Pavel Ivlev
Chairman of the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom
Born in the town of Khimki, Moscow region, USSR, in 1970. He is a dual US and Russian national, and an attorney admitted to practice law in the Russian Federation since 1993. Ivlev graduated in law from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1993 and later continued his legal studies at Columbia University Summer Law School in Amsterdam (1993) and at Queen Mary College of the University of London (1995).
Since 1997, he has been a partner in the Moscow law firm ALM Feldmans, which clients, among others, included Boris Berezovsky and his family, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, Group Menatep Ltd and Yukos Oil Company, as well as other senior figures of Menatep and Yukos. In 1997-2004 the firm was well known as the external counsel for Yukos.
In November 2004, the offices of ALM Feldmans law firm were raided and searched by Russian government agents led by the investigators from the General Prosecutor’s Office. The investigators demanded that Feldmans provided them with literally everything related to Yukos or Menatep, contained in its attorney files. Soon after ALM Feldmans was effectively destroyed by the broader attack on Yukos and its advisers and ceased to exist in 2005. A district court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Ivlev in 2005 on charges of embezzlement and money laundering, identical to those against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who were charged with the same in 2007. Ivlev had refused to give (false) incriminating evidence against his clients.
From 2010 to 2014 Ivlev was executive director of Institute of Modern Russia – a New York-based think tank organized by Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his son Pavel Khodorkovsky. In 2016 Ivlev became executive director of KRES Poliskola, an educational non-profit organization with offices in Riga, Latvia and Brooklyn, New York.
For the past quarter of a century it has been Pavel Ivlev’s primary duty, as both a professional in the field of law and as a human-rights activist, to study and analyze legal, political, social, and economic situation in Russia in order to consult and guide his clients from all over the world, including businesses and educational institutions. He has participated as a panelist or speaker in dozens of conferences on Russia and Russia-related human rights issues, including persecution of dissidents and human rights leaders, and been extensively interviewed or cited by world leading media outlets.
Since 2005 Pavel Ivlev lives in New Jersey.
Jamison R. Firestone
Jamison R. Firestone is a member of the New York Bar and sat on the Board of Directors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Moscow for six years. He is Managing Partner of Firestone Duncan, which is both a law firm and an audit firm with offices in Moscow and London. The firm was established by American attorneys in 1993 to service the specialized legal, tax, accounting, and audit needs of foreign ventures doing business in Russia or with Russian parties. Many of Firestone Duncan’s clients are well known western firms including many western law firms that do not have a Russian presence. The firm’s client list also includes a growing number of dynamic Russian firms.
Firestone has been a tireless advocate and lobbyist of legal and administrative reforms to improve the rule of law and reduce the regulatory burdens of doing business in Russia. Firestone counsels Hermitage Capital, an investment firm that was Russia’s largest foreign investor with over $4 billion under management. In 2007 three of Hermitage Fund’s Russian investment companies were stolen with the active involvement of Ministry of Interior officers. In 2008 one of Firestone’s lawyers, Sergei Magnitsky, was falsely detained and tortured to death in pretrial detention by the Ministry of Interior officers he had exposed as being involved in the theft.
The death of Sergei Magnitsky in pretrial detention in November of 2009 has led to one of the most important rules of law cases in Russia. Although President Medvedev has called for an investigation into the causes of Magnitsky’s death, he has not called into question the arrest of a lawyer by the officers he testified against, nor has done anything to aid Firestone’s client Hermitage Fund to regain control of its stolen companies. President Medvedev has allowed the same officers who Magnitsky accused, and who detained and killed him, to continue to bring fabricated criminal cases against any lawyer who attempts to expose their corruption. As of this date, in addition to detaining and killing Mr. Magnitsky, the same group of Ministry of Interior officers, who somehow acquired millions of dollars of publicly recorded assets at the time of the theft, has attempted to arrest seven more lawyers from five different Russian law firms.
Firestone is a great believer in the potential of the Russian market but believes that clients must understand the failings of the Russian legal system before making investment decisions.
Bruce Misamore
Born in Findlay, Ohio in 1950, Bruce Misamore earned both his BSBA in finance in 1972 and his MBA in 1973 from Bowling Green State University.
In 2001-2005, Bruce Misamore was the Chief Financial Officer of YUKOS Oil Company in Moscow, Russia, and a member of the YUKOS Management Committee. YUKOS was at that time largest Russian oil company and the fourth largest oil producing company in the world. Mr. Misamore was Deputy Chairman of the Management Committee and a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors.
Before joining YUKOS, Mr. Misamore had been Senior Vice President – Finance and Treasurer of PennzEnergy Company in Houston. Mr. Misamore’s prior positions also included Vice President and Treasurer of Pennzoil Company and various middle and upper middle management financial positions with Marathon Oil Company/USX Corporation.
Now Mr. Misamore works from his Houston home to regain lost assets for YUKOS’ more than 55,000 shareholders. Now retired, Mr. Misamore spends several hours a day working on YUKOS -related issues. In 2007 Russian authorities seized YUKOS’ assets to satisfy fictitious tax claims against the company, after having arrested its CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky on fraudulent politically motivated charges.
Mr. Misamore maintains that the tax charges were trumped up and that the seizure was unjust, a move by the Kremlin to re-nationalize its oil industry and punish political enemies of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. YUKOS’ assets were eventually sold to two state-owned companies, Rosneft and Gazprom, and the proceeds from the sales paid primarily to the Russian government to satisfy the fictitious tax claims. Russian prosecutors have argued that Mr. Misamore and his counterparts stripped valuable assets from the company and sold them for personal gain. Bruce K. Misamore dismisses the allegations as absurd.
Andrey Stolbunov
Is a Russian Attorney-at-Law, former Chief of Human Rights Defense NGO “Spravedlivost” (“Justice”). Mr. Stolbunov earned his Master’s Degree of Jurisprudence in 2003 from Moscow New Law Institute, Moscow. In 2011, he successfully completed an advanced course, “Legal Basics of NGO Activity”, at The Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).
From 2006 to 2017, Mr. Stolbunov was a Chairman of the Human Rights NGO “Spravedlivost” (Justice), Moscow, Russia. The NGO has been developing new technologies to facilitate public inquiry that would target corruption. Stolbunov is a former Editor–In-Chief of “Public and Legal Portal Justice”, and a former member of the working group of the Presidential Council on Human Rights, where he participated in the drafting of the legislation on public monitoring of the government.
From 2007 to 2013 Stolbunov was an expert for Public Chamber of Russian Federation (Government-based group of mediators between state and society). He is a former Expert guest at the following television channels: Channel One, Russia 24, TV Center, and a contributing expert for Rossiyskaya Gazeta (Russian Newspaper), Novye Izvestia (New Izvestia), Novaya Gazeta (New Gazette) etc.
Stolbunov currently resides in the USA, having fled an unlawful criminal prosecution on trumped-up charges. These charges followed his proactive struggle for the rights of the citizens of the Russia that fell victim to the corrupt Russian government. Since 2003, he has been practicing law in areas including protecting the interests of companies subject to hostile takeovers (corporate raiding), as well as consulting for commercial and not-for-profit organizations and defense in criminal proceedings.
Currently Mr. Stolbunov is an attorney licensed to practice and consult on Russian law, is a member of the Moscow Regional Bar Association, and Co-Founding partner and Vice-Chairman (as of 2016 off counsel) to Moscow-based law firm, Law and Person. He is an author on Russia-related legal topics (Forum Daily, New York), consultant and contributing author on Russian law and human rights issues for Committee for Russian Economic Freedom.
Boris Palant
Boris Palant is a partner with a New York-based law firm Palant & Shapiro, PC. He is a graduate of Kharkov University, specializing in English and French Languages. In 1978, received his Master of Arts Degree from State University of New York at Buffalo (Psycho- and Neuro-Linguistics and Semiotics), and in 1983 he received his Juris Doctor Degree from SUNY Buffalo School of Law. Since 1984 he has been in private practice, having represented clients from all over the world: former Soviet Union, France, UK, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Uruguay, Israel, Egypt, Mexico, Guatemala, Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic. Boris Palant holds the title “Super Lawyer” awarded by Thomson-Reuters.
Over the span of 30 years (as of fall of 2014) Boris Palant has successfully handled hundreds of various types of immigration cases, ranging from asylum and relatives’ petitions to “green cards” on the basis of extraordinary ability (EB-1) to complicated removal proceedings. His clients include famous writers, composers, scientists, athletes, and attorneys.
Boris Palant has also served as Trust Protector for some of his clients and has represented clients in complex litigation matters before foreign tribunals (Monaco). He has consulted foreign businessmen on issues involving transparency of capital, repatriation of capital, tax consequences of acquisition of the US resident alien status and of surrendering this status. Together with his partner Alex Shapiro, Boris Palant has represented clients in complex international child abduction cases which resulted in the return of the abducted children from US to Russia. Boris Palant hosts a popular weekly radio show on legal subjects at 620AM, and he has also appeared as a guest legal commentator in TV and radio programs of the BBC, Voice of America, RTVi, RTN, NTV America. His column on legal issues is featured in the Russian-American weekly “Russkaya Reklama”, the newspaper which was founded in 1993 as a first weekly commercial Russian language newspaper in America. In the last 10 years alone, the leading newspaper within the Russian community, reaching over 1,000,000 people each week.
Leonid Martynyuk
Is a Russian opposition author, video producer and journalist. Born in Lviv, Ukraine, Martynyuk is a graduate of Kuban State University (faculty of history, sociology, and international relations) in 2001, Bauman Moscow State Technical University (one-year management program) in 2004, and School of public policy of the Open Russia foundation in 2006.
In 2001-2006 Martynyuk was an officer and later a Deputy Head of the HR Department of the division of Kubanenergo OJSC. In 2006-2008, he worked as a PR-manager on a Nokia project in the company Agency of Humanitarian Technologies – South.
Leonid Martynyuk is a former member of the federal political councils of the opposition Solidarity Movement and the People’s Freedom Party. As a co-author of Boris Nemtsov, he wrote anti-corruption reports: “The Life of a Galley Slave (Palaces, Yachts, Cars, Planes and Other Accessories)”, and “Winter Olympics in the Subtropics: Corruption and Abuse in Sochi”. Martynyuk is the author of a viral YouTube channel titled “The Lies of Putin’s Regime,” which has over 50 million views.
In August 2014, when the Moscow arbitration court began hearings on the claim launched by Vladimir Yakunin, the head of Russian Railways, against the authors of the investigative report “Winter Olympics in the Subtropics” Nemtsov and Martynyuk, a representative of Russian Railways claimed: “Almost all of the Russian Railways’ negative reputation abroad is due to the defendants report. The media reprinted this report in whole or partially about 400 times, including statements about Russian Railways. This greatly distorted the entire news media image of Russian Railways. It became negative.”
Martynyuk was arrested in Krasnodar, Russia, on August 23, 2014. A provocateur attacked him, but the police wound up seizing and accusing Martynyuk of “hooliganism” (Art. 20-1). He spent 10 days in jail. According to Boris Nemtsov, this incident was staged in retaliation against opposition activity of Martynyuk, triggered in particular by his short movie “Who shot down the Boeing over Donbass?” On March 4, 2015, a complaint on the arrest was sent to the ECtHR. Since October 2014, Martynyuk lives in New York City.
