For the first time, a court in the Russian Federation deprived lawyers of their status following a lawsuit from the Ministry of Justice. “The Ministry of Justice is breaking the very system of independence of the legal profession” - lawyer

Photo: Vladimir Burnov / RAPSI

The Khamovnichesky Court of Moscow sided with the Ministry of Justice and disbarred lawyers Alexey Basistov, Yuliy Tay and Dmitry Provodin. The reason given was long-term residence outside Russia without a valid reason.

The ministry went to court after, during disciplinary proceedings, the Moscow Bar Chamber refused to deprive them of their status, explaining that traveling abroad is not a misdemeanor.

Basistov, Tai and Provodin left Russia in 2024. They say they fear for their lives and health. According to them, the Ministry of Internal Affairs illegally carried out operational search activities against them. In addition, in 2021, their “principal and partner” Ilya Peregudov from the Bartolius law office, which provides legal assistance to large and medium-sized businesses, was attacked. Later, businessman Ibragim Suleymanov was charged with attempted murder of a lawyer, whom investigators named as the beneficiary of the IT company Sirena-Travel, the developer of the Leonardo airline ticket booking system.

According to lawyers, despite leaving, they continue to engage in legal activities, and Basistov is undergoing “systematic treatment” abroad. In the lawsuit, the Ministry of Justice cited data from the Ministry of Internal Affairs on their border crossing. The documents say that within a few months of each other, Basistov flew to Azerbaijan, Provodin to the UAE, and Tai to Turkey.

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The lawyers' defense insists that the courts are not authorized to consider such claims, since the decision on the status is made by the bar associations. In addition, according to lawyer Kaloy Akhilgov, the Ministry of Internal Affairs data on border crossings were transmitted through the Investigative Committee with violations:

“This is where a fundamentally new and dangerous construction lies: a state body appeals the decision of the body of lawyers’ self-government in court, essentially replacing the disciplinary procedure with a judicial administrative claim. If a lawyer has committed a crime, please deprive him of his status after the verdict, in accordance with the procedure established by law. But now the Ministry of Justice is actually breaking the very system of independence of the legal profession for the sake of a specific case. The only question is that the lawyers are abroad, they cannot be imprisoned. This means that there are no other mechanisms to deprive of status (at least pass a verdict in absentia in order to give legitimacy to your actions). And I really want to deprive it. As you know, if you really want to, then you can... No, you can’t. But if this mechanism survives, the Ministry of Justice will receive a tool to cancel any objectionable decision of any Chamber Council in the country. This means that anyone who is undesirable will be deprived of their status, as the Ministry of Justice originally wanted. This is exactly why the Ministry of Justice tried so hard to push through the draft on a lawyer’s monopoly. If we don’t wash, we just roll.”

According to Andrei Ragulin, Doctor of Legal Sciences, the Ministry of Justice is trying to implement the mechanism provided for by the bill on “lawyer monopoly,” although it has not yet been adopted. According to him, the current legislation does not provide for such a procedure: only the Chamber of Lawyers can deprive or suspend the status of a lawyer. Ragulin recalled that a similar situation arose in the case of Ivan Pavlov, when the Ministry of Justice eventually withdrew the claim, but the lawyer’s status was still forcibly suspended through the Chamber of Lawyers.

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