For some months now, one of the most important and influential people in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian businessman allied with President Vladimir Putin, who founded and manages the Wagner Group. The Wagner group is a battalion of mercenaries which according to estimates has about 50,000 men and is mainly made up of ex-military and ex-convicts: it is affiliated with the Russian army and in recent months has had a fundamental role on the front in Ukraine, above all in the hard fighting for the town of Bakhmut.
Before the intervention in Ukraine, Prigozhin had used the Wagner group to support the interests of the Russian regime in various other parts of the world, including some African countries, and before that he had been accused of trying to influence the outcome of the 2016 US elections coordinating and funding Russian disinformation operations. For these reasons, Prigozhin has been sanctioned by various Western states. The way in which he tried to defend himself and his assets, and at the same time avoid sanctions, has become the subject of numerous recent journalistic investigations, also favored by the publication of confidential documents of one of the largest Russian law firms, after a cyber attack.
The most recent journalistic investigation into how Prigozhin tried to avoid sanctions and defend his interests in the West was published by the Financial Times, but several others have come out in recent months. The starting point of all the investigations is last year’s computer theft of thousands of documents from the Russian law firm Capital Legal Services (CLS), which defended Prigozhin for years. The documents show how Prigozhin tried to exploit the guarantees offered to citizens by Western judicial systems – especially the British one – to avoid sanctions from the West itself and also tried to fight back, for example by suing the journalists who dealt with his most controversial.
Many respected Western law firms have also collaborated in these activities. Of course, there is nothing illegal in defending and representing people who, like Prigozhin, are suspected of very serious crimes. But the legal documents obtained by the newspapers nonetheless raise various ethical questions, especially for the firms involved.
Prigozhin
Yevgeny Prigozhin, similar to Vladimir Putin, came from rather humble beginnings. Born in St. Petersburg, like Putin, he was a petty criminal in his youth who spent a few years in prison after being arrested for robbery. Released from prison in 1990, coinciding with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Prigozhin began working as a hot dog seller.
He rose quickly in the career displaying a remarkable entrepreneurial spirit, and within a few years managed a series of luxury restaurants in St. Petersburg. Here he met Putin, who was then deputy mayor of the city. When Putin became president of Russia, Prigozhin began organizing gala dinners with dignitaries invited by the president in Moscow: there are photos of Prigozhin with George W. Bush, with the then Prince Charles of the United Kingdom, with the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and so many others. It was during this period that Prigozhin became famous as “Putin’s cook” or “the Kremlin’s chef”.
Prigozhin serves a dish to Putin in 2011 (AP Photo/Misha Japaridze, Pool, File)
Prigozhin quickly diversified his activities. In 2014 he founded the Wagner paramilitary group, which operated in numerous conflicts around the world, often to support Russian national interests, and just as often committing violence, atrocities and war crimes. The Wagner group is today considered one of the most efficient mercenary groups in the world, often accused by international organizations of war crimes and the use of torture systems. It is under sanctions from both Europe and the United States, which among other things could declare it a terrorist organization in the coming weeks.
– Read also: What is the Wagner group
Furthermore, in 2018, the US government accused Prigozhin of having financed and created the “troll farm” that allegedly attempted to influence the US election won by Donald Trump by spreading fake news on social media.
Especially with the war in Ukraine, however, when the Wagner group played a key role in some areas of the front, Prigozhin assumed exceptional influence in Russia: according to many analysts, he would today be the second most powerful person in the country after Vladimir Putin .
Due to the activities of the Wagner group and his involvement in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Prigozhin has been subject to legal action and sanctions in numerous Western countries. CLS’s legal documents show some of the operations Prigozhin may have put in place to keep his trades going and try to avoid fines. Prigozhin, for example, owns Meroe Gold, a Sudanese gold mining company. Meroe Gold was placed under sanctions in 2020, but the Financial Times discovered that from that moment on other non-sanctioned but still attributable companies would start operating in its place.
In at least one case, in fact, an air cargo shipped from Sudan to Russia that was officially supposed to contain biscuits actually carried tons of gold.
Reputation
The other notable activity of the law firms working for Prigozhin was to “protect the reputation” of their client, trying to disprove his connections to the various controversial and illicit transactions with which he was involved. The most surprising part concerns the fact that until a few months ago both Prigozhin and his lawyers have always denied any connection with the Wagner group.
Although he has been widely and publicly known for years, Prigozhin admitted to being the founder and financier of the Wagner group only a few months ago, in the midst of the invasion of Ukraine. Since then, Prigozhin has gone to the front several times, having himself filmed while speaking to his mercenaries, or while he was recruiting Russian prisoners, promising in exchange for the elimination of the sentence. In November 2022, Prigozhin even opened a physical branch of the Wagner group, in a large building in St. Petersburg. In recent months he has also admitted to being behind the attempt to influence the American elections.
Before war broke out in Ukraine, however, Prigozhin and his Western lawyers had gone to great lengths to deny any connection to the group. Again in 2020 CLS, together with the lawyers of the important London firm Phillips Lewis Smith, had sent a document to the Court of Justice of the European Union in which it claimed that Prigozhin “is not aware of an entity called the Wagner group. (…). He has and has never had any close or financial connection with any entity called the Wagner group.’
To support this false thesis, Prigozhin and his Western lawyers had also tried to intimidate the press. In particular, the London law firm Discreet Law had filed, on behalf of CLS and Prigozhin, a lawsuit against Eliot Higgins, the journalist and researcher who founded the Bellingcat website, which had published extensive and documented investigations into Prigozhin and the Wagner group. The lawsuit, filed in December 2021, claimed that Higgins with his investigations had “seriously damaged (…) the reputation” of Prigozhin. At one point, according to CLS documents, a lawsuit against the BBC was even considered, but was dropped.
The lawsuit against Higgins was abandoned last May, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but Higgins was left with around 70,000 pounds (just under 80,000 euros) to pay in legal fees.
Among other things, the newspapers that covered the case noted that in order to be able to file a complaint in a British court on behalf of a Russian citizen under sanctions, the London lawyers of Discreet Law needed special authorization from the Ministry of British Treasury: they got it easily. The Treasury Minister at the time was the current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, although this does not necessarily mean that Sunak had any involvement in the affair.
