A Russian businessman has successfully taken legal action to ban a book in Germany about the Kremlin and its spy agencies, in a case that freedom of speech groups have described as an alarming attack on public interest reporting.
Two London-based Russian journalists, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, say they interviewed the businessman, Alexey Kozlov, for their 2019 book The Compatriots because of his family’s historical connections to Soviet intelligence. He has now won a court injunction against the book’s publisher.
Index on Censorship said in a statement that it felt “intimidatory tactics” were being used to silence critics of the Russian regime living abroad. Its statement was backed by 15 other freedom of expression groups including PEN International and Article 19 Europe.
Kozlov claims the book defames him and he says allegations that he owes his career in finance to help from the KGB are untrue. Soldatov and Borogan say the disputed passages in the book come from Kozlov himself when they met him in Moscow in 2018 and spoke to him on the record over three and a half hours.
Last month, Hamburg’s district court agreed to Kozlov’s petition and imposed a temporary ban on sales of the English-language ebook of The Compatriots in Germany. The ruling excludes already printed copies “for reasons of proportionality”. Kozlov’s lawyers have written to the book’s US publisher, Hachette, and demanded that all books worldwide are withdrawn from circulation.
The publisher’s appeal against the Hamburg ruling is due to be heard on 8 December. Hachette says it was surprised when Kozlov filed his legal complaint three years after the book was published, and the journalists have recordings of their interviews with Kozlov “made with his consent”. Hachette has agreed to correct two minor errors: where Kozlov studied in the US and the year he went back to Moscow.
Soldatov has claimed the case is intended to destroy his and Borogan’s reputation “as people who know things about Russia’s security services”. He said: “The goal is to stop us writing for western media publications and to halt our journalistic activities.”
Russia has stepped up measures against critics at home and abroad, and at around the same time as the injunction was filed the Kremlin declared Soldatov to be a “foreign agent”. This means he has to declare to the authorities anything he spends and place a notice above articles and posts saying he is an “agent”. His books can only be sold in a special package marked 18-plus.
Prosecutors have charged Soldatov with discrediting the armed forces, under 2022 media laws banning criticism of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. They have frozen his Russian bank accounts.
Soldatov said Kozlov’s injunction felt like part of a wider trend of Russians litigating in Germany. In the 1980s, Vladimir Putin worked as an undercover KGB foreign intelligence officer in Dresden, in the communist East Germany.
Kozlov moved to Berlin in 2017 after spending four years in a Moscow jail after a business dispute. His step-great-grandfather was the celebrated Soviet spy Nahum Eitingon, who organised Trotsky’s murder on Stalin’s orders, recruiting the Spanish killer, Ramón Mercader.
Eitingon’s stepdaughter Zoya Zarubina, Kozlov’s grandmother, also served in the KGB. His grandmother’s father, Vasily Zarubin, was a Soviet general who worked during the second world war as Stalin’s undercover intelligence chief in America.
Kozlov insists he has nothing to do with Russian espionage and got high-profile jobs in banking on his own merits. Shortly before the Ukraine invasion he travelled to Moscow to present the Russian edition of a book about Zarubin and he spoke about Zarubin at a press conference.
Writing on Facebook last month, Kozlov accused Soldatov and Borogan of unprofessional behaviour. He said he had read the first 100 pages of The Compatriots in 2019 and had only come across the references to himself recently after finding them on Wikipedia. “I was shocked,” he wrote, adding that he sought legal redress because the “distorted” account amounted to lies and slander.
Kozlov said he had only ever wanted the authors to admit their “errors”. He said he tried to meet them “over a friendly glass of wine” but did not get a reply. “I just want that they apologise and say ‘OK, so we made a mistake’,” he said.
Index on Censorship has said it is extremely concerned by the case. It said Soldatov was on Russia’s wanted list, and that the injunction on what it called a work of public interest reporting followed the authors’ “vocal opposition to the war in Ukraine”.
It said: “This legal action is aimed not only at further intimidating and isolating Soldatov and Borogan but at threatening their reputation in the exile community. It also sends a message to other Russian dissidents to be quiet or risk being subject to the same intimidatory tactics. We will continue to monitor this alarming act of legal harassment and believe the injunction should be lifted without delay.”
Kozlov’s lawyer, Walter Scheuerl, said his client did not want to ban the book or intimidate anybody, and he had acted merely to stop the spread of “false and reputation-damaging allegations” and to protect his “personal rights”. Kozlov was himself the victim of harassment, the lawyer said, adding: “It is wrong to insinuate that the Russian state has anything to do with the proceedings.”
In 2021, several oligarchs including Roman Abramovich sued the Financial Times’ former Moscow bureau chief Catherine Belton over her acclaimed book Putin’s People. Abramovich settled his libel claim. Several changes were agreed. Abramovich is now under UK, EU and US sanctions.
Soldatov said: “After Catherine Belton, it became more difficult to publish a book about wealthy Russians because of the potential legal costs, despite the fact Catherine defended her work. In our case the idea is similar. It’s very smart to attack the publisher. The objective is to stop the flow of information.”
Borogan added: “It feels ironic. A proud descendant of Stalin’s top assassin of political opponents abroad, who now himself lives in Germany but who can travel to Moscow, is trying to ban our book about Russian intelligence operations directed against émigrés.”