An American investor with a history of dealmaking in Russia has asked the U.S. government to allow him to bid on the sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline 2 if it comes up for auction in a Swiss bankruptcy proceeding.
Miami Financier Stephen P. Lynch Is Quietly Trying to Buy Nord Stream 2 Gas Pipeline
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[2016] US INVESTORS IN RAID AGAINST DMITRY FIRTASH – STEPHEN LYNCH ATTEMPTS TAKEOVER OF UKRAINIAN GAS PRODUCER, MISEN ENERGY (archived)
Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash defeated a US government attempt last year to extradite him to the US for trial on corruption allegations. But now, encouraged by the US Government and by Ukrainian government officials in Kiev, a new group of US investors, led by Stephen Lynch (lead image) and the law firm Firestone Duncan, are targeting Firtash for a takeover of Misen Energy, an eastern Ukrainian gas producer which Firtash is believed to control. “We are slowly consolidating our position at Misen,” Lynch says, “and may move forward.”
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Firestone Duncan is also the law firm advising Hermitage Capital and its founder, Bill Browder. The firm employed Sergei Magnitsky as an auditor before his arrest in November 2008 and subsequent death in prison in November 2009. The Magnitsky case and Browder’s long-running public feud with the Kremlin triggered the exit from Moscow of the firm’s eponymous partner, Jamison Firestone. According to Lynch, Firestone has also been engaged for representation by Firtash.
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Lynch (below, left) became better known when he and other US investors in Moscow, Robert Foresman (centre) and Richard Deitz (right), attempted what a Financial Times reporter, Catherine Belton, called a “backdoor approach” for a deal with former Yukos managers to take over Dutch-held Yukos assets worth more than $1.5 billion, and lift Russian litigation threats against the American managers of Yukos. A different version of what Lynch and his associates were doing can be followed here.
In March of 2015, RBC reported an investigation of Lynch’s continuing Yukos asset bid through Kirwan Offices, a Luxembourg front originally created by three Renaissance Capital executives, Robert Reid, Richard Olphert and Foresman. When Renaissance Capital was taken over by Mikhail Prokhorov and Suleiman Kerimov, and Foresman had moved on to Barclays Capital, their positions in Kirwan were taken over by Deitz and Lynch. Up to 2011, Kirwan reportedly spent $22 million on its Yukos litigation in Amsterdam.
Jamison Reed Firestone (born 1966) is an American attorney. Firestone graduated from Tulane University in 1988 and Tulane Law School in 1991. In August 1991, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, he moved to Moscow, Russia and co-founded the law firm Firestone Duncan. He fled Russia in August 2009 following the arrest of his employee Sergei Magnitsky, who died in prison, after eleven months’ incarceration without trial.
Firestone founded the law firm of Firestone Duncan in 1993 in Moscow, with his close friend Terry Michael Duncan. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the two young men had thought there were business opportunities in Russia, where privatisation efforts were widespread.
On October 3, 1993, Terry Duncan was shot and killed by a sniper during the Russian Constitutional Crisis while aiding the wounded at the Ostinkino Television Centre. Local papers reported he had aided twelve wounded Russians and died while trying to rescue American photo journalist Otto Pohl [New York Times] who had been shot twice. Otto Pohl lived and eventually interviewed the man who shot them.
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Following Magnitsky’s death in prison, Firestone became one of the chief advocates of United States passage of the Magnitsky Act of 2012, which sanctioned Russian officials believed to have been responsible for the death of Magnitsky and officials who used their powers to attack human rights defenders, journalists and anti corruption activists. It prevented their entry into the US and subjected their US assets to forfeiture.
Jamison R. Firestone (AmCham in Russia): The Committee for Russian Economic Freedom
In 2009, Ivlev co-founded the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom which advocates for economic and civil rights in Russia. Since 2016, Ivlev has led KRES Poliskola, an educational project that helps to integrate people from post-soviet states into modern society through the study of history and culture. Ivlev played an important role in the Yukos shareholders v. Russia arbitration proceedings at the Permanent Court of Arbitration. Ivlev assisted the Russian politician Alexei Navalny in the civil investigation of the fraudulent procurement of drilling rigs by the VTB Leasing and also hired Navalny as his attorney in the proceedings related to the Yukos case.
Pavel Ivlev: Institute of Modern Russia Grants to Freedom House, Funded by Renew Democracy Initiative—Founded by Gary Kasparov (Board members include: Heidi Heitkamp, Bob Kerrey, Bret Stephens, Anne Applebaum, Mickey Edwards, Michael Steele, Annie Duke, etc.)
Robert Foresman: U.S. banker Foresman in the Mueller report
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 