Libel claim against HarperCollins UK dismissed

In the UK, the High Court has dismissed a libel claim brought against HarperCollins and author Tom Burgis over the 2020 book Kleptopia: How dirty money is conquering the world (HarperCollins), reports the Bookseller.

The claim was brought by Kazakh mining giant Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC), which argued that parts of the book would be understood by an ordinary reader as claiming the ENRC had three men murdered to protect its business interests, or that there were reasonable grounds for suspicion.

At a preliminary hearing, the judge ruled those parts of the book did not refer to the corporation and dismissed the claim. ENRC must pay both sides’ costs and was denied leave to appeal.

A HarperCollins spokesperson said the publisher was ‘delighted that this egregious case of lawfare has been dismissed’.

‘It is grossly unfair that yet again HarperCollins and our author have had to risk substantial legal costs and personal liability defending public interest journalism,’ the spokesperson said. ‘This threat came from a company which the judge correctly described as “a legal device”, which shamelessly claimed that it, not the oligarchs named in the book as the people who had secrets to protect, had been libelled.’

In November last year, a UK high court judge ruled that numerous passages in Catherine Belton’s book Putin’s People, were defamatory of Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, while in a separate libel claim by oil company Rosneft, the judge found three of the four contested passages were not defamatory of the company and will not proceed.

Category: International news