Hamburg (OTE) – On 11 March 2026, the Slovak news outlet Denník N
published an
article concerning the alleged efforts of the Slovak government to
secure the removal of two Russian nationals from the EU sanctions
list. The article contained an extensive passage concerning our
client, Mr Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov.
By letter dated 12 March 2026, Denník N was requested, in order
to avoid court proceedings, to provide a cease-and-desist undertaking
backed by a contractual penalty.
„The article was published on the eve of the European
Commission’s decision on the extension of the sanctions. It reads as
if its authors had taken particular care to assemble, in a single
piece, every factual allegation that courts have previously found to
be unlawful,“ said Mr Usmanov’s lawyer, Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel.
The article contained a dozen such statements about Alisher
Usmanov, even though these very allegations have for years been
prohibited, retracted, deleted or corrected in one case after
another. The Regional Court of Hamburg has prohibited corresponding
statements, inter alia, in proceedings against Kurier, Forbes Media
LLC, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel and RTL. Cease-
and-desist undertakings backed by contractual penalties have been
signed, among others, by Il Tempo, Wiener Zeitung, Norddeutscher
Rundfunk, WirtschaftsWoche and Basler Zeitung, as well as many
others. Further retractions, corrections or rights of reply were
issued by La Repubblica, Corriere della Sera and OCCRP. In total,
from 2023 to 2025, 18 court decisions and injunctions and 102 cease-
and-desist declarations from media outlets worldwide were secured on
behalf of Mr. Usmanov and members of his family, resulting in the
removal of hundreds of false articles and links, and corrections to
more than 2,000 publications overall .
„Anyone who republishes the same allegations under these
circumstances is not engaging in genuine journalistic inquiry, but
demonstrating serious journalistic negligence,“ Steinhöfel added.
If, according to media reports, the European Union is currently
reviewing the legal sustainability of sanctions imposed on another EU
citizen, it cannot discriminate against Mr Usmanov and proceed as
though the numerous court rulings rendered in his favour by European
courts were of no relevance. Numerous publications underlying the
sanctions allegations have already been the subject of injunctions,
cease-and-desist undertakings, rights of reply and corrections. In
particular, the Regional Court of Hamburg’s Forbes decision of
January 2024 concerns an allegation that the Council nevertheless
adopted unchanged in its reasoning. A state governed by the rule of
law damages its own credibility if it ignores such rulings. Mr
Usmanov is an honorary citizen of an Italian municipality, The Sunday
Times listed him in 2021 as the most generous donor in its Giving
List, and the criminal investigations conducted against him in
Germany were discontinued. The presumption of innocence remains
intact. The lifting of the sanctions imposed on him is therefore also
a matter of restoring confidence in the rule of law.
Background
From 2023 to 2025, Mr Usmanov prevailed in proceedings against
the US magazine Forbes, Der Tagesspiegel, Austria’s Kurier, and major
German broadcasters including RTL and ARD/Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
In April 2025, Münchner Merkur removed 15 articles concerning
Alisher Usmanov. Some of those articles had triggered investigations
against Mr Usmanov in Germany and were mentioned in the Council of
the European Union’s sanctions dossier concerning him. At the same
time, Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (NOZ) deleted or revised 36 inaccurate
articles, while the Irish publication EU Reporter removed 174 links
in 58 languages from its website.
In February 2025, Germany’s leading news agency dpa informed its
national and international media partners of the withdrawal of a
report claiming that Mr Usmanov’s sister owned the yacht Dilbar. This
followed the deletion, after a formal legal warning, of a
corresponding statement by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA).
Numerous media outlets then removed the content from their websites,
including Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die
Zeit and Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, among others. In March 2025,
Tagesschau, Germany’s oldest and most widely watched television news
programme, was likewise required to remove similar content from its
website.
Digital press kit: http://www.ots.at/pressemappe/DE121736/aom