The publishing house stopped selling the German journalist’s books about Putin

The German publishing house Hoffmann und Campe stopped selling books by the famous journalist Hubert Seipel about Vladimir Putin and modern Russia. As Der Spiegel magazine reports, the publishing house took such measures after it turned out that Seipel had been receiving funding from circles close to the Kremlin for many years.

The investigation into the Seipel case was conducted jointly by Paper Trail Media, Der Spiegel, ZDF and Important Stories. Journalists found out that since 2013, Seipel – a recognized expert on Russian politics – has been receiving hundreds of thousands of euros as “sponsorship” from the structures of Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov, who has been under EU sanctions since 2022 as a person close to Vladimir Putin. The journalist did not inform the publishers about the conflict of interests.

In the documents on the payment of fees to Seipert, signed by Mordashov’s company, it is indicated that he should write books about Russian politics. The journalist and writer himself claims that he only received funding, but the Russian side did not interfere in any way with the content of his books and did not try to influence his point of view. Nevertheless, now the German mass media and publishers doubt his neutrality.

After the publication of the investigation, the German mass media, for which Seipel worked, said that they “feel deceived.” Hubert Seipel became the first of the widely known German authors whose cooperation with the Kremlin was documented.