A judge ruled that some passages in the best-selling book “Putin’s People” conveyed defamatory meaning and objected to Roman Abramovich, Including claims that he purchased Chelsea Football Club under the order of Vladimir Putin.
The Russian oligarch said that he was slandered by 26 specific passages in the book of journalist Catherine Belton, all of which he said conveyed untrue meanings about him.
In the preliminary ruling on Wednesday, Judge Tips stated that ordinary readers will understand these parts as meaning that Abramovich bought the Premier League club for £150 million in 2003 “under the guidance of the Kremlin.”
She said the book implies that Abramovich is “under Putin’s control” and that the oligarch is obliged to “provide the wealth of his business empire to President Putin and his regime.”
The judge said in a 34-page ruling that if Abramovich did not do this, the book suggested that he might “lost his wealth to the Russian state”, or be exiled or imprisoned.
Tipples emphasized that at this stage, the court only makes decisions based on meaning. It did not decide whether the allegations against Abramovich or anyone else were true.
Abramovich is one of three Russian tycoons who filed a defamation lawsuit against Belton and its publisher HarperCollins over a book Widely acclaimed As an authoritative work in the Putin era. The Russian state oil company Rosneft, run by Putin’s close ally Igor Sechin, also filed a lawsuit.
The case prompted the press freedom organization Call on the British government Investigate how foreign billionaires use defamation courts.
Two oligarchs have Since the settlement of their legal proceedingsBut Abramovich and Rosneft continue to advance their complaints, which may be heard in the High Court next year.
On Wednesday, in a decision on the meaning of the disputed paragraph, the judge ruled that three-quarters of the paragraph in Rosneft’s complaint was not defamatory. The argument they put forward is that these paragraphs claim that Rosneft has embezzled Yukos Petroleum and annexed its assets at low prices in a rigged auction.
The judge said that Putin’s people also claimed that Rosneft’s listing on the London Stock Exchange in 2006 was successful only because the “Kremlin or KGB” put pressure on potential investors to buy shares. She ruled that this meant “not a slander” for Rosneft. She said that Rosneft paid an overpayment for an oil company in a 2003 transaction, which may be defamatory.
HarperCollins emphasized in a statement that Abramovich “didn’t win his claim” and stated that Putin’s people are “a widely acclaimed work with considerable public interest.” The publisher added: “The judge found that with regard to most of Mr. Abramovich’s complaints, he exaggerated the meaning of what he complained and rejected a complaint completely. Today’s preliminary judgment only determines the general reader’s response to the book. Understanding of relevant paragraphs. No trial is expected for at least one year.”
A spokesperson for Abramović said he welcomed the ruling, which found that Belton’s book had “nine allegations of defamation” against the oligarch, including “false allegations” regarding the nature of his purchase of Chelsea. .
The judge stated that Belton’s description of recent events in Russia, as her lawyer argued, “is correct in my opinion.” But she also said that the defense relied on “too forensic” and “too detailed” explanations of the contents of the book.
Abramovich also complained about several other things. Among them, the book implies that he bought 300 million U.S. dollars of Rosneft stock “under the guidance of the Kremlin”, so the company’s listing will not fail, and that he has moved to New York “under Putin’s guidance”, so ” Russia can influence the family Donald Trump”, the judge said.
She ruled that both parts were defamatory. The judge wrote, further claiming that Abramovich had served as “the cashier of former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his family, providing them with funds from his own business empire for their own private purposes.”
At the initial hearing, Abramović’s lawyer said that the book repeated the “lazy inaccuracies about Abramovich’s role in various incidents” and gave him a “nothing at all.” According to” false and destructive statements.
Neither Belton nor HarperCollins was required to raise a defense, and therefore did not raise a substantive defense.
Belton spent seven years writing about Putin’s people, and served as the head of the Financial Times bureau in Moscow.Last week she was named Outstanding Investigative Reporter of 2021 The award is named after Sergey Magnitsky, a Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in prison.
