Moscow's "Firm"

"Now it's the Russian lawyers turn. ... With the brazen daytime murder of human rights attorney Stanislav Markelov on Jan. 19. it became clear that members of the Russian bar are also targets in the murky vendettas that taint commerce and politics in Moscow and throughout the country. ... Corporate lawyers, too, face increasing threats. 'It is now impossible in Russia to defend a client who is in a politically motivated case or in a [commercial] case where the other side has a lot of money and is willing to play dirty,' says Jamison R. Firestone [JFR], managing partner of Firestone Duncan, an American corporate law firm in Moscow. ... [JFR] argues that the case against [Sergei] Magnitsky is entirely fabricated and intended as a form of pressure on Magnitsky's client, Hermitage Capital, by hostile forces within the Russian state, possibly in collusion with corporate raiders. ... 'What's especially disturbing in Russia is that the state investigators and prosecutors appear to have been quite superficial in such cases [Markelov's],' says Martin Solc, co-chair of the Human Rights Institute at the International Bar Assn. Novaya Gazeta, which has had four of its reporters murdered since 2000, observed: 'The perpetrators have no fear because they know that they will not be punished'," Jason Bush at Businessweek, 9 February 2009.

Are these murderers who "have no fear because they know that they will not be punished", NY investment bankers? Moscow legal practice is not NY's, see my 9 November 2008 post: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/11/moscow-vs-ny-justice.html.

Does JFR think he is practising in front of the SEC? Things just don't seem to work that way in Moscow. Moscow legal practice is a John Grisham novel! See my 23 October 2008 post, link: http://skepticaltexascpa.blogspot.com/2008/10/who-is-stephen-cutler-2.html.