Russian Federation v. Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky and Platon L. Lebedev

On December 30, 2010, in a decision scrutinized and commented upon by multiple international organizations and government officials, Judge Victor Danilkin of Moscow Khamovnichesky District Court found our clients Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest oil businessman, and his partner Platon L. Lebedev, the majority stakeholders in YUKOS, one of the largest Russian oil companies, guilty of embezzlement and money laundering under the Russian Federation Criminal Code. Over the past three years, a Compass Lexecon team, led by Kevin Dages and Laura Yergesheva, traveled to Russia and worked alongside an international team of defense attorneys in this matter, the most publicized white collar criminal case in modern Russian history.

The procedural irregularities of the case and the biased nature of the proceedings were widely commented on by major Western and Russian media. As a first hand observer, Kevin Dages was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and NPR. We worked with both the defendants’ U.S. defense team: Sanford Saunders and John Pappalardo of Greenberg Traurig LLP, Robert Andalman and Jeremy Margolis of Loeb & Loeb LLP, as well as with the defendants’ Russian trial attorneys: Konstantin Rivkin and Vadim Kluvgant. Evan McKay and
Jessica Mandel of Compass Lexecon’s Chicago office also worked on this matter.