This past summer, Washington, D.C.–based Patton Boggs litigation partners Benjamin Chew and Andrew Friedman were a long way from home when they successfully defended the founders of telecom company Dardafone against fraud charges. The nine-week trial, which ended in July with acquittals for their clients, brothers Blerim and Shkelqim Devolli, was in Kosovo, in the Basic Court of Pristina.
As it happened, Chew and Friedman weren’t facing local prosecutors. The indictment was brought by EULEX—a far-reaching European Union program to help reestablish the rule of law in Kosovo after a brutal and ethnically charged civil war in the late 1990s left the southeastern European country in tatters. Operating in Kosovo since 2009, EULEX has taken on an increasingly ambitious caseload, targeting corruption and high-profile criminal matters—even as debate continues over whether its mandate should be renewed after it expires this June.
