![]() ![]() The younger Yegiazaryan got a doctorate in finance with an eye toward business. His late father, Gevork Yegiazaryan, led the industrial economics department at prestigious Moscow State University. Recounting his saga through an interpreter, he calls to mind the title character in Woody Allen’s “Zelig,” repeatedly turning up in different guises at crucial points in contemporary Russian history. Dark stubble on his worn face, the 58-year-old is dressed in gym apparel and Crocs. It’s a mild winter day and Yegiazaryan has picked a patio table at a favorite Pacific Palisades restaurant. Putin is now using the United States to advance his interests,” he said. He has long asserted that his cousin’s husband, an executive for the state-controlled Gazprom energy company, was shot in the head and killed in 2010 after refusing to participate in a smear campaign against him. Smagin and others, and spoken loudly, consistently and definitively in condemning that conduct,” said Kennedy, who declined to answer a lengthy set of questions about the dispute and instead referred The Times to court filings.Īfter a court battle that has been fought over a decade in no fewer than seven countries, both Yegiazaryan and his former partner have spent huge sums that have drained them. ![]() have considered over a period of many years the body of evidence relating to Mr. “The courts in the U.S., U.K., Liechtenstein, Nevis and Russia. law firm that had a large Russian practice before spinning it off after the country’s invasion of Ukraine - said Yegiazaryan’s claims have been discounted by judiciaries worldwide. Kennedy, a partner at Baker McKenzie - a leading U.S. court against dissident and exiled politician,’” the appeal stated, quoting Zambrano. “This lawsuit has reflected a clear attempt by ‘Russia’s authoritarian government’ to use a ‘proxy plaintiff’ - Smagin - ‘to file claims in U.S. “They are going after his money and the Western courts and law enforcement systems are completely naive,” said economist Anders Aslund, who served as a Swedish diplomat in Moscow and has written about the conflict for the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. Yegiazaryan’s lengthy legal battle has been followed by a small circle of Putin’s critics, who see courts in the West being used to harass dissidents even as the war rages in Ukraine. Yegiazaryan has maintained that he is the subject of a “witch hunt” conducted by his adversaries in the Putin government, with whom Smagin has collaborated, according to a 2015 federal court filing in Los Angeles opposing a worldwide freeze of his assets. RICO has long been employed in civil litigation, but under what circumstances it can be applied to foreign disputes has been unclear. The lawsuit called Yegiazaryan lord of a “criminal empire” that defrauded Smagin of his interest in a Moscow mall and has prevented him from collecting on his arbitration award. The law, better known as the RICO Act, allows for treble damages that could total more than $300 million in Yegiazaryan’s case. Supreme Court ruled that a separate lawsuit filed by his former partner, Vitaly Smagin, under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act could proceed. ![]() After years of maneuvers to avoid paying the judgment, he was held in contempt in May by a federal judge in Los Angeles who warned he might incarcerate Yegiazaryan. Long the subject of an Interpol Red Notice, he has faced arrest if he traveled abroad and recently faced a similar threat in his adoptive home. ![]() Today, he stands increasingly hemmed in, legally and financially. (Alexander Zemlianichenko / Associated Press) ![]()
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