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The Russian lawyer worked for Mikhail Khordokowski and was twice extradited to Russia.
She describes herself as apolitical. She doesn’t really want to talk about politics anymore, she prefers to act. In the “Club” she still talks – about the war, Putin and her history.
Fourteen years ago, lawyer Natalia Lechbinskaya was targeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. In Moscow, she represented three subsidiaries of the oil company Yukos, which belonged to the Kremlin-critical oligarch Mikhail Chordokowski. The group went bankrupt in 2006, and criminal proceedings were instituted against Lechbinskaya in Moscow. The charge: embezzlement, fraud and money laundering.
“Yukos was a show trial to show everyone: whoever is against us faces the same threat,” says Lechbinskaya. She originally studied physics and passed with a “red diploma”, which in Russian means “with distinction”.
But then she decided to become a lawyer. In 2000, there was a spirit of optimism in Russia: “I thought that after Yeltsin and Gorbachev, a good regime would come with Putin.” She hoped for a more modern government to replace communism. “Then I realized that wasn’t the case.”
Yukos was a show trial to show everyone: whoever is against us faces the same threat.
The lawyer came under increasing pressure. She could no longer represent her clients because the law was no longer valid: “You have no chance of proving anything in court. What the prosecutor says counts,” she says. Chordokowski went to the penal camp. Lechbinskaya fled to Switzerland.
Lechbinskaya’s reputation is suffering
But that wasn’t the end of it for her. Russia has twice requested extradition. Switzerland rejected it twice. In 2014, a court in Moscow sentenced her to eight years in prison. A circumstance that does not have any criminal consequences in Switzerland, but nevertheless damages the reputation of the lawyer. Because of her past, she was unable to find a job as a lawyer in her field.
Lechbinskaya was not intimidated by this. She founded an online platform on which she offers legal and administrative advice to Eastern Europeans. “I knew what it was like to have to start over in a foreign country,” she says.
Since the Russian war of aggression, counseling for Ukrainian refugees has been free. But there are also Russians who contact her. People who criticize the war and are afraid of Putin’s repression. In addition to her main job, she answers around a hundred inquiries a day.
Politicians started this war, but as always, it is the people who suffer.
Her parents believe the Russian propaganda. It’s difficult for Lechbinskaya. She loves her parents and emphasizes that they are good people, but the secret service methods on television, the indoctrination, has also reached them: “It’s funny to know that they are nationalists. They mean well and think they’re doing everything right.”
And so Lebinsksaya prefers to stay out of politics and helps where she can: “Politicians started this war, but as always, people suffer from it.”