Matthew Parish

For the British former Conservative MP and journalist, see Matthew Parris. For the Australian rugby league player and coach, see Matt Parish. For the British Olympic rower, see Matthew Parish (rower).
Matthew Parish
Born
Headingley, Leeds, England
Occupation(s)Lawyer, academic, author, international relations expert
Websitematthewparish.com (archived on 4 November 2023)

Matthew Parish is a British international lawyer and scholar of international relations, based in England and Eastern Europe. In September 2021, Parish was sentenced by a Swiss court to three years in prison for his role staging a fraudulent arbitration to prove the authenticity of incriminating evidence in a political dispute between rival members of the Kuwaiti ruling family.[1]

Early life

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Parish was born in Leeds, in West Yorkshire.[2] He is a graduate of Cambridge University.[3]

Career and publications

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Parish worked in the legal department of the International Supervisor for Brčko, part of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina.[4][5][6] His first book, on reconstruction in post-war Brčko, A Free City in the Balkans (2009),[7] drew on his experience working for the OHR.[4] The book has been criticized for being too sceptical of the international community's statebuilding efforts in the country.[8]

Parish's second book, Mirages of International Justice, was published in 2011. The book describes international law as "for the most part quite useless". According to a sceptical review by Christian Axboe Nielsen, the book "concludes by wishing that both international law and international organizations would disappear from the face of the earth". Nielsen compares the book unfavourably to A Free City in the Balkans, describing the latter as making "provocative and, by comparison, cogent arguments".[9]

Parish left Akin Gump's Geneva office for Holman Fenwick Willan's (HFW) Geneva office in 2011.[10] In December 2014 he and a colleague at HFW set up their own practice, Gentium Law Group.[11][12] Gentium was one of the first boutique arbitration law firms that involved teams of senior arbitration lawyers splitting away from large established law firms and forming their own smaller practices under new brands. The group was nominated as a Global Arbitration Review Top 100 Law Firm worldwide in 2016 and 2017.[13][14] In November 2018 Parish ceased to manage the company having handed control to a new partner.[15]

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In 2018, Parish was found guilty of criminal defamation in Switzerland for making reports to Western intelligence services accusing his former clients, Murat Seitnepesov and Konstantin Ryndin, of money laundering, fraud and financing terrorism.[16] Sentenced to two months,[17] Parish reports in a self-published book that he spent 23 days in prison.[18]

Parish was further charged in 2019.[19] He was subsequently fined, given a one-year suspended prison sentence and instructed by the court to see a psychiatrist. Reuters reported that a spokesman for the Geneva prosecutor's office said: "Mr. Parish is found guilty of defamation, calumny, a coercion attempt and of failing to conform with an authority’s decision." Parish indicated his intention to appeal the conviction.[3]

Parish has also been convicted in Switzerland for his role in a fraudulent arbitration in a dispute between rival members of the Kuwaiti ruling family aimed at falsely authenticating fraudulent videos showing corruption and breach of Iran sanctions.[20][21][22][23] AP reported in February 2021 that a court hearing had been held and adjourned until August 2021.[24][25] In September 2021, Parish was convicted and sentenced to three years' jail time and was banned from practicing law in Switzerland.[26][27][28] As AP reports, "Judge Gonseth said he was an arbitration expert and 'manifestly' involved at all stages of the process".[26][23] On 18 December 2023, Parish had an appeal against his conviction dismissed, though an appeal against his sentence was partially allowed, with the custodial element reduced to two years' imprisonment, all of which was suspended.[29]

In September 2024, an order allowing Parish to bring a libel claim against the Wikimedia Foundation was dismissed by the High Court in London. Parish said that the Wikipedia article about him was defamatory as it had been published in England and Wales, but Mrs Justice Steyn ruled that the London courts had no jurisdiction in the matter, as the issue related primarily to his career as a lawyer in Switzerland.[30] The claim was also dismissed as it had been made more than a year after the date of publication, and because Parish had failed to disclose that he had been living and working outside England for over twenty years.[31]

Works

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Books

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  • A Free City in the Balkans: Reconstructing a Divided Society in Bosnia I.B. Tauris, London, October 2009. ISBN 978-1848850026
  • Mirages of International Justice: The Elusive Pursuit of a Transnational Legal Edward Elgar, London, May 2011. ISBN 978-1849804080
  • Ethnic Civil War and the Promise of Law Edward Elgar, London, 2016. ISBN 978-0857934192

References

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  1. ^ Farge, Emma (10 September 2021). "Kuwait's Sheikh Ahmad convicted of forgery in Geneva trial". Reuters. Retrieved 13 September 2023.
  2. ^ Biography Archived 2017-12-10 at the Wayback Machine, MattewParish.com
  3. ^ a b Farge, Emma (29 February 2020). "Swiss court convicts British lawyer of defaming oil trader to MI5". Reuters. Archived from the original on 29 February 2020. Retrieved 27 May 2020.
  4. ^ a b Morrison, Kenneth (15 June 2010). "Matthew Parish, A Free City in the Balkans: Reconstructing a Divided Society in Bosnia". Balkan Insight. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  5. ^ Geoghegan, Peter (14 May 2014). "Welcome to Brčko, Europe's only free city and a law unto itself". The Guardian. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  6. ^ Sadiković, Mirna. "Iz OHR za etto.ba: Tvrdnje Parisha o smjeni visokog predstavnika nisu tačne". Etto. Retrieved 4 November 2023.
  7. ^ Matthew Parish, "A Free City in the Balkans: Reconstructing a Divided Society in Bosnia" (London: I.B.Tauris 2009)
  8. ^ Subotic, Jelena (2010). "A free city in the Balkans: reconstructing a divided society in Bosnia, by Matthew Parish, New York, I.B. Tauris, 2009, xvii + 256 pp. + maps, illustrations (hardback), ISBN 978-1848850026". Nationalities Papers. 38 (3): 440–442. doi:10.1017/S0090599200039787. S2CID 186664720.
  9. ^ Nielsen, Christian Axboe (2013). "Mirages of international justice: the elusive pursuit of a transnational legal order, by Matthew Parish, Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, Edward Elgar, 2011, 268 pp., £75 (Hardback), ISBN 978-1-84980-408-0". Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. 13 (1): 110–112. doi:10.1080/14683857.2013.773185. S2CID 153751608.
  10. ^ Muckle, Adam. "CDR – Commercial Dispute Resolution". Arbitration, Litigation, Dispute Resolution | CDR Magazine.
  11. ^ https://www.shab.ch/shabforms/servlet/Search?EID=7&DOCID=1897317 [bare URL PDF]
  12. ^ https://globalarbitrationreview.com/editorial/1035366/gentium-law-group[permanent dead link‍]
  13. ^ "Global Arbitration Review – GAR 100 – 9th Edition". globalarbitrationreview.com.
  14. ^ "GAR Arbitration Surveys". Globalarbitrationreview.com. Retrieved 23 February 2017.
  15. ^ https://www.shab.ch/shabforms/servlet/Search?EID=7&DOCID=HR02-1004491200 [bare URL PDF]
  16. ^ Miller, Hugo; Hoffman, Andy (5 June 2018). "Telling Tale About Russian Client Lands Swiss Lawyer in Jail". Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on 12 June 2018.
  17. ^ Osborne, Lydia (6 June 2018). "Swiss Lawyer Imprisoned After Making Fraud Accusations". Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project. Archived from the original on 15 June 2018. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  18. ^ Parish, Matthew (2018). Spy's Diary: Essays from a Maximum Security Swiss Prison (PDF). Matthew Parish. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 February 2022.
  19. ^ "British lawyer faces new charges in Geneva". globalarbitrationreview.com. Archived from the original on 27 October 2020.(subscription required)
  20. ^ "A Genève, trois avocats et un cheikh sont inculpés pour faux arbitrage". Le Temps. 16 September 2016. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018 – via letemps.ch.
  21. ^ Besson, Sylvain (16 November 2018). "Un puissant membre du CIO renvoyé au tribunal pour faux arbitrage". Le Temps (in French). Archived from the original on 31 August 2023. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  22. ^ "Powerful Kuwaiti IOC member to be tried in Switzerland for forgery". Agence France-Presse. 17 November 2018. Archived from the original on 17 November 2018. Retrieved 17 November 2018.
  23. ^ a b "Lawyers charged in Geneva over fake arbitration". globalarbitrationreview.com. Archived from the original on 20 July 2021. Retrieved 20 July 2021.(subscription required)
  24. ^ "Trial of Olympic sheikh on forgery charge pushed back". AP NEWS. 20 April 2021. Archived from the original on 8 May 2021. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  25. ^ AP (13 April 2021). "Forgery trial of Olympic powerbroker now set to open in August". Business Standard India. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  26. ^ a b "Olympic power broker Sheikh Ahmad found guilty of forgery". Associated Press. 10 September 2021. Archived from the original on 17 September 2021.
  27. ^ AP, PTI & (11 September 2021). "Olympic power broker Sheikh Ahmad found guilty of forgery". The Hindu. ISSN 0971-751X. Retrieved 2 November 2023.
  28. ^ "مركز رفع وتحميل صور وملفات رابط مباشر" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 January 2022. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  29. ^ Between Matthew Thomas Parish and Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (High Court of Justice 6 September 2024), Text.
  30. ^ Castro, Bianca (12 September 2024). "High Court dismisses Swiss lawyer's libel claim over Wikipedia page". The Law Society Gazette. Retrieved 13 September 2024.
  31. ^ "Parish v Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. [2024] EWHC 2301 (KB)".
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