Marks & Sokolov Assists Client in Alleging LUKoil Involvement in Cash Smuggling Scheme

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The Philadelphia Law Firm is Assisting Archangel Diamond Corporation To File Claims Against the Russian Oil Company. Racketeering and Fraud are Just Two of the Charges.

Denver, CO, March 19, 2010 (PressReleasePoint) -- Recently emerging from bankruptcy proceedings, Archangel Diamond Corporation (ADC) has launched new claims in Colorado federal court against Russian oil company LUKoil.

Led by international litigator Bruce Marks, ADC filed amended claims against LUKoil alleging a series of wrongdoings. Claims include allegations of racketeering, fraud, unjust enrichment, and civil conspiracy. Archangel Diamond Corporation has pursued these claims in an effort to buttress its case that the Colorado court has jurisdiction over LUKoil to try a related 11-year old diamond mine case.

Intimately familiar with Russian business by maintaining a Russian law office in Moscow, Marks & Sokolov has worked with ADC to allege that LUKoil used Colorado, local companies, and at least a dozen de facto Colorado employees to smuggle large sums of cash into Russia. The court filing alleges that from March 1999 until now LUKoil has used a Colorado front company as "the fulcrum of illegal cash smuggling schemes in which the LUKoil Colorado employees carried cash from Colorado to Russia, in amounts averaging $40,000 per month, totaling over $6 million.”

Marks and Sokolov states that the new court filing alleges LUKoil engaged in this wrongdoing as part of the alleged scheme to take the mining license for the Grib diamond pipe in Arkhangelsk away from ADC, and vest it in another company Arkhangelskgeoldobycha (AGD).

As a US-Russian law firm focused on business between the two counties, Marks and Sokolov sees that the new evidence strengthening the case against LUKoil may be an effective strategy in obtaining compensation for the lost diamond mining rights from the Russians. The award could reach into the billions of dollars. A parallel legal proceeding in Stockholm, before the Stockholm international arbitration tribunal, was wound up in October, 2009.

About Marks & Sokolov:

Marks & Sokolov is an international law firm with offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Moscow, Russia, and Kyiv, Ukraine. Under the direction of Bruce Marks, the Managing Director, the firm provides a full range of international litigation and arbitration services to Russian and Ukrainian businesses and individuals in the United States and international clients throughout the world. Marks, Sokolov & Burd is known for its extensive experience in handling transactions for Western clients doing business in Russia and Ukraine and Russian/Ukrainian clients doing business internationally.
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