The Russian government and its judges have declared several Russian dissident lawyers “foreign agents”. Often, these lawyers have received money from foreign sources, either for their defense or to attend events outside. The result is that the lawyer will be forced to reveal all his data to the government, including the files related to the defense of his client.
Posted at 3:00 p.m.
I hope this worries and outrages you, this breach of the sacrosanct principles that every citizen has the right to a lawyer and that any action by the lawyer and any exchange with his client be protected by the lawyer-client privilege. . Obviously, this also applies when it comes to litigation with the government, for example in criminal law. No matter our discomfort when a skilled lawyer, when defending a mafia, a sex criminal, a terrorist or a killer, finds the argument or the procedural fault that will make his client acquit.
In Russia, on the other hand, it is rather the sovereignty of the country, of the State and of the government which takes precedence and which is invoked in order to justify any limitation of the rights of the accused and their lawyers, in particular when it comes to contesting actions of the government in power.
Now, I take you to the Netherlands, where courts and arbitration courts are often called upon to decide international disputes. The international nature of this country’s economy partly explains this reality, as does its well-developed international law and, gossip will say, its status as a tax haven. Hundreds of global companies, including some from Quebec, have established their head offices or administrative subsidiaries there. Among them, Russian companies, often major producers of natural gas and oil.
Under Presidents Yeltsin and Putin, the Russian government played an active role in establishing these companies and selling them, often at low cost, to friends of the regime. Among them, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, friend of Putin and co-owner of the Yukos oil company. However, when Khodorkovsky publicly turned against Putin, the reaction was immediate and merciless: he was charged with fraud and sentenced to 10 years in prison, and another such charge followed. He was released in 2014. In the meantime, the Russian authorities demanded huge taxes from Yukos, causing its bankruptcy.
The Yukos Trial
But Yukos had other shareholders. Since 2003, they have sued the Russian state in the Netherlands. Having lost at first instance, they won on appeal. The Russian government was ordered to pay compensation in the order of 50 billion US dollars. Recently, the Supreme Court of the Netherlands returned the case to the Court of Appeal.
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, it has been denounced that law firms in Amsterdam have significant annual income from the Russian government and its oligarch friends.
The firm that represented the Kremlin understood that the collateral damage to its reputation will be significant. He will no longer accept new cases from his client, from which he derived annual revenues of more than 10 million. The question remains: what should be done with the ongoing trials? Like Alexandre Navalny, Vladimir Putin has the right to a lawyer. He is even obliged to be represented by a lawyer.
In the meantime, the lawyer responsible for the Yukos file has left this firm. After he argued the case, but before the publication of the Supreme Court’s decision, the Dutch government appointed him as a Supreme Court justice, an appointment which is not contested in the media. Putin can be proud of that.
In front of this dish of ethical spaghetti, let’s go back to Quebec. Immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the major law firms present in Quebec made the inevitable gestures: condemnation of the Russian government, withdrawal from the Russian market, no new mandates for Russian clients targeted by sanctions, etc.
But it’s like with the mafia. Putin also has the right to a lawyer. We will never know what revenues these firms have received from their (doubtful) Russian clients. What fiscal (and other) constructs did they sell them in order to protect their black empire? Sometimes we wash our hands, but they will remain dirty.
* This text is based, in part, on a blog by Diana de Wolff, professor at the University of Amsterdam, published in Dutch on March 3, 2022.