Khodorkovsky's lawyer - "Taking on the State"

From page 1 of the October 10-16 issue of the Georgetown Law Weekly ("The Student Newspaper of Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C."):

Amsterdam is "Taking on the State"
by Lyndon Allin, 1L
Guest Writer

Last Thursday, the Georgetown community was treated to a first-hand account of the most controversial legal case in Russia today. Robert Amsterdam addressed over 100 people in Copley Formal Lounge on the main campus in a presentation about the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of the Yukos oil company. The remarks by Mr. Amsterdam, the lead western lawyer on Khodorkovsky’s defense team, were no less provocative and far-ranging than the title of his presentation, “Taking on the State.”

Amsterdam’s appearance, sponsored by the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies (CERES) at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, was initially scheduled to take place in a smaller venue but was moved to Copley to accommodate the unexpectedly large turnout.

Amsterdam began by mentioning his recent deportation from Russia and observed that in this situation, “I managed to do more for my client by getting myself kicked out of the country than I could by whatever representation I could make within the country.”

Khodorkovsky, who has been imprisoned since late 2003, recently lost an appeal of his conviction this May on charges of fraud, tax evasion and embezzlement, for which he was sentenced to a nine-year prison term. Many Russia observers believe that the case against Khodorkovsky, at one time the richest man in Russia, was motivated by the businessman’s involvement in Russian domestic politics and sponsorship of civil society initiatives, coupled with the Russian government’s desire to take control of the assets of his company, Yukos. Khodorkovsky’s prosecution was accompanied by tax evasion charges against Yukos that eventually led to the forced sale of the company’s main production unit, Yuganskneftegaz, which is now under the control of the state-owned oil company Rosneft.

Last week, Russian prosecutors initiated a new series of raids on companies affiliated with Yukos, and the story continues to garner international attention. Mr. Amsterdam described the charges against Khodorkovsky and Yukos as a manipulation of the legal system, and said that the charges against his client reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of modern business practices on the part of prosecutors. “In many ways,” he said, “it was the old Russia putting the new Russia on trial.”

Khodorkovsky’s prosecution has been popular among a large segment of the Russian population left impoverished by the economic and social transitions of the 1990s who watched the emergence of a small class of wealthy elites, the very richest of whom, like Khodorkovsky, came to be known as “oligarchs.”

Denying his client’s guilt, Mr. Amsterdam stated, “it is the [Russian] government that is conducting itself criminally, and it is the American government that is closing its eyes to what is going on in the name of oil.” This was one of several points during his remarks at which Amsterdam suggested the US government, and President Bush specifically, should be more active in criticizing the Russian government’s handling of the case against Khodorkovsky.

Speaking more broadly about the legal climate in Russia, Amsterdam noted that many positive reforms were enacted during President Vladimir Putin’s first term in office, citing the new tax, criminal and procedural codes introduced during that period. However, according to Amsterdam, during Putin’s second term, the president “has been meticulous in his destruction of even the very roots of judicial independence.”

“The rule of law has been under attack consistently from the government now for essentially three years,” he said. Amsterdam remarked on the authorities’ use of “Soviet-style tactics” in the prosecution of Khodorkovsky, and he observed that “lawyers are in [the authorities’] sights,” citing several recent cases where prosecutorial abuses have been alleged and attorneys have been jailed under questionable circumstances.

After his remarks, Amsterdam took many questions from the audience. Robert Alter, an MSFS candidate who is also a lawyer, asked how it was possible for attorneys to stay sufficiently motivated to diligently prepare for trial proceedings if they view the trial process itself as corrupt. Amsterdam responded, “I believe this is an entirely political case, and I think the only resolution will be political ultimately, and that essentially it is critical as his lawyers to try to keep his light alive and to have people remember that he exists, and to shout and scream when you see crimes being committed by states.”

Amsterdam went on to say that the Russian lawyers on Khodorkovsky’s defense team are conducting their side of the case diligently in hopes that their client’s case will eventually reach the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. He expressed his admiration for his Russian colleagues, calling them “incredibly heroic in incredibly difficult circumstances.” One of Khodorkovsky’s Russian attorneys, Olga Artyukhova, was disbarred last week by the Moscow Chamber of Lawyers, and other members of his defense team are facing disbarment proceedings on charges that they unethically attempted to drag out the appeal process.

Several people in the audience felt that the presentation was one-sided. Irina Papkova, a PhD candidate in the government department, observed that Amsterdam “got a little carried away.” “For all of Khodorkovsky’s subsequent good civic behavior, I doubt he got where he was without any illegal activity,” said Ms. Papkova, “but I don’t think the punishment befits the crime in this case.” At least one individual from the Russian Embassy in Washington was in attendance at the event but did not address Amsterdam directly with questions or comments.

Of Amsterdam’s remarks, CERES MA candidate Jonathan Hayes said, “He definitely shed light on the specifics with his own bias.” CERES Associate Director Jennifer Long observed that “Mr. Amsterdam’s views clearly are based on his experiences working with his famous client and add to an often heated debate about the conduct of economic and political reforms and the establishment of the rule of law in post-Soviet Russia.”

Overall, Mr. Amsterdam’s remarks were highly critical of the Russian government. He expressed dismay at the state’s reassertion of control over Russia’s oil and gas industry, saying that this was already leading to a decline in oil production because “this is a state that can’t manage its way out of a paper bag.” However, in his final comment, Amsterdam expressed optimism about Russia’s future, because, according to him, the “taste for reform” still exists, and the controversy surrounding Khodorkovsky continues to be the subject of much public discussion. “I am hopeful for Russia because it is amazing to me that Khodorkovsky still gets the level of attention that he gets.”

I guess since I haven't had time to post original content here lately, I can at least post the fruits of my other labors. I went to this interesting talk last week and had the chance to cover it for GULC's weekly newspaper (their web presence is a bit weak at the moment).

Amsterdam actually said some things that were much more incendiary than the sound bites I ended up using. To explain the context around some of the things he said would have required much more writing than the 800-1000 words that the editors wanted.

You can listen to the whole talk if you have a fast connection - the "webcast" is posted here. I have to add a most sincere thanks to everyone at CERES - they were kind enough to get me the webcast ahead of time, which was very helpful since my deadline for the story was 18 hours after the event ended. A piece of cake for a real journalist, but it's been years since I did anything like this, so I found myself feeling pressed for time.

To be honest, it was difficult for me to try to seem objective on this (and maybe my article didn't end up seeming objective after all), because I agreed with a lot of the things Amsterdam said. He was very compelling, speaking with conviction that you don't always see in hired advocates.

If you want to see more, the full text of Amsterdam's talk at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace here in DC is available on their website, and he said many of the same things in that presentation. He also did an interview with RFE/RL recently - getting kicked out of Russia was something of a publicity coup for him.

Here are some of the high points of Amsterdam's remarks that I didn't use in my article (If you listen to the webcast, you'll probably hear that the individual quotations were not necessarily said in order I've listed them, but I can assure you that nothing is out of context):

"We’re back to the USSR. You can’t have independent sources of power, or enlightenment, or civil society. It’s a no-no, it’s a danger, it’s the Orange Revolution. Putin sees the Orange Revolution behind every rock."

"I have worked in many hellholes [earlier Amsterdam mentioned his work in Nigeria, Venezuela, and Guatemala], and...there’s nothing comparable to working in Moscow in a political trial...In Russia, when it comes to suppression, they lose their incompetence; they’re pretty damn good at it."

"...I can only tell you bluntly that technology and the ability to control the media represent grievous threats to those fighting the state.”

"The war on terror is a war of terror in Russia. Mr. Putin is not a partner of the war on terror; he is part of the problem when it comes to terror, because he has used the war on terror to declare war on his own people. You declare war on your own people when you destroy their political space, when you destroy the press, when you insure that the first eight minutes of every television program involving news covers your picture, when you destroy federalism after a terrible incident involving the incompetence of your own security staff, and when you lie and lie and lie again to your people."

At several times during his remarks, Amsterdam ranged past the narrow topic of the Khodorkovsky case and into his take on the role in this case of German and US policy toward Russia:

"We are living in an age where foreign policy is defined by opportunism. And people like to cloak it in realpolitik, but it’s just bald-faced, bare-assed opportunism, and it is important that the world changes, and that people understand that human rights where they’re under attack really mean something."

"When you are fighting the state, recognize that those who act for the state know no limits. They know no limits because their leader is given a free pass, and he is given a free pass because he has energy galore, and because other countries have State Departments that can focus on only one war at a time. And in this country if it isn’t Iraq, it doesn’t exist. And what is sad and tragic is that the peoples of Latin America and Eastern Europe and Russia see this void, and the damage and destruction that has been done by Abu Ghraib is incalculable."

"I cannot define for you America’s loss of face in the world, I cannot express to you how incalculable the damage has been. I can only tell you that it will take a generation to repair, and I can only tell you that it is a tremendous loss for those of us who work internationally...to see the bright light of America so dim, to see the incredible lack of moral leadership that emanates from this country, to know the world is so much the poorer for it..."

I have to second Amsterdam on that last observation - it's never been harder than it is today to defend US policy to foreign audiences, not necessarily because of the substance of the policy but because we seem to be setting such a bad example for the rest of the world.