The Economist will answer for corruption in Russia
Gennady Timchenko, co-owner of the Swiss oil trader Gunvor and Bank Rossiya, has filed a libel suit against The Economist magazine with the High Court in London. Mr Timchenko worked with Vladimir Putin at St Petersburg Mayor's Office in the early 1990s. He is co-founder of the judo club Yavara-Neva fund of which Vladimir Putin is the honorary president. In November last year The Economist carried an article about rampant corruption in Russia. The article mentioned Gennady Timchenko and the company Gunvor which has in recent years emerged as one of the leading oil traders in the world.
The Economist article, only a small part of which was devoted to Gunvor, reproduced some claims which the businessman had already challenged in an open letter to the Financial Times in May of last year. In that letter Gennady Timchenko stressed that he was not as close with Vladimir Putin as the press claimed and that Gunvor's rapid growth had nothing to do with his political connections. For his part, Mr Putin always described as groundless the claims that he was Gunvor's owner or beneficiary.
"Time and again the media draw the wrong conclusion that Mr Putin and I are ‘close' in order to bolster their conspiracy theories", the businessman claims. He says he personally had no part in the creation of the company which got a lucrative quota of oil export through the port of St Petersburg from City Hall in the early 1990s when Mr Putin worked there. According to British laws, the burden of proof that the claim is false lies with the respondent, that is The Economist in our case.
Based on the materials of Kommersant and the BBC News Service.
Dmitry Polonsky