Münchner Merkur: German Newspaper Retracts Claims that Usmanov – Affiliated Company Tried to ‘Smuggle Iron Ore’ from Ukraine into Russia

The German newspaper Münchner Merkur has deleted an article which claimed that a company with ties to sanctioned billionaire Alisher Usmanov tried to “smuggle hidden supplies of raw materials” from Ukraine into Russia to support the latter’s military campaign.

The article, which cited claims put forward by Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), was removed after the newspaper was approached by Usmanov’s lawyers, according to a statement from the businessman’s press service.

The newspaper’s publisher, Münchener Zeitungs-Verlag Holding, signed a cease-and-desist declaration pledging to refrain from disseminating a number of “wrong factual statements” that appeared in the now deleted article, the press service said.

“The article was a shameful example of journalistic diligence being compromised in order to publish a conspiracy theory that fits the popular ‘Russian, rich and guilty’ narrative,” Usmanov’s media rights lawyer, Joachim Steinhöfel, said in the statement.

“It is regrettable when a newspaper almost makes a fool of itself by claiming obvious nonsense, like the allegation that Metalloinvest could ship its own products into Ukraine in order to illegally smuggle them back to Russia.

“No professional journalist would have published fairy tales like this,” Steinhöfel said.

Usmanov’s legal representatives say they have so far secured around 30 cease-and-desist declarations and nine court injunctions prohibiting European media from spreading false statements about the billionaire.

In February 2022, Ukrainian authorities seized approximately 160,000 metric tons of iron ore belonging to the Russia-based metals producer Metalloinvest, where Usmanov is an indirect shareholder through the holding company USM.

At the end of that year, the SBU confirmed the seizure and said Metalloinvest had been storing iron ore in “secret Russian warehouses” in Ukraine with plans to export the goods into Russia for use by the military-industrial complex.

In an official statement, Metalloinvest rejected the SBU’s claims and said the iron ore had been in transit through Ukraine to customers in Europe and Asia when it was illegally seized.

The company plans to take legal action in the event that Kyiv ultimately confiscates the iron ore, sources told Reuters in August.

Ukraine’s Supreme Anti-Corruption Court is set to decide on the fate of the iron ore this week when it hears a lawsuit filed by the country’s justice ministry seeking to confiscate the assets.

As followed by EU Today, Usmanov has secured a number of legal victories against media outlets which failed to substantiate their statements about him after his lawyers challenged them as false.

Earlier this year, Usmanov won a case against Forbes magazine, which published a claim that the billionaire had “fronted for Putin” and “solved his business problems” in an article that became a key part of his EU sanctions reasoning.

In 2023, a court banned an Austrian newspaper from making the claim that Usmanov was “Putin’s favourite oligarch, a title bestowed upon him by Putin himself.”

Usmanov, a metals and telecoms magnate, was among the first billionaires to be sanctioned by the EU and other Western governments in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The EU recently extended individual sanctions against him and more than 2,200 individuals and entities for another six months until March 2025.