Pavel Ivlev

Pavel Petrovich Ivlev (born 6 January 1970, Khimki, Moscow Region, Russia) is a Russian lawyer, and now a political refugee in the USA. Ivlev advised Yukos and its former Chairman and CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and was charged by the Russian authorities as part of the controversial case against Khodorkovsky and other senior Yukos executives, in the course of which violations of human rights and of the rule of law have been reported.

Ivlev graduated in law from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 1993 and later continued his legal studies at Columbia University Summer Law School in Amsterdam and at Queen Mary, University of London.

Russia

In 1997 Ivlev became a partner in a Moscow-based international law firm, ALM Feldmans, which was effectively destroyed by the broader attack on Yukos and its advisers in 2005. A district court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Ivlev in 2005 on charges of embezzlement, money laundering and tax evasion, identical to those against Khodorkovsky and Lebedev, who were charged with the same in 2007. Ivlev had refused to give (allegedly false) incriminating evidence against his clients. On 15 February 2005 the Moscow City Court overruled the Basmanny District Court in favour of Ivlev, but that same court upheld a Basmanny District Court arrest warrant in December 2005. Having witnessed the conduct of the case against Yukos so far, Ivlev remained in New York for his own safety. When his wife arrived with the couple's children at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport to fly to New York she was detained on suspicion of drug trafficking. Though she was later released without charge, they missed their flight.

United States

Ivlev is Chairman of the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom, which he founded in 2009 to campaign for "free markets, free people and free ideas in Russia". He is a member of the International Bar Association and of the U.S.-Russia Business Council. His campaigning activities gained attention in 2010 when he sent a mass email to participants in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which ended with a warning that, "As you listen to Russian officials and businessmen discuss potential gold mines in investing in Russia, be mindful that there are numerous land mines as well."