Zelenogradsky court of Moscow satisfied lawsuit businessman Oleg Deripaska to the oppositionist Alexei Navalnyhis supporters Georgy Alburov (recognized as a foreign agent), Maria Pevchikh and three media outlets regarding material about the Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrovbusinessman’s lawyer Alexei Melnikov told RBC.
The three media in question are The Insider (the Ministry of Justice included him in the register of media-foreign agents, the Prosecutor General’s Office recognized his activities as undesirable, editor-in-chief Roman Dobrokhotov was included in the register of foreign agents and arrested in absentia), New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and Associated Newspapers Limited (holding company for Daily Mail subsidiaries).
“Claim [к указанным СМИ] were as follows: to recognize the published defamatory information as untrue, to remove from the public domain a photograph, the illegal use of which is an interference with the private life of my principal, and to place a refutation in the form of information about the court decision, ”Melnikov told RBC.
According to him, Navalny and his associates had the same requirements, only with regard to the publication, which was published on the oppositionist’s YouTube channel.
As the lawyer clarified, there were no material requirements in the lawsuit, but the court agreed with Deripaska’s position and imposed a court penalty on the defendants if they did not want to voluntarily comply with the decision. The amount of the court penalty will be 50 thousand rubles. for each day of delay.
The court decision has not yet entered into force and can be appealed, Melnikov added. He called the publication about Lavrov “unsubstantiated and without any factual basis.”
The publication in question was posted by Navalny in September 2018. It spoke, in particular, about the communication between Lavrov and his family with Deripaska. The businessman has already sued Navalny over investigations about him and Anastasia Vashukevich (Rybka). The court ruled to include Navalny’s blog, a YouTube video, and a text version of the investigation on the oppositionist’s website into the register of prohibited information.
In March 2020, Deripaska through the court demanded from Navalny to compensate non-pecuniary damage for 1 rub. The main purpose of the lawsuit was to protect the business reputation of the businessman, Melnikov said. The plaintiff demanded to refute and delete the statements voiced by Navalny in the Navalny Live program on his YouTube channel (Roskomnadzor demanded that the video hosting management block the channel). Navalny, in the author’s program, argued that Deripaska’s business in Russia is developing due to the receipt of large loans from state banks on non-market terms and their refinancing. At the end of 2021, the court granted Deripaska’s claim.
Kommersant.Ru, 11/11/2021, “The court satisfied the claim of Deripaska against Navalny for the protection of business reputation”: The Moscow Arbitration Court satisfied the claim of businessman Oleg Deripaska to protect his business reputation against imprisoned oppositionist Alexei Navalny. The defendant must, within 24 hours after the entry into the decision (.pdf) forcefully remove the video released in 2019 and an excerpt from it, which was edited into a separate video, and also publish a refutation within a month. […]
Initially, the plaintiff asked to post a retraction on Navalny’s website, where the video was released, but the court recalled that this resource was blocked. Then the representatives of the businessman offered to publish this text in any business newspaper, eventually choosing Kommersant as such. “I offered the court any publication, but since your newspaper is a leading business newspaper, and you were just in the hall, I decided that it would be funny,” Mr. Deripaska’s lawyer explained to a Kommersant correspondent. […] The court also ordered Mr. Navalny to pay moral compensation to the businessman in the amount of 1 ruble. and 50 thousand rubles. penalties for each day of non-execution of the judgment. — Inset K.ru
