It’s another bad day for Vladimir Putin’s crony oligarch, Roman Abramovich. Oh, and also for Abramovich’s lawyer John Kelly and his firm Harbottle & Lewis.
The BBC’s investigative news arm has just published a new report on Abramovich’s purchase of Russian state-owned energy companies at far below their actual value. The BBC indicates that this included the kidnapping of an Abramovich purchase competitor.
It won’t be easy for John Kelly and company to spin this one away.
While Harbottle & Lewis have reveled in lawfare against British newspapers for their reporting on Abramovich, Russia’s war on Ukraine has changed things. Albeit belated, the introduction of U.K. government sanctions on Abramovich last week has given British media outlets new impetus to report on Abramovich’s corrupt legacy. Even Britain’s maestro barrister for corrupt Russian oligarchs, Hugh Tomlinson of Matrix Chambers, will struggle to defend his client now. Both Kelly and Tomlinson were recently called out by name by a U.K. parliamentarian.
These developments are near revolutionary.
It was just last year, after all, that the investigative journalist Catherine Belton was forced to make Abramovich-favorable post-publication edits to her landmark book on Putin’s rise to power, Putin’s People. As I wrote following a preliminary English High Court ruling against Belton (her publisher later settled with Abramovich out of court), the ruling drew a stark contrast with U.S. legal protections under the First Amendment. U.S. law’s recognition that the accountability of public figures is more important than their privacy allowed me to write that Abramovich is indeed “a willing Putin ally, that he is corrupt, and that he is indeed suspected by the U.S. intelligence community of being a ‘bag carrier’ for Putin.”
Contrast this statement with the Independent. In response to the same “bag carrier” assertion, Kelly forced the newspaper to “apologize to Mr Abramovich for any misunderstanding. In view of these errors we have agreed to make a donation to a charity nominated by Mr Abramovich and to pay his legal costs.” Harbottle & Lewis still celebrates that apology on its website.
Let us hope a new era of reporting on Putin’s people has arrived. There are more oligarchs who deserve similar attention. Still, Abramovich’s fall from false grace is a good start. Let us hope also that Kelly, Tomlinson, and company find their wallets a little less fat. And that the U.K. Conservative Party might finally find the courage to detach itself fully from the trough of Russian funny money.
