Amsterdam legal service provider worked for Russian State companies: report

Loyens & Loeff, one of the largest legal services providers in Amsterdam’s Zuidas, had multiple Russian state-owned companies and Putin-friendly oligarchs as customers, according to research by Follow the Money. At the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Loyens & Loeff denied working for parties linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to FTM, Loyens & Loeff set up a “Russia desk” around the turn of the century to optimally serve wealthy clients from the country. It offered tailor-made legal and notarial services for years. After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, every Zuidas law firm, including Loyens & Loeff, quietly removed their web pages about their Russian relations.

At the end of February 2022, the European Union announced sanctions against Russia that banned lawyers and tax specialists from working for “Kremlin-related parties.” Loyens & Loeff said it didn’t expect any problems. “We are not going to be affected so much by the sanctions. We mainly deal with private Russians, not state-owned companies affiliated with Putin,” Lilia Gontcharova, a Dutch-Russian tax specialist at Loyens & Loeff, said in March 2022.

Not true, FTM reported based on its analyses of numerous documents from the Pandora Papers and Rotenberg Files, among others. Loyens & Loeff's client base included Russian state-owned companies Gazprom and VTB, as well as multiple Putin-friendly oligarchs, including Yuri Chaika, Oleg Deripaska, Vladimir Lisin, Iskander Makhmudov, and Andrei Bokarev. “Loyens & Loeff seems to have had even more clients around the Kremlin than Houthoff, another Zuidas office known for its many Russian clients,” FTM wrote.

The firm wouldn’t tell FTM if any of those clients are still in its customer base, claiming it is “confidential information.” Loyens & Loeff’s Group Director Risk and Compliance and General Counsel Martijn van Gils told FTM that the firm “introduced a tightened sanctions policy at the beginning of March 2022” and that it has been “very reluctant to accept work from the former Soviet Union since 2014,” when Russia annexed Crimea. He also said that the agency “only works for decent parties that have successfully completed the client acceptance process.”