The Lawyer: Firestone Duncan founder flees Russia amid alleged government conspiracy

March 2, 2010

The man­ag­ing part­ner of a Moscow law firm has fled Rus­sia over fears he is being tar­get­ed by the same peo­ple he claims are ­respon­si­ble for the death of one of his partners.

Jami­son Fire­stone, co-founder of tax firm ­Fire­stone Dun­can, has not been back to Rus­sia since Christ­mas after claim­ing to have uncov­ered a crim­i­nal con­spir­a­cy that bears a resem­blance to the events that led to the deten­tion and death in cus­tody of his ­for­mer part­ner Sergey Magnitsky.

Fire­stone said that ­offi­cials from Russia’s ­Inte­ri­or Min­istry have made two attempts to obtain, through an alleged­ly ­fraud­u­lent tax refund, $21m (£13.57m) that he paid to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment in his capac­i­ty as gen­er­al ­direc­tor of invest­ment ­com­pa­ny OOO Anrider.

Fire­stone claims that on 1 August 2009 he received an enve­lope from the tax author­i­ty con­tain­ing ­fraud­u­lent­ly signed and sealed OOO Anrid­er ­doc­u­ments ask­ing for the tax rebate, which had been reject­ed by the author­i­ty as forg­eries. A sim­i­lar attempt was made to claim the same rebate in December.

Fire­stone said that he twice told offi­cials about the inci­dent, alleg­ing that they had refused to inves­ti­gate the alle­ga­tions in a mean­ing­ful man­ner, instead break­ing the case up into var­i­ous ­indi­vid­ual com­plaints to be dealt with by sep­a­rate, low-lev­el investigators.

“There’s a group of peo­ple try­ing to steal mon­ey and to make it look like I did it,” said Fire­stone. “I can’t be sure what’s hap­pen­ing here. I can be sure who’s behind this. What’s clear is that this is the same thing that ­hap­pened to my client ­Her­mitage Fund and led to Magnitsky’s death.

“When he [Mag­nit­sky] died, the whole coun­try was up in arms and even the pres­i­dent got involved, but these peo­ple were still brazen enough to try to take this mon­ey. So I thought that if I’m still on the ground in Moscow, just wait­ing, then soon­er or lat­er I’m going to get snatched like Mag­nit­sky was. So my ­feel­ing is that I’m going to fight this from [Lon­don]; I’m going to com­plain at all lev­els until the gen­er­al ­pros­e­cu­tor does its job.”

Fire­stone said he hopes to return to Moscow once the sit­u­a­tion is resolved.

Mag­nit­sky had been ­rep­re­sent­ing Her­mitage Cap­i­tal when he was arrest­ed and detained on charges of tax fraud. He died in ­cus­tody in Novem­ber 2009, ­prompt­ing Russ­ian pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medvedev to order an inves­ti­ga­tion (The Lawyer, 11 Decem­ber 2009).

Describ­ing a series of events that bear a sim­i­lar­i­ty to the alle­ga­tions made by Fire­stone, Her­mitage ­Cap­i­tal chief exec­u­tive William ­Bow­der alleged in a YouTube video released last year that he was accused of tax fraud after his offices were raid­ed and doc­u­ments tak­en to fraud­u­lent­ly ­trans­fer own­er­ship of his com­pa­nies and steal $230m from Russ­ian taxpayers.

Fire­stone Dun­can ­con­tin­ues to oper­ate, with a team of lawyers remain­ing in Moscow and Fire­stone work­ing from an office in Lon­don. Fire­stone co-found­ed the firm in 1993.

The Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Min­istry could not be ­con­tact­ed for comment.

Pub­lishe in The Lawyer.

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