The British lawyer who represented Greenpeace in the battle with Shell over the disposal of the Brent Spar oil platform has been hired by Russia to prepare a case against the Anglo-Dutch oil company over problems at its development project on Sakhalin Island in the country’s Far East.

Mark Stephens, partner at Finer Stephens Innocent, told The Guardian that he expects court proceedings to start in spring although he would not say whether that would be in London, New York or Moscow.

Mr. Stephens made his name defending Greenpeace in litigation brought by Shell to recover the Brent Spar platform in the North Sea in 1995 which it alleged had been illegally occupied by the environmental activists. The case fizzled out, but Shell lost the public relations battle with Greenpeace and dropped its plans to sink the platform in place of dismantling it at the shoreside.

The defeat had a profound effect on the Anglo-Dutch oil group which threw itself into schemes aimed at rebuilding its reputation for corporate social responsibility.

Mr. Stephens said last night he was confident the Russian government would be able to build a successful case against Shell over environmental violations at the Sakhalin-2 liquefied natural gas project.

“I have been asked to put together a team of international lawyers and to come up with options for proceedings to be taken to enforce Shell’s environmental obligations at Sakhalin,” he explained.

He expressed support for the deputy head of Russia’s environmental watchdog Oleg Mitvol, whom he described as a “man of principle” and said he was sure he would emerge vindicated from any investigation into his words or behavior. On Thursday, Mitvol’s superior Sergei Sai has asked Russia’s Natural Resources Minister Yuri Trutnev to give Mitvol a formal warning and reprimand for his activities. Mitvol has dismissed Sai’s words, saying that Sai is the third head of environmental watchdog to try and get rid of his deputy, but all of them have been unsuccessful.

Mitvol told Echo of Moscow radio station that he was being punished for being too good at his job. “I’m someone who sticks in the throat of a lot of bureaucrats,” he claimed, while financial analysts said he had stood on a lot of toes, inside and outside government.

“It could suggest that his endless stream of attacks on Shell and others had achieved the goal the Kremlin wanted, and there could be a softening of the position against them,” one expert said.

Others questioned whether the call for a reprimand was just a way of cutting down to size a man whose profile had become far higher than the environmental agency he worked for.

Within hours of the disciplinary decision, Mr. Mitvol gave a clean bill of health to another British firm that he had previously attacked for alleged environmental violations: Peter Hambro Mining.

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