Date: August 17th, 2018 6:54 PM
Author: Ebony Spot Boistinker
In April 2014, Olena Tyshchenko—a Ukranian lawyer, mother of four, and key witness in the U.K.’s biggest ever fraud case—emailed a senior partner at the London office of one of the world’s largest law firms, Hogan Lovells.
Her email detailed a string of allegations against the firm and one of its clients, a preeminent Kazakh bank. Her accusations were grave: that she had been arrested in Russia on false pretenses, visited in isolation cells by lawyers acting against her to give “false evidence,” kept in illegal custody, and forcefully taken to Kazakhstan.
“I was released only after I signed the agreement [to cooperate as a witness] written by Hogan Lovells,” she wrote in the furious email. “This you all understand looks bad and illegal.”
The email, and all of the serious allegations of witness intimidation and contamination, arrived soon afterward after being forwarded through a middleman into the inbox of Pavlov, one of the people present in the cell—according to a transcript produced by Kazakh authorities and emailed to Pavlov—where Tyshchenko claims she was interrogated, without a lawyer, under armed guard.
The case in question was that of Mukhtar Ablyazov, a Kazakh banker and political rival of the country’s president. Ablyazov was accused of a multibillion-pound fraud against BTA Bank (in which he was once the largest shareholder, but which was subsequently nationalized) but had protested that his prosecution was politically motivated. After the bank was nationalized in 2009, Ablyazov fled Kazakhstan and later received political asylum in the U.K. Multiple human-rights groups had spoken out against his attempted extradition.
Ablyazov’s legal case, aspects of which are still ongoing, has involved dozens of hearings in U.K. and French courts, and is one of the largest and most lucrative ever seen in Western Europe, with the Financial Times reporting that more than 50 solicitors and 32 barristers—including eight queen’s counsels or prominent lawyers—have worked on the case since 2012.
BTA alleges Ablyazov misappropriated up to $6 billion in bank funds and assets, and the bank has spent over five years pursuing him in the U.K. courts through numerous sets of high-stakes proceedings.
“The investigators managed to follow Tyshchenko across London and into France, as she visited Ablyazov in his ‘hideaway’—a villa near Cannes.”
Ablyazov was granted political asylum in the U.K. but fled the country in 2012 to France after being held in of contempt of court related to seizure of funds and disclosing information relating to the case. Civil proceedings relating to seizing his assets continued in his absence.
One such High Court hearing, in July 2013, was attended by Olena Tyshchenko, a confidante and legal adviser to Ablyazov. As she left the U.K. court, she was photographed by private investigators working for Diligence, a security firm founded by former MI5 and CIA staff, hired by Hogan Lovells—photos that were then passed to and published by the U.K. press.
The investigators managed to follow Tyshchenko across London and into France, as she visited Ablyazov in his “hideaway”—a villa near Cannes. He was arrested by French authorities in connection to his alleged bank fraud in an armed raid soon afterward, and the story of how he was tracked down—along with some of the surveillance photos—leaked to the press.
Ablyazov, though, was not the only one to be arrested. Tyshchenko herself was arrested by Russian authorities and kept in custody for four months, until she agreed to be a cooperative witness for BTA as well as for Russian and Kazakh authorities.
The emails of Pavlov shed light on months of correspondence between Kazakh authorities, Pavlov, and one of the world’s most respected law firms—from which Trump later hired his own lawyer Ty Cobb, who was not directly involved in this case.
The cache shows the peril faced by people, like Tyshchenko, who get caught in the wheels in battles between oligarchs and autocrats, even when they are ostensibly being fought through Western courts. Documents in the email cache show Pavlov was present during an extended interrogation of an obviously traumatized Tyshchenko by both Russian and Kazakh Interior Ministry officials in prison in Moscow during November 2013.
Tyshchenko in Prison
A transcript of the interrogation was sent to Pavlov by the Kazakhstan prosecutor’s office and has been professionally translated and reviewed by The Daily Beast.
The documents confirm the close involvement of Kazakh authorities in Ablyazov’s case—which Amnesty International has repeatedly warned would suggest political motivation for the extradition request.
Early in the transcript, the Kazakh prosecutor explains to Tyshchenko he will not interview her with her lawyer present. “The lawyers will be [here] shortly, you will consult with them whether you wish to or not,” he says. “I will explain why I will not be interrogating you in their presence.”
Soon afterward, he tells Tyshchenko, “They [Kazakhstan] don’t want there to be any kinds of false rumours about your being pressured or any kind of illegal activities.”
She interrupts: “When there are three armed men with me and I’m handcuffed?”
He responds: “This is only common procedure which is not dictated by us, it’s dictated by the law. Because we have you here and you consider yourself a law-abiding citizen. But there are some people who do not share this opinion. Sometimes they will attempt to escape.”
During the lengthy exchanges, Tyshchenko speaks of her anguish at her situation, especially at being separated from her children, with little opportunity to speak to them.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4051388&forum_id=2#36635422)