Prestigious British law firms have been complicit in helping oligarchs prevent legitimate media scrutiny of their activities, MPs have been told.
Two journalists, who have recently been on the receiving end of legal action over their reporting on oligarchs, told MPs on the Foreign Affairs Committee of the tactics typically used by law firms acting for powerful interests. They said this had pushed up insurance premiums to provide legal cover and many publishers had taken fright over the issue.
Tom Burgis, a Financial Times journalist, named a number of firms, including Carter-Ruck and Schillings, and told MPs of the type of letters which were often sent.
“In my experience they are often written in a tone of righteous indignation where the journalist is said to have behaved appallingly,” he said, in answer to a question from MP Tom Tugendhat, the chair of the committee hearing a session into the “use of strategic lawsuits against public participation”, also known as SLAPPs.
“What you are threatened with – and I have spent a long time trying to work out why journalists recoil [from covering some of these issues] – and it’s because you risk humiliation in the public square. It works on that basis, as well as the massive threat of costs.”
Catherine Belton, another journalist who appeared alongside Burgis, agreed with Tugendhat when he asked if British courts were being used “as tools of intimidation”.
However, she said that the invasion of Ukraine had led to a sea-change.
“The coverage of oligarchs is as different as night from day. Before, it was almost as if there was a reign of terror. The oligarchs were deploying all these reputation managers,” she said, adding that it was “never heard” how Roman Abramovich had been “an enabler of Putin.”
Last year, Abramovich settled his libel claim against Belton over her bestselling book Putin’s People – described in the Guardian as “the essential book to understand the Russian president” – after an agreement was reached.
Earlier this month, an attempt by a Kazakh mining giant to sue Burgis for allegedly claiming it ordered the murders of three men was was stopped by a judge who said the case was flawed because readers would know that only individuals can commit murder, rather than corporations.
