The first thing Heleen noticed as a first-year law student at UvA was the massive student body: her first lectures were in the Oudemanhuispoort building, spread across two classrooms. The lecturer would teach in one of the rooms, while the other room was used solely to store video screens. But since so many students dropped out of the course early on, it didn’t take long before everyone fit into one space. Things had changed quite a bit since she began her Russian course at UvA way back in 1985, when Gorbachev had just recently taken office. Heleen: ‘Studying Russian is more of a hobby than anything. The students are different as well; they don’t seem interested in pursuing a career or making money. But I always liked the fact that having a law degree really increases your odds of landing a job when you graduate.’ 

Degrees in Russian and Law – both from UvA (naturally)

Heleen first got the idea to study law while still living in Russia. The three best students in her Russian programme were given the opportunity to spend a semester in Moscow during their third year, and Heleen made sure she was one of them. ‘That was the year – 1988 – when the ban on private business ownership was lifted in the Soviet Union,’ Helen says. One of her lecturers had plans to establish a language institute in Moscow for Americans and European looking to learn Russian. Heleen was able to help her lecturer out, and she herself started a travel agency in Amsterdam offering language-study trips to what was then the Soviet Union and would later become Russia. After selling the travel agency in 1997, she and her then husband, who was also Dutch, and their two young children relocated to Russia, where they set up several businesses together. ‘It was there that I developed an interest in studying law. My ex-husband, who has an economics degree from UvA, was good at creating business plans and handling the commercial side of things, while I was in charge of the Russian-language and legal aspects. But I had no legal background, so when we returned to the Netherlands, I decided to study law. Heleen began her legal studies at UvA in 2000.

Heleen says the University of Amsterdam was an obvious choice for her: “I’m from Amsterdam originally, and that means UvA is really the only option – we all went there back then. Back in the 1980s, I knew I definitely didn’t want to attend Vrije Universiteit (VU), because at that time it was considered the college for religious students and people from the countryside.’ She retains good memories of her university days: ‘If you work hard in your classes, you’ll almost always be able to build a good connection with your lecturers, even in a programme that attracts as many students as Law. If you attend all your tutorials and hand in your papers and essays in time, your lecturers will know you personally and will really support you.’ More than half of her lecturers at the time – including Van Weeghel, IJzerman, Cornelisse, Weber and Wattel – are currently Advocates General with the Dutch Supreme Court, and all are professors. ‘That does tell you something about the quality of education offered at UvA,’ Heleen observes.

After completing her first year, she decided to pursue a Master’s degree in Fiscal Law, having noted that this branch of law was still at the fledgling stage in Russia, with many laws having not yet been established. ‘I reckoned I’d like to return to Russia with my family and work for a law firm or tax consultancy in Moscow. It would have been an opportunity to help create new laws, but when the time came to leave, neither my husband nor my children felt like going back, so I ended up staying here in the Netherlands.

Own legal practice in Amsterdam

While attending a careers event, Heleen was approached by Deloitte, where she ended up working as a tax consultant in the company’s international department for three years. She put in the graft, while also leading a busy and active life and raising two teenagers. Heleen also had the qualifications to become an attorney-at-law. ‘In 2006, I promised my children I would apply to the law firm located closest to our home, as I no longer wanted to deal with the pressure of working in an international office. I ended up at a firm in Volendam – I sent in my CV and was offered the job right away. Experience living and working in Russia really makes you stand out,’ Heleen says.

But her dream had always been to start her own legal practice, serving Russian-speaking clients. ‘Once you’ve acquired a minimum of three years of work experience at a law firm, you’re qualified to start your own practice, so I opened my own firm in Amsterdam in 2009.’ An acquaintance of hers who was a member of the Ruslandtafel (informal meeting place for those with a professional or personal interest in Russia) of the Koninklijke Industrieele Groote Club (a business club) was the owner of the Geelvinck Hinlopenhuis on Herengracht. There was a museum on the ground floor, and business units on the next level, and Heleen could rent office space there for a very reasonable price – until the building was sold in 2015. Her current practice, Rechta, is located on Utrechtsedwarsstraat. She has four specialisations: family law, corporate law, contract law and procedural law. She tends to pick unusual or non-standard cases, often working with Russian-speaking clients.

Doctoral research into EU sanctions

As if running her own legal practice and being involved in the Ruslandtafel association didn’t keep her busy enough, she embarked on her doctoral research at Groningen University in 2015. ‘When sanctions were imposed against the former Ukrainian government, East Ukraine, Crimea, and major Russian oil companies and banks, all the assets of former Ukrainian president Yanukovych and his entourage in the Netherlands were frozen. However, this was not based on a court ruling: it was a decision by the Council of the European Union, without being supervised by a judicial or legal institution. I believe the Council of the EU overstepped its boundaries and that they violated the right to freedom of ownership. How can assets be “frozen” and, to all intents and purposes, be seized without prior judicial review, and without this occurring as part of ongoing criminal law proceedings?’ She hasn’t changed her opinion, and still believes this is against the law. ‘In 2016, we had the Dutch Ukraine-European Union Association Agreement referendum, and the subject of the sanctions became increasingly politicized. I was interviewed about this by a lot of media outlets at the time and received a lot of blowback, because people said I supported the former Ukrainian regime. While I was affected by the criticism, I wanted to look at the issue from a strictly legal, rather than a political, perspective,’ Heleen says. She feels her academic research has been hampered by the current politicization, because what appears to matter is not the legal reality, but the political reality. The objective of her research is to assist large Russian and Ukrainian companies in sanction cases before the European Court of Justice. Heleen views the research as the next step in her career, which she took in order to branch out from the cases she was taking on in her legal practice.