A court in Hamburg forbade Forbes to call Alisher Usmanov a Putin stand-in

The Land Court of Hamburg forbade the American magazine Forbes from disseminating information about the connection between Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov and President Vladimir Putin. The court considered the dissemination of defamatory statements published by the publication, EU Today reports.

Usmanov’s defense argued that the European Union quoted unconfirmed statements from the text of 2022, published under the heading “Meet Putin’s oligarchs, who are likely to be subject to Biden’s sanctions from outside Ukraine,” in the justification of the sanctions imposed against him.

In particular, it was a quote from an anonymous expert: “Usmanov repeatedly covered for Putin and solved his business problems.” The publication refused to reveal the expert’s identity in court and did not provide examples of the oligarch’s solution to Putin’s problems, EU Today and RBC claim.

In the text, Usmanov’s purchase of shares in the cellular operator “Megafon” in 2006 was cited as such an example. It is confirmed that the oligarch bought out the fate of the Minister of Communications and friend of Vladimir Putin, Leonid Reiman, after his participation in the company became known to the public. Rayman denies the connection with the operator, the court prohibited Forbes from distributing this statement.

The magazine did not comment on the decision, the text of the article remains on its website in an uncorrected form. This is Usmanov’s second victory in a lawsuit against the mass media, which declared his closeness to Putin. In August 2023, the businessman lost in a Hamburg court to the Austrian newspaper Kurier, which claimed that Putin called Usmanov “one of his favorite oligarchs.” Soon after that, the European Union stopped calling Russian billionaires under sanctions as oligarchs.

The news is updated