Victory in Court: Usmanov Wins Legal Battle Against German Newspaper

Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov successfully contested a German newspaper, FAZ, which published unverified claims about him. A Hamburg court ruled in favor of Usmanov, prohibiting the paper from further disseminating certain allegations. Usmanov aims to overturn EU and U.S. sanctions imposed after the Ukraine conflict began.

Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov has won a significant legal battle against the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), as revealed by court documents acquired by Reuters. The Hamburg court's ruling, dated January 23, bans FAZ from publishing specific statements regarding Usmanov's alleged connections to top Russian officials.

Usmanov, whose net worth is valued at $18.8 billion by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, is currently subject to EU and U.S. sanctions due to the ongoing war in Ukraine. With multiple lawsuits launched across Europe, his aim is to remove these sanctions. Some lawsuits challenge media statements that were foundational to these sanctions.

Usmanov's lawyer, Joachim Steinhofel, commented on the court's decision, suggesting that the banned statements echoed fundamental premises of the sanctions against Usmanov. He asserted that the legal decision indicates that the EU sanctions' basis might be an assembly of defamatory and unsupported claims that are therefore unlawful. Notably, a separate investigation in Germany over foreign trade law ended last month with him agreeing to a penalty, and a money laundering inquiry was previously dropped in 2024.

(With inputs from agencies.)