Steptoe & Johnson's newest lobbying client is a Belarusian oligarch with alleged ties to the country's dictator.
The law firm signed Vladimir Peftiev last month, according to a just-released disclosure. Peftiev is a former arms dealer and had allegedly acted as an economic adviser to and associate of Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko. For several years, the European Union sanctioned Peftiev for his alleged connection to and bankrolling of the Lukashenko regime, but in 2014 a court annulled the sanctions on the grounds of lack of evidence against Peftiev.
Peftiev's heavy-hitting Steptoe & Johnson team, which includes three firm partners and two former Senate chiefs of staff, is lobbying Congress on unspecified foreign-affairs issues. The work also includes "providing information... [to] journals and news outlets."
Editor's note: In a 2014 ruling, the European Union Court of Justice annulled the European Union's sanctions against Peftiev on the grounds that the Council of the European Union failed to provide sufficient evidence that Peftiev had served as a financial sponsor of the Lukashenko regime or been an associate of or economic adviser to Lukashenko.
Although the court found that Peftiev had provided "various legislative proposals aimed at altering Belarusian legislation concerning the economy" to Lukashenko's administration, the court found that "those proposals may have been made by [Peftiev] in order to pursue his own private economic interests" and it was "not apparent" that Peftiev had submitted the proposals "at [the] request" of Belarusian authorities. The court also reasoned that "some of the applicant's legislative proposals were rejected by the Belarusian authorities... Yet if the applicant had been providing economic advice to President Lukashenko and if the latter, as maintained by the Council, controlled Belarusian legislation, the applicant's legislative proposals ought to have been accepted by the regime."
In its decision that there was insufficient evidence that Peftiev had funded or been an adviser to or associate of Lukashenko, the court rejected the findings of various reports by the media, non-governmental organizations, the U.S. Embassy in Belarus and the European Parliament.
This post has been revised to reflect the European Union Court of Justice decision.
