Roman Abramovich settles defamation claim over Putin’s biography | Roman Abramovich

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has settled his defamation suit against journalist Kathryn Belton for her best-selling book The Putin People, following an agreement reached late Tuesday.

The text will now acknowledge that the allegation that Abramovich bought the Chelsea football team on the orders of the Russian president is not a statement of fact. It will include additional refutations from the oligarch’s spokesman and the association.

He will also correct a claim that the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky was co-owner of the Russian oil company Sibneft with Abramovich. The amendment follows a 2011-12 Supreme Court dispute between the two men, which Abramovic won. The book’s publisher, HarperCollins, has agreed to make a charitable payment “in recognition of this mistake,” he said.

Abramovich has sued over a number of claims, including that he bought Chelsea on the orders of Vladimir Putin. He was one of three Russian tycoons to launch a defamation suit against Belton and HarperCollins, along with Russia’s state oil company Rosneft.

The other defendants then settled or withdrew their claims. Abramovich closed his case after HarperCollins said on Wednesday that some information about the oligarch was inaccurate. He agreed to make revisions to the book, which is widely recognized as the definitive work of the Putin era.

HarperCollins hailed the overnight settlement as a fair deal. No compensation is paid to Abramovich himself. Both parties will pay their own costs. If the defamation trial had taken place in the Supreme Court the following year, the legal bill was likely to exceed 10 10 million, it is understandable.

The publisher said: “While the book has always contained a denial that Mr Abramovich was acting under the direction of anyone when he bought Chelsea, the new edition will include a more detailed explanation of Mr Abramovich τρων’s motives for buying the club.

“HarperCollins has also made it clear in the book that there is no evidence, other than the statements of the individuals themselves, to support the allegations made against the author by [the former Kremlin insider] “Sergei Pugachev and two other unnamed people in connection with the Chelsea purchase.”

Harper Collins acknowledged that a Supreme Court judge described Berezovsky as an “inherently unreliable witness.” He added: “HarperCollins and the author apologize that these aspects of the book were not as clear as they would like them to be and they are happy to clarify the text now.”

Chelsea FC said they were pleased HarperCollins and Belton had “apologized to Mr Abramovich” and agreed to amend the book. Several false allegations against him were dropped, he said, adding that “they had no evidence and they were indeed false.”

The club said the publisher had agreed to add or delete “more than 1,700 words”. The only reason the oligarch had issued his claim was to “refute the false allegations” made about him, including the Chelsea market and its activities.

The statement continued: “As the objectives of this legal claim were never punitive, we did not seek compensation. “We asked HarperCollins, however, to make a donation instead of compensation to a charity, to which they agreed.”

Despite the revisions, the deal is generally seen as a victory for Belton, who has come under unprecedented legal attack from billionaires with ties to the Kremlin. Abramovich served for eight years as governor of Tsukotka, a region in Russia’s Far East. He has consistently denied that he is under the control of the Russian government.

In a statement, said that “last year felt like a war of attrition” in which it had been “bombarded with lawsuits” by four Russian billionaires and Rosneft.

Belton was added“Although the plaintiffs denied that it was coordinated, it seemed to me similar to the Kremlin’s multifaceted campaign against Ukraine, in which it sought to exhaust the West from making security concessions on NATO expansion.”

He continued: “Throughout the year, HarperCollins vigorously defended the book. “I could not wish for a better or braver publisher more dedicated to public interest journalism.”

Campaigners described the Belton case as an abuse of the UK’s slander system. Abramovich personally sued the former Financial Times journalist as well as her publisher.

The settlement was reached after an approach by Abramovich, as it is understood. HarperCollins said Belton was always willing to include the oligarch’s comments on the allegations and acknowledged that books on controversial contemporary issues needed updating as new information emerged.

At a preliminary hearing in November, Justice Tipples ruled that many excerpts from the book, which Abramovich said contained untrue statements about him, were defamatory.

One such claim was the suggestion that Abramovich was “under Putin’s control” and that the oligarch was obliged to “make his business empire available for the use of President Putin and his regime,” Tipples wrote in a 34- page decision. However, it ruled out that three of the four divisions complained about by Rosneft were not defamatory, with the oil company subsequently abandoning its case.

Tipples stressed that the court only, at that point, judged the meaning. He did not decide whether the allegations against Abramovich or anyone else were true or false. After Wednesday’s settlement, the claims will not be considered in court.

At the initial hearing, Abramovich’s lawyer said the book repeated “lazy inaccuracies about Abramovich’s role in various events” and made false and damaging statements about him as “completely unfounded”.

Belton spent seven years writing for People’s People and was based in Moscow as head of the FT office. Last month, it was named 2021 Excellent investigative journalist at the awards named after Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian anti-corruption lawyer who died in prison.