Irina Nesvetova has more than seven years of experience in project and trade finance, secured transactions, corporate acquisitions and general corporate law.  She advises on legal issues relating to banking, currency regulation, licensing, securities issuance, and corporate law, and has particular expertise in the oil and precious metals industries.

Irina has acted for a variety of clients, frequently as the lead associate in the Moscow office, on numerous financings.  Her recent experience includes:

• Representing, as common counsel, export credit agencies, multilateral lenders and commercial bank lenders in connection with the $20 billion project financing of the Sakhalin II (Phase 2) LNG Project in Russia;
• Representing ABN AMRO Bank N.V. and Citigroup as Mandated Lead Arrangers on the US$765 million crude pre-export financing facility to LUKOIL (named EMEA Loan of the Year by IFLR for 2003);
• Advising the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on a $200 million secured project financing to SeverTEK, a joint venture of LUKOIL and Fortum Oyj to develop the South Shapkino oil field located in the Nenets Autonomous District of Russia;
• Advising the EBRD on the $97 million project financing of Gastransit, a Ukrainian affiliate of Gazprom (Phase II);
• Advising the EBRD on the $90 million secured financing of Rosneft-Sakhalinmorneftegaz;
• Advising the EBRD on a $150 million secured financing to LUKOIL;
• Advising the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on several secured financings to various Russian banks; and
• Advising a major Russian natural resources company on several trade financings totalling more than $800 million.

Prior to joining White & Case in 1998, Irina worked for two years as a lawyer at an international law firm in Chicago, USA, and Kyiv, Ukraine, and for three years as legal counsel at a private trading company in Minsk, Republic of Belarus.