A British judge has found that a book that claimed Russian-Israeli oligarch Roman Abramovich bought London's Chelsea soccer club on the Kremlin's orders as part of a plot to gain influence in the United Kingdom were defamatory after he sued for libel.
In her critically acclaimed 2020 book, British journalist Catherine Belton describes Vladimir Putin's rise to power and how many former intelligence agents gained positions of wealth and influence after he secured control of the Kremlin in 1999.
Among the claims in Putin's People: How The KGB Took Back Russia And Then Took On The West is that Putin has used corrupt money to spread influence abroad, including Abramovich's purchase of Chelsea in 2003.
Judge Amanda Tipples was asked to determine the "natural and ordinary" meaning of the allegations about Abramovich in a first-round libel claim. She said on November 24 that the court was only deciding on the meaning of the passages and not whether or not the allegations made in the book were true or not.
The passages will form the basis of a defamation trial, where the former Financial Times Moscow correspondent and publisher will have to defend their use.
In the ruling, Tipples found that readers of the book would understand Abramovich to be "under the control of President Vladimir Putin and, on the directions of President Putin and the Kremlin, he has had to make the fortune from his business empire available for the use of President Putin and his regime."
"The claimant has...
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