A recent opinion piece in The Moscow Times by Dewey & LeBoeuf Moscow office head Brian Zimbler portrays Russia as a country ripe for legal reform. Zimbler’s column comes as Russia’s legal system is under attack following the death last week of a prominent lawyer and accountant.
Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has ordered an inquiry into the death of Sergei Magnitsky, head of the tax practice at Moscow’s Firestone Duncan, the law/auditing firm founded in 1993 by American lawyers. He died Nov. 16 while in custody at a pretrial detention facility in Moscow. The lawyer had been caught up in a “battle between the Russian authorities and the international investment fund he was representing,” as the New York Times reported.
