Matthew Parish

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 in a new breed of "boutique" arbitration law firms that involves teams of senior arbitration lawyers splitting away from large established law firms and forming their own smaller practices under new brands. The group was the first firm to be nominated as a Global Arbitration Review Top 100 Law Firm worldwide within the first year of its operation.[13] The Gentium Law Group, has been named by Global Arbitration Review[14] in consecutive years as one of the top one hundred law firms worldwide in its field. In November 2018 Parish ceased to manage the company having handed control to a new partner.[15]

In 2013 and 2018 Parish was named by Bilan magazine as one of the three hundred most influential people in Switzerland.[16]

In 2018, Parish was found guilty of criminal defamation in Switzerland for making the reports to Western intelligence services accusing his former clients, Murat Seitnepesov and Konstantin Ryndin, of money laundering, fraud and financing terrorism.[17] Sentenced to two months,[18] Parish reports in a self-published book that he spent 23 days in prison.[19]

Parish was further charged in 2019.[20] 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.[21]

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.[22][23][24][25] AP reported in February 2021 that a court hearing had been held and adjourned until August 2021.[26][27] In September 2021, Parish was convicted and sentenced to three years' jail time and was banned from practicing law in Switzerland.[28] As AP reports, "Judge Gonseth said he was an arbitration expert and 'manifestly' involved at all stages of the process".[29][30]

• 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