Kuwaiti Court convicts Main Line woman of embezzlement
LOWER MERION >> Marsha Lazareva continues to fight for her freedom in Kuwait. However, the Bryn Mawr business woman faced a setback on Nov. 11 when a Kuwaiti
court convicted her of embezzlement and another charge and sentenced her to 15 years in prison.
However she remains free at the moment, according to Anthony Hogrebe, a spokesman.
“Her team, of course, plans to appeal and to work with the U.S. government and the U.N. to put additional pressure on Kuwait,” said Hogrebe. Previously, Lazareva was held in a Kuwaiti jail for 474 days away from her 5-year-old son, Yvan.
Kuwaiti authorities had brought two separate cases against Lazareva, an executive and founder of KGL Investment Company Asia, a private equity firm. In one case, the charges against her were based on documents forged by a Kuwaiti man, who was later convicted of forgery.
Charges of embezzling $496 million from The Port Fund, which her company controlled, were brought against Lazareva and Saeed Dashti, another member of her firm, by the Kuwaiti government as the Kuwait Ports Authority was an investor. But Lazareva had also faced a second set of charges — which her company billed the Kuwait Port Authority for certain separate consulting services that were never provided. She was convicted and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor for that, but the Kuwait appeals court over
turned that conviction, as well as Dashti’s, said David Hammond, one of her defense lawyers. And it turned out that the $496 million had been frozen in a Dubai bank in 2017 so the money was subsequently returned.
Lazareva has several high profile supporters who are trying to win her release, including Neil Bush, the son of the late President George H.W. Bush and Cherie Blair, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s wife.
“I am disappointed, but not surprised by the judgment of the Kuwait Court,” said human rights attorney Cherie Blair CBE, QC, in a statement. “It follows a campaign of persecution against Marsha and grave flaws in the judicial process which raise serious questions for Kuwait.”
Bush had warned Kuwait officials about the damage that this case is doing to their country’s reputation as a nation that is governed by the rule of law and international norms.
“When my dad led the coalition to help rid Kuwait of Saddam Hussein’s army after that horrific invasion, after that, Kuwait has been a pretty good player on the international scene, upholding human rights,” said Bush in a previous interview.
Lazareva also has an organization that fights for oppressed Christians going to bat for her.
“In Defense of Christians is very disappointed by the conviction Monday of Marsha Lazareva, the Orthodox Christian woman being wrongfully held in Kuwait, and its impact on her five-year-old son who is with her,” said Peter Burns, government relations and policy director for In Defense of Christians. “In a miscarriage of justice, Kuwait sentenced Marsha to fifteen years in prison on false charges. The U.S. must demand that Kuwait correct this immediately and let Marsha and her son return to their home in America and to their faith community at Saint Andrews Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Philadelphia.”
In addition, that organization sent a stronglyworded letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin alleging violations of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Act against various Kuwaiti officials.
The letter said, in part, “We understand that Ms. Lazareva’s rights as an Orthodox Christian woman were not respected during her imprisonment in Kuwait and she was advised on numerous occasions that she should abandon her religious beliefs in order to seek mercy from the Kuwait government despite the fact that the charges against her are completely false.
“The Honorable Louis Freeh, the former U.S. FBI Director and a former U.S. federal district court judge, has examined the charges against Ms. Lazareva and her Co-Defendant and found them to be false and without evidence. A group of former senior U.S. officials and other interested Americans and human rights advocates have travelled to Kuwait on numerous occasions for court hearings over the past year and directly witnessed numerous violations of recognized rights to due process and justice.
“Ms. Lazareva is now effectively trapped in Kuwait with her 5-year old son, Yvan Lazareva, a U.S. citizen, because Kuwait will not dismiss the false charges or lift its travel bans despite the evidence of her innocence. Kuwait has failed to address these matters and the U.S. government must now act.
“We encourage the U.S. Treasury Department to act on the information included with this letter to initiate a GMA investigation into the individuals identified and any others found to have committed or contributed to the corruption or human rights abuses against Mrs. Lazareva. If you find that these individuals are responsible for human rights violations or corruption, IDC respectfully requests that GMA sanctions be imposed on them until such time as the human rights violations and corruption are resolved, Ms. Lazareva and her co-defendant are freed, and all charges against them are dropped.”
Meanwhile, Lazareva’s mother, Lidia Lazareva, who was undergoing treatment for cancer in Philadelphia, paused that treatment in order to fly back to Kuwait to care for her grandson in case authorities imprison her daughter yet again.
Officials at the Kuwaiti Embassy in Washington, D.C. did not respond to a request for comment.