The Hamburg Land Court has banned the American magazine Forbes from spreading claims that Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov was a "front man" for Vladimir Putin and "solved his business problems."
Source. This was reported by RBC.
The reason for the lawsuit was a Forbes article about Russian billionaires dated February 2, 2022, titled "Meet Putin's oligarchs who are likely to be subject to Biden's sanctions over Ukraine."
Usmanov's lawyers stated that the article contained unsubstantiated allegations, namely a quote from an anonymous expert that "Usmanov has repeatedly acted as a proxy for Putin and solved his business problems."
In February 2022, the EU Council cited this phrase, among others, in justifying sanctions against the businessman. Usmanov's lawyers called the statements in the Forbes article false and defamatory.
Forbes refused to disclose the anonymous source who made this statement. The publication failed to provide examples of when and how Usmanov solved Putin's business problems, according to court documents.
The German court also banned Forbes from disseminating other statements. Among them, Usmanov acquired a stake in the Russian mobile phone operator Megafon from former Russian Communications Minister Leonid Reiman (who has repeatedly denied that he owned the company) to solve a business problem for Putin.
Media outlets note that the court's decision could set a legal precedent for challenging the sources used by the EU to justify sanctions against individual Russians in connection with the military operation in Ukraine.
In August 2023, Usmanov lost a court case against the Austrian newspaper Kurier, which wrote that Putin had called Usmanov "one of his favorite oligarchs." The Hamburg Land Court sided with the businessman in the dispute, ruling that the statement was defamatory. In September 2023, the EU Council abandoned the use of the definition of "oligarch" in relation to Usmanov.
Usmanov is ranked 8th in the ranking of the richest businessmen in Russia. In 2022, the entrepreneur entered the Top 250 richest people in the UK, with a fortune of £14 billion earned in the mining and metallurgical industry. According to the Russian Forbes, his fortune for 2023 is $14.4 billion, while in 2022 it was $11.5 billion.
Usmanov was placed under EU sanctions on February 28, 2022, amid the war in Ukraine. The EU justified the sanctions by claiming that the businessman has close ties to Putin.