep corruption?

JF: It’s fun­ny you know, but being a lawyer in Rus­sia you have to be one part lawyer, one part PR, and one part lob­by­ist, and in a sense, our job has been that when we get a case where you are run­ning into cor­rup­tion, you have to make the pub­lic and the author­i­ties aware of it to the point where the cor­rup­tion has to stop because it has been brought into broad day­light. And we had been pret­ty suc­cess­ful at that, but we had nev­er hit any­thing of this size. I mean, these peo­ple stole $230 mil­lion when the hijacked the Her­mitage com­pa­nies, and they stole $200 mil­lion before that when they stole the oth­er com­pa­nies — and we’re talk­ing half a bil­lion dol­lars, so when you have peo­ple who are that con­nect­ed and that pow­er­ful, it’s just a whole oth­er lev­el — law does­n’t have much to do with it.

RA: Do you believe that the recip­i­ents of this mon­ey are in the Kremlin?

JF: I don’t know … I can’t real­ly say … I per­son­al­ly would like to believe no, that I don’t know who the ulti­mate recip­i­ents of the mon­ey are. I know that the police offi­cers involved were report­ed to have received $6 mil­lion and that can be mea­sured by the way that they live beyond the means of their salaries, but I real­ly can’t tell you how high this goes. I cer­tain­ly hope that it does­n’t go that high, but I don’t know.

RA: How do you think your case and oth­ers like it inform upon the future of Russ­ian business?

JF: Well, for one, the prob­lem with Rus­sia is that it is a rel­a­tive­ly easy place to make mon­ey. What is hard to do is to hold onto what­ev­er is mak­ing the mon­ey, because the way that the police work there, and the way that the crim­i­nals work there — and they are basi­cal­ly the same — is that you have got to invest all the mon­ey and all the time to get the invest­ment work­ing, and then the crim­i­nals come and steal it. They have got a 100% rate of return with zero risk — they don’t have to invest any­thing, and just steal what is already work­ing. So peo­ple con­tin­ue to come into Rus­sia and invest, but peo­ple aren’t always going to be that stu­pid. We hear more and more peo­ple say­ing, “Well gee, maybe I don’t need that has­sle. I can get a sim­i­lar rate of return some­where else and I don’t have to wor­ry about some­body killing me.”

So I think that soon­er or lat­er the gov­ern­ment isn’t going to be able to keep putting on the hap­py face and sweep­ing it under the rug — they’ve got to even­tu­al­ly address rule of law because investors want some sta­bil­i­ty. They have got to know that if they build it, they can keep it. So I think that a lot depends on that.

RA: What do you think has made such a sit­u­a­tion possible?

What we are deal­ing with in this par­tic­u­lar case is an exam­ple of just how impos­si­ble it is to pro­tect your own rights even when every­thing is absolute­ly clear. This struck me when I wrote a lit­tle let­ter to the edi­tor of Vedo­mosti the oth­er day, and I reread it, and you can slap your­self on the head: every­body can see this, why isn’t any­thing get­ting done? And that’s the crazy thing about Rus­sia. I am a lawyer with almost 20 years of expe­ri­ence, sat on the board of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce for six years, and they can do this to me in broad day­light. Here I am with the U.S. Embassy behind me, with the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce behind me, and with the force of law behind me, and in the spot­light because of Mag­nit­sky’s death, and not sure if I can defend myself, and that’s how bad­ly the sys­tem is bro­ken. And if I can’t defend myself, who can?

There has to be a point in which Rus­sians see that law is not a joke, when they can clear­ly see how some­one is clear­ly abus­ing the sys­tems. Judges will have to decide that no mat­ter how many stamped doc­u­ments or nota­rized sig­na­tures some­body is bring­ing before their court, that these peo­ple are clear­ly using the legal sys­tem to steal and that they should be reject­ed and sent out of the court­room. If peo­ple actu­al­ly start prac­tic­ing law instead of just going through the motions, we’ll have a much bet­ter sys­tem in Russia.

RA: Do you believe there is a war on lawyers in Russia?

JF: As far as pro­tect­ing lawyers, it’s open hunt­ing sea­son on us right now. It used to be that when you want­ed some­thing in Rus­sia, you grabbed the guy who owned it and put him in a ter­ri­ble posi­tion, giv­ing him the choice of free­dom for hand­ing over the assets, and he’d usu­al­ly hand over the assets. Now it has expand­ed to the legal team. So now they grab the lawyers and say, “alright, we need some bad stuff on your client,” and the lawyer may say “I don’t have any bad stuff on them” or “I have it but I can’t give it to you.” So then they throw you in prison, and tell you that you have to make up some bad stuff, and until you do, you aren’t going to see your fam­i­ly, that you are going to live very bad­ly, and then you are going to die. So it’s an expand­ing nas­ti­ness, and that has to stop.

Lawyers are becom­ing more than just hostages. In the rest of the world, lawyers can­not be ques­tioned about their clients. In the Russ­ian way of doing things, lawyers should make good wit­ness­es. I know it sounds com­plete­ly crazy, but if the lawyer says that this is a bad guy, they think “whoa, what a great case.” So they think let’s grab lawyers, let’s get them to say bad things about their clients, and give them the choice between free­dom or impris­on­ment and pos­si­bly death.

So despite how often we jokes about lawyers, the amaz­ing thing about them in Rus­sia is that so many of them are in prison or they have fled the coun­try, and that’s because they are heroes. That’s because they made the choice to say no — you can put me in prison and destroy my life, but I am not going to play your dirty game. That’s what Mag­nit­sky did, and it cost him his life.

Pub­lished on Robert Ams­ter­dam blog.

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