Lawyer detective

Why is the precedent of disbarment created by the Khamovnichesky District Court dangerous?

On April 10, about forty lawyers gathered in Hall No. 9 of the Khamovnichesky District Court of Moscow. Eight of them represented the interests of the three absentees, the rest were located in public places. Some did not make it into the hall and waited for the judge’s decision in the corridor.

The administrative case to overturn the decision of the Moscow Bar Association and to deprive the status of its members, lawyers Dmitry Provodin, Yuliy Tay and Alexey Basistov, may indeed be important for the fate of the Russian legal profession as a whole. The basis for the administrative claim of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Justice for Moscow was subparagraph 7 of paragraph 2 of Article 17 of the Law on Advocacy and the Bar. This subclause, introduced into the 2002 law in April 2024, established that by decision of the Bar Chamber, the status of a lawyer can be terminated if the lawyer leaves the Russian Federation for permanent residence or for a period of more than one year without good reason.

On December 10, 2025, the Moscow Bar Chamber refused to deprive the Justice Department of the status of lawyers of Provodin, Tay and Basistov. According to the law on the legal profession, the decision of the chamber can be appealed by the lawyer himself, but not by the department of justice, for which such a decision becomes final. Nevertheless, the judge of the Khamovnichesky Court, Vera Fokeeva, accepted the statement of claim, with her decision suspended the status of the three named lawyers, and a few days later, with unprecedented speed, she satisfied the claim of the justice department.

Meanwhile, the Moscow Chamber examined in detail the reasons that forced Provodin, Tay and Basistov to go abroad and still make returning dangerous for them.

The detective part of the story is connected with the Knightsbridge Private Park residential complex, which in the mid-2010s was built on the site of the former bakery No. 6 in the Komsomolsky Prospekt area and today consists of four multi-storey buildings with luxury apartments and an internal park. It is not our task to delve into the conflict around this real estate, but the basis for it is generally clear: one company expected to buy 20 apartments in this complex, but they went to another.

Against the backdrop of a black PR campaign in the media against the Bartolius law office, of which the three named lawyers were partners, on March 10, 2021, an attempt was made to murder Ilya Peregudov, a former partner of the Bartolius office, and at that time the manager of the Knightsbridge Private Park project. The attackers broke Peregudov’s skull with a metal pipe, but did not finish him off and were forced to hide due to the appearance of a bystander. The first at the scene of the assassination attempt, half an hour later, was lawyer Yuli Tai, who provided first aid to Peregudov and took him to the hospital.

A criminal case was initially opened on grounds of assault, although a “beacon” was found on Peregudov’s car, indicating careful preparation of the attack. It took three years to reclassify the case as attempted murder. Lawyers from the Bartolius Bureau managed to conduct their own “investigation” and use CCTV cameras to identify the attackers. Currently, according to lawyers, the direct perpetrators and organizers of the attack - 5 people in total - have been detained.

Meanwhile, a criminal case was opened against one of the lawyers under an article of fraud, which is still devoid of specifics, and Provodin, Basistov and Tai consider it to be ordered. In their opinion, the party that believes itself to be unfairly offended in the Knightsbridge Private Park project has a very strong “roof”. Basistov had gone abroad earlier for health reasons, and Tai and Provodin, while they remained in Russia, received threats that they considered so real that they hired security until they left abroad in 2024–2025.

Having conducted another – its own – investigation (a 50-page certificate), the Moscow Bar Chamber came to the conclusion that the reasons why Tai, Provodin and Basistov are so far refraining from returning to the Russian Federation are valid, and on December 10, 2025, the Justice Department refused to deprive them of their status as lawyers.

The Ministry of Justice has recently initiated consideration in the State Duma of bills that include the possibility of appealing decisions of bar associations in court, but so far such a law has not been adopted, that is, Judge Fokeeva applied the future rule.

The materials presented by the Department of Justice also contain violations regarding guarantees to lawyers during operational activities related to their legal activities.

The precedent significance of Judge Fokeeva’s decision is that in the same manner those who were forced to leave for political reasons, such as Karinna Moskalenko, Ivan Pavlov, Vadim Prokhorov, Andrei Ragulin and others, can be deprived of the status of lawyers. Of course, their own fame is enough to provide advisory assistance, but they will no longer be able to send requests and appear via video link in court. And the symbolic significance of such deprivation should not be underestimated.