Pitt Alumni Make a Difference

Luke Dembosky (J.D. ’94) and Pavel Astakhov (LL.M. ’02) are Pitt School of Law graduates who headed up the U.S. and Russian delegations, respectively, of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Child Protection. The group held its first meeting in Moscow last week. Dembosky is seated at far right and Astakhov, third from right.

In Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg’s remarks to the Board of Trustees on Feb. 25, he commented on the work of two Pitt law alumni who are “making a difference.”

Those alumni, Luke E. Dembosky and Pavel Astakhov, were part of the first meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Child Protection, held in Moscow last week. The U.S. delegation was organized by Dembosky, and the Russian delegation was led by Astakhov.

Dembosky, a 1994 graduate of Pitt’s School of Law, is currently fulfilling a multiyear assignment as a U.S. Department of Justice resident legal advisor at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. In this capacity, Dembosky represents the Department of Justice to Russia on all matters of transnational crime and regularly meets with Russian law enforcement and other government officials to build cooperation between the two countries. Recently, he led the U.S. delegation in discussions of child abduction matters. Dembosky has served as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Western District of Pennsylvania, since 2002, specializing in prosecuting cybercrime and other white-collar crimes.

In December, Dembosky received the Department of Justice Director’s Award for dedication to carrying out the mission of the department. Specifically, Dembosky was recognized for leading the extensive undercover, Internet-based investigation and successful prosecution of Max Ray Butler, the largest cybercrime prosecution in U.S. history to that time; Butler was sentenced in February 2010 to 13 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $27.5 million in restitution to his victims.

Prior to working for the Department of Justice, Dembosky served as a law clerk for the Honorable Richard L. Nygaard of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and practiced at the law firm of Hangley Aronchick Segal & Pudlin in Philadelphia.

Dembosky earned his undergraduate degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1990.

High-profile Russian attorney Astakhov is a 2002 graduate of the Pitt School of Law Center for International Legal Education’s LL.M. Program for Foreign Law Graduates. In 2009, Astakhov was appointed children’s rights commissioner for the president of the Russian Federation. He is leading talks with the United States on the future of U.S. adoptions of Russian children. The talks partially stem from the public case of a Tennessee nurse who returned her adopted seven-year-old son to Russia.

Astakhov appears on three Russian television legal-education programs, including Hour of Judgment, which is similar to The People’s Court in America; he also runs a legal-aid center linked to the show. He is the author of more than 35 books about law and at least five novels.

“Pavel is the ultimate legal entrepreneur,” Pitt law professor Ronald Brand said of Astakhov in a May 2, 2010, Washington Post article. Brand, recently named Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg University Chair, also said that students from Russia often say that Astakhov “probably has done more to help ordinary people in Russia understand the rule of law than anybody else.”

Astakhov is a 2001 recipient of the Merited Lawyer of Russia award, given to only a handful of lawyers by the Moscow Bar Association’s Russian Lawyers Guild to recognize service on behalf of human rights protection. Fluent in five languages, Astakhov is a member of the Moscow Bar Association and the American Society of International Law.

In 2000, Astakhov defended Edmond Pope, a former U.S. naval intelligence officer and American businessman who was convicted of espionage in Russia. Pope’s account of his 253-day incarceration in Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison before being pardoned from a sentence of 20 years at hard labor was published in the book Torpedoed (Little, Brown, and Company, 2001).