An author working on a book exposing kleptocrat business dealings had arranged a clandestine meeting in a car park with his source, a former investigator at the Serious Fraud Office.
Tom Burgis took great care to avoid being followed, drawing on tactics he learnt in Zimbabwe and Kazakhstan. He arranged the meeting using Signal, an encrypted messaging app. They went to the source’s home but despite taking such extraordinary measures, someone had been watching.
Quinn Emanuel, which claims to be the world’s largest business litigation law firm, wrote to Burgis’s source: “You attended this meeting with notebooks and folders. One of which appeared to be an orange/red notebook.”
Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation, a Kazakh mining company founded by three central Asian oligarchs, subsequently filed litigation against the source accusing him of leaking information about an SFO inquiry into the company. The case is ongoing.
The letter revealing the covert surveillance was written by Justin Michaelson, a partner at Quinn Emanuel’s London office. Michaelson, 47, has previously represented Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, which was sanctioned by the UK government last month.
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In 2018 Michaelson successfully acted for the bank in litigation against the International Bank of Azerbaijan. In 2014 the US Treasury and the European Union sanctioned Sberbank after Russia sent troops into Ukraine.
In 2011 Michaelson represented Konstantin Malofeev, who was sanctioned by Ukraine, accused of funding pro-Moscow separatists in 2014. That year he acted for Sergei Pugachev, who helped put President Putin in power.
Pugachev had fallen out with the Kremlin. Michaelson defended him after he had assets worth £1 billion frozen over accusations that he embezzled more than £655 million from his Russian bank. He was found guilty of contempt after fleeing the UK to France.
Such cases led John Quinn, one of Quinn Emanuel’s founders, to commend Michaelson’s client base when he joined the firm in 2020. He said that he would “add real depth” to the office. Last week Michaelson criticised on social media how the government froze Chelsea Football Club, calling the restrictions an “unhelpful publicity stunt, & it risks trivialising/undermining the underlying purpose behind (and support for) the sanctions regime”.
Burgis discussed his surveillance this week while giving evidence to a parliamentary committee. He attended after a judge last month threw out an attempt by ENRC to sue him over his book Kleptopia. The decision has helped to increase sales of the book.
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The author said that the biggest threat to free speech came from expensive legal action brought by lawyers against those seeking to expose corruption. “Our biggest obstacles are not hit squads or cyberattacks,” he said.
“It is firms in London working day in, day out to attack free speech in the interests of very rich and powerful people who rightly deserve scrutiny.”
He named Carter-Ruck, Schillings, Mishcon de Reya and Taylor Wessing as among the firms that have tried to pressure journalists. The firms have denied any wrongdoing. Another author who gave evidence to the committee was Catherine Belton, who wrote the book Putin’s People. She singled out Geraldine Proudler, a partner at the firm CMS, who sat on the Scott Trust which oversees The Guardian, “yet still saw fit to go after journalists like me for public interest reporting”.
Proudler, 65, represented the now sanctioned oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven in a defamation case.
After she was named this month in parliament by Bob Seely, the Tory MP, as one of four “amoral” solicitors who have grown rich by teaming up with “Putin’s henchmen”, The Guardian announced that she had stepped down from the foundation.
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Seely told parliament in January that “Bill Browder has directly alleged that CMS took instruction from Russian organised crime via middlemen”. It was a reference to Proudler’s representation of Pavel Karpov, a former Russian policeman, and his failure to sue Browder, the anti-corruption campaigner, for alleging that he murdered Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer, in 2009.
The firm “strongly reject the allegations of impropriety that have been made against CMS, and in particular Geraldine Proudler”.
Browder said: “The thing that upsets me the most is that without these slick expensive western lawyers, they wouldn’t achieve any of their success.”
The government announced plans this week to clamp down on the use of the courts by Russian oligarchs.
Quinn Emanuel did not comment but referred to an earlier statement which said that it was “not accepting instructions from any parties or interests connected with the current Russian regime, and we are looking to exit any existing engagements where possible in accordance with our professional obligations”.
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A spokeswoman for CMS said: “We have reviewed the steps taken in our media litigation practice and are confident that these were compliant with all professional regulations.
“Since the brutal and unlawful invasion of Ukraine, CMS, like many businesses, has been reassessing its work for Russian clients and . . . we will no longer be accepting new instructions from Russian-based entities.”
