The fixer

It’s well known that journalists aren’t built for early starts. So it was with bleary eyes that I climbed the steps at Hyde Park Corner underground station one sunny morning in April, before making the short walk round the corner to the opulent The Lanesborough hotel.

Despite the clock still showing the wrong side of 7.30am, a large group of senior professionals from some of the world’s leading energy and natural resources companies were already milling around, drinking coffee from delicate bone-china cups.

But what would compel such an esteemed group, which also comprised a former British ambassador, to gather at such an unsociable hour? The answer was simple: Robert Amsterdam.

Having grown up in New York’s tough Bronx borough, Amsterdam made his name fighting in the often ambiguous grey area that forms when politics and the law collide. He specialises in acting for individuals and companies in cases influenced, either directly or indirectly, by the state.

Perhaps most famous is his work in defending Russia’s one-time richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed in 2003 following a highly questionable $3.4bn tax claim by the federal authorities. Amsterdam’s outspoken opposition to the government on Russian TV and radio has seen him face social and political persecution unimaginable to most Western lawyers, and be labelled anti-Russian – an accusation he vehemently denies.

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