Russian actors: With libel suits against critics

Status: 23.09.2021 5:44 p.m.

The Russian broadcaster RT sees itself in an information war and brings critics to court in France. RT and other actors instrumentalized the judiciary with strategic lawsuits, say experts.

By Silvia Stöber, tagesschau.de

The French political scientist Nicolas Tenzer is known as a critic of the Russian leadership. In 2018 he wrote on Twitter about the role of the Russian state media RT, Sputnik and Ruptly in the protests of the “yellow vests”. He accused them of fueling the mood. Now RT is suing him for defamation. The hearing will take place in Paris on September 30th. According to Tenzer, there are similar proceedings against civil servants, intellectuals and politicians.

In some cases, judgments have already been made in which RT lost. But the broadcaster, which has a broadcasting license in France and broadcasts in French, is not giving up. A lawsuit was directed against ex-government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux. In January 2019, he had described RT as a propaganda tool financed by the Russian state that had no place in the press room of the Elysée Palace. RT lost the trial in February in the second instance and was sentenced to pay 1000 euros for the cost of the appeal. In the first case, RT had to pay 2000 euros legal fees to Griveaux.

The foreign broadcaster also failed with a lawsuit against the satirical magazine “Charlie Hebdo”. RT had compared it with the propaganda newspaper “Signal”, which the German Wehrmacht published in France during the Second World War. RT tried to enforce a reply, but was rejected three times and had to transfer 6500 euros legal fees to “Charlie Hebdo”. However, the court also rejected Charlie Hebdo’s request to RT to pay 10,000 euros for abuse of procedure.

Lawsuits against books on Putin’s networks

Not only RT tries to take legal action against unpleasant statements. Six people sued the professor of Russian Studies from the University of Rennes II, Cécile Vaissié, and her publisher. They saw themselves denigrated in their book “The Kremlin Networks in France”. The court dismissed the complaints except for one: A portrayal as “Kremlin-friendly” does not meet the criteria of defamation. Vaissié’s assertion that blogger Oliver Berruyer had the will to twist the facts on Russian-Ukrainian questions can no longer be used under threat of a fine of 500 euros. Vaissié and the publisher had to pay the blogger 2000 euros in damages and 2500 euros in legal costs.

In Great Britain, the former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, Catherine Belton, and her publisher HarperCollins are also facing lawsuits over her book “Putin’s People”. The plaintiffs are the Russian businessmen Roman Abramowitsch, Michel Fridman, Petr Awen and Schalwa Tschigirinsky as well as the Rosneft concern. Belton describes the rise of Vladimir Putin and his colleagues from the KGB to the top of Russia and their worldwide connections. HarperCollins plans to “vigorously” defend itself against the lawsuits.

“Reputation laundering” for wealthy clients

The US scientist Karen Dawisha was not granted such support from her publishing house. The British publisher Cambridge University Press rejected a book with evidence about “Putin’s kleptocracy”. As a justification, the publisher referred to the basic assumption of the book, according to which Putin’s power rested on his connections to organized crime. Mail to the author who published the “Economist”. The book was finally published in 2014 by “Simon & Schuster” in the USA, where there are not so strict laws on defamation. It was praised for its in-depth research.

Dawisha, who died in 2018, made it clear at the time that her outrage was directed not against the publisher, but against the climate in Great Britain, which allows “preventive book burning”. In addition to the “plaintiff-friendly libel laws” in Great Britain, according to the “Financial Times”, an entire “industry” comes to the service of wealthy businessmen from Russia. This is what it says in a report by Parliament’s Secret Service Committee on influencing the Brexit vote. According to this, Russians with close ties to Putin have managed to integrate into the business and social scene. The “industry” includes lawyers who do “reputation laundering” for their clients, based on the term “money laundering”.

Protection from censorship

Clients also come from countries like China and Azerbaijan. You can also find them in France: in 2019, the Chinese company Huawei sued the researcher Valérie Niquet as well as a journalist and the production company of the television program “C dans l’air”. There the Asia expert said that “no one would have given a Soviet company the means to monitor all communications in the western world. And that is exactly what is being done with Huawei”. Huawei is under the control of the state and the Chinese Communist Party, which is pursuing a real power strategy. Huawei insisted on being a private corporation. The proceedings are ongoing.

In 2017, Azerbaijan lost a lawsuit against two journalists from France 2 who had described the state on the Caspian Sea as a dictatorship. The criminal court in Nanterre called the action inadmissible. The press law was introduced to prevent political censorship, said the presiding judge.

Instrumentalization of the rule of law

Failure in court does not prevent clients from continuing to sue. This shows the procedure of RTs in France. The sued political scientist Tenzer wrote in an article for “Le Monde” that a state was trying to instrumentalise the judiciary on a large scale. He recalled that the European Parliament and the Council of Europe had already warned against “Strategic Public Lawsuits” (SLAPPs).

Commonly, public figures sued the media for defamation. In the case of RT, this is the other way around, according to Tenzer. RT sees itself in an “information war” together with the Russian government: Just as the Ministry of Defense has weapons available for war in peacetime, RT must be available as an information weapon for times of crisis, explained editor-in-chief Margarita Simonjan in 2013.

The office manager of RT DE, Dinara Toktosunova, said in an Arte interview: “I actually think that the whole world is at a war for information. If you ask yourself where the Third World War is – that is in the information area.”

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