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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The Huffington Post: Open Season on Lawyers in Russia

February 19, 2010

Rus­sia has become a pret­ty scary place for lawyers to work, and not for any lack of pow­er lunch­es, major deal­mak­ing, or lux­u­ry retail­ers. While we most often hear about the scores of jour­nal­ists who pay a high price for their crit­i­cism of the Krem­lin, the legal pro­fes­sion has come under attack as well, in both polit­i­cal cas­es as well as run-of-the-mill cor­rup­tion. In recent years, dozens of lawyers have been forced into prison, out of the coun­try, or worse.

The most famous lawyers to fall vic­tim to these prey­ing forces would be Stanislav Markelov, the human rights lawyer who was shot dead on a Moscow side­walk; Vasi­ly Alex­anyan, the Yukos gen­er­al coun­sel who was refused med­ica­tion for AIDS and tuber­cu­lo­sis; and Sergei Mag­nistky, the cor­po­rate lawyer who most recent­ly died in prison fol­low­ing abu­sive treat­ment in rela­tion to the Her­mitage case.

The most recent name to make the head­lines is Jami­son Fire­stone, the 44-year-old Amer­i­can found­ing part­ner of the law firm Fire­stone Dun­can in Moscow, who has been forced to flee Rus­sia for his own safe­ty. Fire­stone was the for­mer employ­er of Mag­nit­sky, and rep­re­sent­ed Her­mitage in their recent tra­vails against state corruption.

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Bloomberg: Firestone Flees Moscow ‘Mafia’ Police as Browder Affair Widens

February 19, 2010

Jami­son Fire­stone, who spent 18 years help­ing U.S. com­pa­nies nav­i­gate Russia’s legal sys­tem, said he fled the coun­try because he’s the next tar­get of “mafia” law-enforce­ment offi­cials he says were respon­si­ble for the death of his col­league Sergei Magnitsky.

Fire­stone, 44, a U.S. cit­i­zen and for­mer board mem­ber of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce in Rus­sia, said Inte­ri­or Min­istry offi­cials made two attempts to obtain $21 mil­lion in tax­es that a com­pa­ny he’s a direc­tor of paid to the gov­ern­ment. He said the per­pe­tra­tors forged his sig­na­ture and cor­po­rate seals to seek tax rebates, sim­i­lar to the $230 mil­lion in claims made by funds expro­pri­at­ed from Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, a $1 bil­lion invest­ment firm run by his client William Browder.

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Businessweek: Deadly Business in Moscow

February 19, 2010

An Amer­i­can lawyer’s expe­ri­ence under­scores the law­less­ness out­siders oper­at­ing in Rus­sia can face.

Jami­son Fire­stone was at his desk when the com­mo­tion began. On the morn­ing of June 4, 2007, the Amer­i­can attor­ney heard loud voic­es com­ing from the recep­tion area of his law firm, Fire­stone Dun­can, on Krasno­pro­le­tarskaya Street in Moscow. He went out to inves­ti­gate and was greet­ed by two dozen offi­cers from the Russ­ian Inte­ri­or Ministry.

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Global Voices: Theater Play to “Reconstruct” Lawyer Magnitsky’s Death

February 15, 2010

Sergei Mag­nit­sky, a 37-year-old Russ­ian tax lawyer, died in a Moscow prison on Nov. 16, 2009, after spend­ing near­ly a year in pre-tri­al deten­tion with no access to ade­quate med­ical treatment.

The cir­cum­stances of his death received exten­sive cov­er­age both in Rus­sia (RUS) and abroad (ENG). Let­ters and appeals he wrote from prison were pub­lished as well (an Eng­lish trans­la­tion of one let­ter — at RFE/RL; scanned Russ­ian-lan­guage orig­i­nals of typed and hand­writ­ten doc­u­ments — at NewTimes.ru). The Pub­lic Over­sight Com­mis­sion for Human Rights Obser­vance in Moscow Deten­tion Cen­ters issued a review of the con­di­tions of Mag­nit­sky’s prison stay (in Russ­ian and in Eng­lish — at Law and Order in Rus­sia blog).

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