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Franz J. Sedelmayer
Franz J. Sedelmayer is the author of “Welcome to Putingrad” (2017), the memoir of his time in Russia and his case against President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Federation. He is the CEO of MARC LLC, which specializes in international dispute and crisis management, and world-wide claim recovery services. He also owns US-based WTP LLC, a book publishing company.
Mr. Sedelmayer was educated at the Munich International School, attended the University of Utah, and served in the German armed forces (airborne and signaling). In the mid-1980s he developed and exported standardized equipment and training packages to counter-terrorist units in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. In 1989 he moved to Russia and became a pioneering entrepreneur, forming the joint venture “Kamenny Ostrov Company JSC” with the USSR Ministry of Interior’s Leningrad City and Regional Police Department to supply law enforcement equipment. He enjoyed a good working relationship with the then deputy mayor, Vladimir Putin, which included his equipping and training the FSB SWAT team “GRAD” pro bono for the Goodwill Games. He was a founder of the Saint Petersburg International Business Association (SPIBA), served as an advisor to the Kazakh government, the Leningrad Region Governor, the Ministry of Federal Security (FSB), the Russian Presidential Guard Service, and the Leningrad Police Department, among others.
In 1996 President Boris Yeltsin nationalized Mr. Sedelmayer’s Russian holdings. Russia refused to compensate him, and so he pursued his claim through ad hoc arbitration under the German-Russian bilateral investment treaty. “Sedelmayer vs. Russian Federation” resulted in the very first international arbitration award against Russia. Mr. Sedelmayer prevailed in proceedings against the Russian Federation in dozens of cases brought before European public court and arbitration tribunals, proceedings that spanned more than a decade.
To date Mr. Sedelmayer is the only claimant who has collected on a claim from this sovereign debtor. Indeed, “Sedelmayer vs. Russian Federation” has become the precedent for overcoming the issues of sovereign immunity in investment claims, spanning from the Oxford University Press to the OECD and the Stockholm International Arbitration Report, the Transnational Dispute Management Journal, and other publications.
Mr. Sedelmayer’s dispute has long been the focus of the international media. It has been covered by the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Economist, der Spiegel, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Newsweek (Russia), Bild, Reuters, Dagens Industri, SvD and Dow Jones among others. Mr. Sedelmayer has appeared on BBC, NPR, BR, CNN, ZDF, DW, SVT, Echo Moscow, Russian State Television’s RTR and NTV.
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