Robert Amsterdam

Robert "Bob"  Ross Amsterdam (born January 1956) is a Canadian international lawyer of the law firm Amsterdam & Partners, with offices in Washington, D.C., and London.

Major cases
Some of his most well known cases were related to early work in Africa and Latin America. Amsterdam won international litigation on behalf of the Four Seasons Hotel and Resort Group in Venezuela. He also worked the well known Gutierrez case in Guatemala, which involved representing the victims of one of the country's largest alleged tax fraud and money laundering schemes. Amsterdam would go on to represent political prisoners such as Eligio Cedeño in Venezuela, African political leaders such as Nigeria's Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai, and democracy advocates such as Singapore's Dr. Chee Soon Juan.

Yukos case
In 2003, Amsterdam was retained by the Russian company Yukos-Group MENATEP to defend former CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In 2005, Khodorkovsky was sentenced to eight years in jail. On the night of the verdict, Amsterdam was accosted by plainclothes security agents in the middle of the night at his hotel room, who attempted to arrest him before he could call his colleagues in the media. In the years since leaving Russia, Amsterdam engaged in a media campaign for the Yukos Group-MENATEP and Khodorkovsky cases.

Thaksin Shinawatra
Robert Amsterdam was hired in May 2010 by former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to serve as international lawyer and adviser to the defence counsel of the "Red Shirts," formal name the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD).

In 2010, Robert Amsterdam "urged the international community not to tolerate the government's violent crackdown on self-proclaimed peaceful protesters", and published a list of alleged human rights and international law violations committed during what he called the "Bangkok massacres".

During the 2013–14 Thai political crisis, Amsterdam delivered a speech to a massive Red Shirt rally in Bangkok. Former Democrat Party member and anti-government protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban criticized Amsterdam for it, to which Amsterdam responded naming Suthep as a Thai Taliban.

Kim Dotcom
He is now part of the legal team representing Kim Dotcom, the Internet entrepreneur in the Megaupload legal case.

Republic of Turkey
Robert Amsterdam and firm were involved in efforts to sue the Gülen movement as part of a wider effort by the Turkish government to suppress it..

Russia-Trump
According to Robert Amsterdam in an April 2017 article in The Independent, there was "no question" that the FBI and United States intelligence agencies had information about Russian entities that had financial relationships with Trump prior to the 2016 United States elections.