Alisher Usmanov Wins Legal Case Against Luxembourg's Largest Media Group, Says Law Firm Rechtsanwälte Steinhöfel
PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- A German court has banned Mediahuis Luxembourg S.A., the most important media holding in Luxembourg, from referring to Alisher Usmanov as the owner of the yacht Dilbar.
Mediahuis Luxembourg is the leading publishing company in Luxembourg, with such assets as newspapers and online platforms, including Luxemburger Wort, Luxembourg Times and others. On May 5, 2025, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled that the following statement published by Luxembourg Times was false and prohibited its further publication: 'The luxury yacht Dilbar was seized in Hamburg's harbour in 2022 following Russia's invasion under EU sanctions. The yacht is owned through a company and trust by Uzbek-Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov.'
The court found the statement to be in violation of Mr. Usmanov's rights and prohibited its distribution.
In the event of non-compliance with the prohibition, Mediahuis may be fined up to €250,000 for each individual offense. Moreover, if such a fine is not enforceable, it may be replaced with an administrative detention of up to six months per offense, with a maximum of two years in total.
The disputed paragraph from the article has been removed from the Luxembourg Times website.
Since 2023, Mr. Usmanov's legal counsels have obtained 10 court rulings and injunctions against media outlets that were attributing property in the Federal Republic of Germany and other various assets in the country to Mr. Usmanov. In reality, these properties and assets are held in irrevocable trusts and belong to their managers – independent trustees. In addition, some 40 cease-and-desist letters have been served, resulting in hundreds of media outlets withdrawing or correcting their articles.
Joachim Steinhöfel, a lawyer specializing in press law and representing Mr. Usmanov, said: 'Media outlets have persistently and unlawfully alleged that Mr. Usmanov uses family members, shell companies, or trusts to conceal ownership of some assets — claims that are demonstrably false. Long before the ruling on Luxembourg Times, we obtained multiple court injunctions and cease-and-desist declarations prohibiting such defamatory assertions or promises to cease and desist, which were secured by contractual penalties.
Despite their legal invalidity and subsequent removal or correction, such articles have nonetheless been cited in investigative files and EU sanctions documents targeting our client.
The fact that prosecutorial authorities and EU sanctioning bodies rely on discredited and judicially banned media content raises serious concerns of procedural impropriety. It constitutes a clear abuse of discretion and a potential violation of due process rights. Decisions derived from such flawed sources lack both legal and moral legitimacy.'
On the defamation cases brought by Alisher Usmanov and Gulbakhor Ismailova
Between 2023 and 2025, a number of European, mainly German, media outlets and public figures acknowledged their inability to prove their allegations against Alisher Usmanov and his sister, Gulbakhor Ismailova, and subsequently undertook in writing to cease their illegal distribution.
One of the most noteworthy is the ruling in January 2024 prohibiting several claims made by the U.S. magazine Forbes against Mr. Usmanov that were used to justify the imposition of the EU sanctions on him. Usmanov has also won legal battles against many other outlets, including the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, Austria's Kurier, and major German television and radio channels RTL and ARD/Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
In April 2025, the German newspaper Münchner Merkur took down 15 articles on Alisher Usmanov and Gulbakhor Ismailova at once. Some of these articles had been used to trigger investigations into Mr. Usmanov in Germany, and their content was later included in the EU's sanctions dossiers against both Mr. Usmanov and Ms. Ismailova.
In February 2025, Germany's leading news agency, dpa, informed its partners in the FRG and international media partners of the retraction of its April 13, 2022, article claiming that Ms. Ismailova was presumably the owner of the yacht Dilbar, citing the retraction by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) of its April 2022 statement on the X platform (formerly Twitter). (The BKA deleted the original post after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Mr. Usmanov's legal counsel and confirmed that it would no longer propagate it.) Dpa also advised them to withdraw the publication 'to avoid any legal dispute.' The article in question disappeared from the websites of numerous media, such Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Zeit, Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung and others.
In March 2025, Tagesschau, Germany's longest-running and most-watched television news program, was also forced to remove similar content from its website.
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