“The defendants would deny that the meanings advanced at sub-paragraphs (1) to (4) inclusive of paragraph 2 above Sub-paragraphs (1) to (4) of paragraph 2 of the Defendants’ notice of their case on meaning are set out in paragraph 7 of this judgment. are defamatory of the Claimant at common law if the increasingly extreme and objectionable nature of Mr Putin’s regime (as presented in the Book) is left out of account.”
“[11.] It appears to me to be particularly important where, as here, a judge is providing written reasons for his conclusion as to the meaning to be attributed to the words sued on, that he should not fall into the trap of conducting an over-elaborate analysis of the various passages relied on by the respective protagonists. The parties are entitled to a reasoned judgment but that does not mean that the court should overlook the fact that it is ultimately a question of the meaning which would be put on the words of the book by the ordinary reasonable reader. Such a hypothetical reader is assumed not to be a lawyer. He or she is very unlikely to read the whole book in a single sitting or to compare one passage with another or to focus on particular phrases. The exercise is essentially one of ascertaining the broad impression made on the hypothetical reader by the book taken as a whole. [12.] A feature of the present dispute on meaning is that each side has pointed to different passages in the book which it maintains is supportive of its case as to the degree of seriousness of the libel. That is commonplace and legitimate. It is well established that the tribunal of fact, whether judge or jury, must take the bane and the antidote of the publication together: see Chalmers v Payne (1835) 2 Cr M&R 156, para 159. As Lord Nicholls pointed out in Charleston v New Group Newspapers at 73-74, there is an artificiality about this approach since, especially in the case of a book, not all readers will read it from cover to cover. It is, however, clear from that and earlier authorities that the publication must be taken as a whole.”
“[17.] [The Chase levels of meaning] come from the decision of Brooke LJ in Chase v News Group Newspapers Ltd[2002] EWCA Civ 1772 ; [2003] EMLR 11, para 45 in which he identified three types of defamatory allegation: broadly, (1) the claimant is guilty of the act; (2) reasonable grounds to suspect that the claimant is guilty of the act; and (3) grounds to investigate whether the claimant has committed the act. In the lexicon of defamation, these have come to be known as the Chase levels. Reflecting on the almost infinite capacity for subtle differences in meaning, they are not a straightjacket forcing the court to select one of these prescribed levels of meaning, but a helpful shorthand. In [Charman], for example, Gray J found a meaning of “cogent grounds to suspect” at para 58.”
“[28.] The repetition rule clearly applies when the court is considering the meaning of words, but it takes its place alongside all other matters to which the court must have regard when determining meaning. The task is to determine what the ordinary reasonable reader would understand the words to mean. The repetition rule cannot be applied mechanistically to the determination of meaning … [29.] It seems to me that, as is nearly always the case in determining meaning, context is everything. It is easy to imagine cases where a publication refers to an allegation because the author wants to establish the fact that the allegation was made rather than any suggestion on her part that the allegation is true. Borrowing from Lord Devlin’s analogy, it may be difficult to repeat the allegations of others without suggesting to the reader that the allegations are true, but it can be done. “One always gets back to the fundamental question: what is the meaning that the words convey to the ordinary man: you cannot make a rule about that” [Lewis v Daily Telegraph[1964] AC 234 , per Lord Devlin at p. 285]. [30.] In my judgment, to produce a Chase level 1 meaning, the effect of the publication (taken as a whole) has to be the adoption or endorsing of the allegation. That adoption or endorsement may come from “bald” repetition … or it may come from other context which signals to the reader that the allegation is being adopted when it is repeated. The converse is also true. The context may signal to the reader that the allegation is not being adopted or endorsed. Sometimes allegations are repeated to criticise the person who made them. When doing so, prudent publishers often expressly state that the allegations were “baseless”, but whilst no doubt sufficient (in most cases) to prevent the publisher being found to have adopted the allegation by repetition it is not necessary in all cases for this to be stated expressly. It all depends on context… [32.] … When the authorities speak of rejecting submissions that words repeating the allegations of others bear a lower meaning than the original publication that is a rejection of the premise that the statement is less defamatory (or not defamatory at all) simply because it is a report of what someone else had said. That kind of reasoning is what the repetition rule prohibits when applied to meaning. The meaning to be attached to the repetition of the allegation has still to be judged, applying the rules of interpretation I have set out above, looking at the publication as a whole.”
“[26.] The main section of the Television Report presents a series of factual allegations. The application of the repetition rule in this case does play a significant role in the determination that the meaning is Chase level 1. Viewers are presented with information provided by sources which they are given no reason to doubt beyond the various denials. Publications that result in a meaning at Chase level 2 or 3, tend to flag clearly to viewers/readers that there are reasons why they should be cautious before accepting allegations made by others, perhaps for motives of their own, for example. Not only are there no independent signals in either Report for the need for caution, on the contrary, the various sources’ credibility appears to the reader/viewer mutually to support the overall credibility of the allegations being presented.”
“… when determining whether the words complained of contain allegations of fact or opinion, the court will be guided by the following points: (i). The statement must be recognisable as comment, as distinct from imputation of fact. (ii). Opinion is something which is or can be reasonably be inferred to be a deduction, inference, conclusion, criticism, remark, observation etc. (iii). The ultimate question is how the words would strike the ordinary reasonable reader. The subject matter and context of the words may be an important indicator of whether they are fact or opinion. (iv). Some statements which are, by their nature and appearance opinion, are nevertheless treated as statements of fact where, for instance, the opinion implies that a claimant has done something but does not indicate what that something is, ie the statement is a bare comment. (v). Whether an allegation that someone has acted “dishonestly” or “criminally” is an allegation of fact or expression of opinion will very much depend on context. There is no fixed rule that a statement that someone has been dishonest must be treated as an allegation of fact.”
“when he acquired the Sibneft oil major, he became the epitome of the intensely politically-wired oligarchs of the Yeltsin era”
“It is no defence to a charge that “You call me A” to say “Yes, but I also called you B on the same occasion, and that was true,” if the second charge was separate and distinct from the first. It may in any given case be difficult to decide whether the two charges are indeed separate and distinct … but whether they are or not is a question of law which can be conveniently be determined on an interlocutory application of this kind.”
‘The Tip Of An Iceberg’ (4). “In essence, what had been created was what in Russian criminal parlance is called an ‘obschak’, a common cash pot or slush fund for a criminal gang. It was a model based on handing out riches to a tightly controlled network of close allies, where the lines between what was to be used for strategic operations and what was for personal use were always conveniently blurred. This model became the basis for the kleptocracy of the Putin regime, and later its influence operations too – and it was based on the clandestine networks and payments systems of the KGB.” [Page 94] Chapter 4: Operation Successor: ‘It Was Already After Midnight’ (5). “Suspicions had long circulated that relations between Sibneft and the Yeltsin Family were too close, that the company had been the basis for its owner, Boris Berezovsky, to become the consummate insider oligarch. Sibneft had sold oil through two trading companies: one of them, Runicom, was owned by Berezovsky’s business partner Roman Abramovich; the other, a more obscure outfit known as Belka Trading, was owned and run by Tatyana’s then husband, Leonid Dyachenko.56” [Page 129] Chapter 5: ‘Children’s Toys in Pools of Mud’ (6). “The Yeltsin Family still felt secure in the belief that Putin would protect their safety and their fortunes from attack. When Yeltsin had agreed to bow out ahead of time, behind the scenes they’d made a pact with his successor, according to a close Putin ally and a former senior government official.84 One of Putin’s first acts as acting president was to issue a decree granting Yeltsin immunity from prosecution. But a broader bargain had also been sealed behind the scenes. ‘The negotiations that went on over Putin’s rise and Yeltsin’s departure were about property,’ said Andrei Vavilov, first deputy finance minister at the time. ‘The subject of these negotiations was about property, and not about the structure of society … Everyone forgot. Everyone thought that democracy would just be there. Everyone was just thinking about their personal interests.’
‘The Inner Circle Made Him’ (7). “With branches in London, Geneva and the Isle of Man, it managed the foreign bank accounts of Khodorkovsky’s Menatep Group, as well as the Swiss oil trader Runicom, which exported oil from Sibneft, the Russian oil major belonging to Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich.” [Pages 193-4] (8). “In February 2001, on the insistence of Voloshin, Berezovsky sold his shares in ORT to Roman Abramovich, who’d abandoned his former partner to become a financial bridge between the Yeltsin Family and Putin’s men, and who promptly sold the shares to the state.” [Page 208] Chapter 7: ‘Operation Energy’ (9). “When the most strategic and lucrative sectors of Soviet industry were sold off in the mid-nineties under the loans-for-shares auctions, many of these gold seams for KGB networks passed into private hands. The likes of Yukos and Sibneft, a neighbouring west Siberian oil producer, were sold into the hands of the young bankers close to the Yeltsin government, to Khodorkovsky and the partnership of Berezovsky and Abramovich, for just$300 million and$100 million apiece.” [Page 212] PART THREE Chapter 10: Obschak (10). “When Putin took over the presidency, Petromed became a centre for collecting hundreds of millions of dollars in so-called donations, ostensibly to buy medical equipment from Siemens and General Electric to upgrade St Petersburg’s Military Medical Academy. But the ‘donations’ were essentially tributes paid by oligarchs to the new Russian tsar, an entry ticket to Putin’s inner circle, and they became part of a slush fund for Putin’s rule. A large percentage of the money was used to fund Bank Rossiya’s rapid expansion. It provided the cash for Bank Rossiya to acquire Gazprom’s Sogaz insurance company – and for Gorelov and Shamalov to acquire stakes in Bank Rossiya. By that time Matthias Warnig, the former Stasi officer with whom Putin had also worked closely on technology transfers, had become chairman of Bank Rossiya. It was a sign that Putin’s former KGB networks were more than being preserved: they were being resurrected, and then provided with tens of billions of dollars of siphoned Gazprom cash. The story Kolesnikov was to tell me, years later, when he emerged from it all, still wide-eyed at the secrets he was daring to reveal, described how he worked with Shamalov and Gorelov to funnel the Petromed ‘donations’ through a web of offshore companies that stretched from Liechtenstein to the British Virgin Islands to Panama. Thirty-five per cent of one such donation – of$203 million from the Yeltsin Family oligarch Roman Abramovich in July 2001 – was transferred to a BVI company, Rollins International, and$50 million of that then made its way to a Panamanian company called Santal Trading, which Kolesnikov liked to call the ‘safe’.18 This was the cash store that funded the Bank Rossiya expansion, while Rollins International financed Gorelov and Shamalov’s acquisition of 12.6 per cent stakes apiece in Bank Rossiya on the eve of the bank’s rapid growth.” [Pages 314-5] (11). “Cowed by the legal attack on Khodorkovsky, the remaining Yeltsin-era tycoons were, one by one, beginning to vow fealty to the Putin regime. The unruly media tycoons Gusinsky and Berezovsky had been exiled, their assets taken over by the state. A consolidation of assets was occurring across industry – in particular in the strategic sector – and the new leaders who emerged all bowed to the Kremlin’s might. But it was Roman Abramovich, the billionaire oil trader who’d taken over Berezovsky’s business empire, a powerful broker long considered the purse-holder for the Yeltsin Family, who performed the first and most overt act of fealty of all.” [Page 343] Chapter 11: Londongrad (12). “According to a tycoon close to him, he was sent to Chukotka on Putin’s orders 4 because Putin wanted the fortune Abramovich had made through his stakes in the oil major Sibneft and in Rusal, the aluminium giant that controlled more than 90 per cent of the nation’s output, to be at his command. It wasn’t enough that Abramovich’s charitable foundation Pole of Hope was ready to later donate$203 million to Petromed, the medical-equipment-supplies company connected to Bank Rossiya.5 Putin wanted to be able to access the rest of Abramovich’s cash too, and the laws of the time made it easier to jail officials than businessmen. [Page 345] (13). “But the ever-present threat of tax fraud charges was part of a process that was gradually turning the Yeltsin-era oligarchs into loyal vassals. Abramovich, long before the others, had been first among them. … After Khodorkovsky’s trial, Russia’s businessmen were all too aware that a criminal case could be opened against them at any time, in which, guilty or not, the odds would be stacked against them from the start. A feudal system was being resurrected, where the owners of the country’s biggest companies, especially those in the strategic resource sector, were beginning to operate as hired managers, working on behalf of the state. They were no more than the guardians, and they kept their businesses by the Kremlin’s grace. … * The signs should have been troubling. But for a long time, it seemed the West didn’t understand the depth of Russia’s transformation. The rise of Putin’s KGB men was evident as they asserted control over the country’s strategic energy sector, and the boards of the biggest state companies. But to Western eyes, the rest of the nation’s business still appeared to be largely independent. Yeltsin-era tycoons like Abramovich were seen as symbols of modernising, pro-Western forces in the Russian economy.” [Pages 345-7] (14). “The city was awash with Russian cash. But instead of Russia being changed through its integration into Western markets, it was Russia that was changing the West. The tycoons coming to London, who the West hoped would become independent driving forces for change, were instead becoming more dependent on the Kremlin. They were vassals of Putin’s increasingly authoritarian and kleptocratic state. Instead of bringing Russia into line with its rules-based system, slowly the West was being corrupted. It was as if a virus was being injected into it. * The path had been smoothed in part, it seemed, when Roman Abramovich bought London’s Chelsea Football Club in the summer of 2003. The£150 million ($240m ) purchase was something of a PR coup. London newspapers marvelled at Abramovich’s private Boeing 767 as he swooped into London to inspect his new club. They devoted copious column inches to his luxury yachts, including the world’s biggest, the Eclipse, a 168-metre floating palace kitted out with two helicopter pads and its own submarine. The secretive oligarch, stubble-faced and dressed simply in jeans, was lauded as he spent lavish funds buying world-famous players for Chelsea, and upgrading its Stamford Bridge stadium. Few asked where his money came from. ‘It’s very good exposure,’ one former Abramovich associate said. ‘With Chelsea, he’ll get three pages in the back of the papers, and there’s nothing bad. No one questions him.’36 Putin’s Kremlin had accurately calculated that the way to gain acceptance in British society was through the country’s greatest love, its national sport. According to Sergei Pugachev, from the start the acquisition had been aimed at building a beachhead for Russian influence in the UK.37 ‘Putin personally told me of his plan to acquire the Chelsea Football Club in order to increase his influence and raise Russia’s profile, not only with the elite but with ordinary British people,’ he said.38 Putin had directed Abramovich to buy the club, claimed a Russian tycoon and a former Abramovich associate. ‘It was a great operation. No questions were asked.’