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WCED Lecture. “Erosion of Rights in Russia: A Lawyer’s Perspective.”

Tuesday, February 18, 2014
12:00 AM
1636 International Institute/SSWB, 1080 S. University

In this lecture, Pavel Ivlev will draw on his experience as Russian legal counsel to Yukos Oil and its management to analyze the case at its deepest level. Ivlev argues that the Khodorkovsky/Yukos affair reveals the flawed Russian prosecution and judiciary system that can prioritize politics over due process, and that Putin’s regime works against free markets, sound corporate governance, transparency, and the rule of law. He will draw lessons from the case that he feels anyone interested in dealing with Russia and its people should learn.

Pavel Ivlev, former lawyer for Yukos and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, fled to New York from Russia under fear of unjust prosecution. A district court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Ivlev in 2005 on charges of embezzlement and money laundering, identical to those of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev. Ivlev believed that the arrest warrant was a result of his refusal to provide false incriminating evidence against Khodorkovsky and other key Yukos managers. Ivlev has vowed not to return to Russia. A graduate of Moscow State University Law School in 1993, Ivlev also studied law at Columbia University (New York) and Queen Mary College (London), and is a member of the International Bar Association and the U.S.-Russia Business Council. In 1997 Ivlev became a partner at a leading Moscow-based international law firm, ALM Feldmans, which was effectively destroyed by the broader attack on Yukos and its advisors. Ivlev is Chairman of the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom, which he founded in 2009 to campaign for “free markets, free people, and free ideas in Russia.”

Part of the series Pluralism in Politics and Culture, a new initiative jointly sponsored by CREES and WCED that examines the foundations of free and open societies. The project builds on the university’s rich legacy of study and support of the dissident culture in the former Soviet Union and on several existing efforts at U-M. The series focuses on multiple facets of political pluralism, including its legal, cultural, and economic dimensions, and explore them in a broader historical context.

Sponsors: WCED, CREES

Speaker:
Pavel Ivlev, chairman, Committee for Russian Economic Freedom