- Before I talk about the scandal around Yevgeny Prigozhin’s
defamation case against Eliot Higgins, I want to lay out the steps a
journalist has to go through before she writes about a Russian oligarch
employing a mercenary army to loot the world.
- First of all she has to decide
to be a journalist, to consciously choose to do a job where there is an
ever-more-limited supply of organisations able or willing to pay a decent
amount for her time.
- Secondly, she has to decide to
investigate financial crime, perhaps the most moribund corner of this dying
profession, instead of something more clickable.
- Thirdly, she has to focus on
investigating financial crime in the kind of countries readers don’t much
care about – poor, remote ones where people speak different languages from us
– instead of writing about Donald Trump. That’s before she does a stroke of
work on this particular investigation.
- When the investigation begins
we get to step four: she has to find people willing to talk to her, to expose
the secrets of a man with his own army, who has exulted in the fact that his
people murdered a supposed deserter with a sledgehammer.
- Fifthly, she needs to find his
financial documents, to prise them out of the world’s tax havens, to
interpret them and to explain their secrets in plain language.
- Sixthly, she needs to find an
editor willing to publish the piece. Take a look at today’s papers: most
editors aren’t.
- Every single one of those steps
is sufficiently large to deter any sensible person from taking it. No one can
be blamed for looking at this serious of obstacles, and thinking: “Nah.” But,
fortunately, there are some journalists out there who decide not to be
sensible, and who choose their subjects not because they’re profitable,
popular or easy, but because they’re important.
- On to step seven: when she’s
finished her investigation, but before she can publish a word, she needs to
persuade her publication’s lawyers that not only can she back up everything
she’s reported, but that the subject of her investigation won’t bring
defamation proceedings anyway. To avoid ruinous legal proceedings, simply
telling the truth isn’t enough: you can be as easily bankrupted by the
expense of defending an accurate article as an inaccurate one.
- And that brings us to step
eight: can she persuade her editors to stake not just their own jobs but the
careers of all of their colleagues on this one article? Or will they say, as
one once said to me, this just isn’t a big enough deal for us to take the
risk.
 | The Wagner Group - Prigozhin's mercenary army - image from Guardian newspaper
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- If you ever wonder why we hear
so little about the wrongdoing of the oligarchs, this is the reason. Sensible
people don’t take these risks. The deck isn’t merely stacked in the
oligarchs’ favour: they’re being dealt an extra hand to play with, and a
whole hill of chips. I’m not asking for sympathy, just explaining how it is.
The fun, the camaraderie, the sense that we’re pushing back against
entrenched injustice, they all make up for the downsides of writing about
financial mega-crime for a living. But they don’t make it easy.
- We now know that everything
Bellingcat reported about Prigozhin, and which Higgins tweeted about, was
true. Prigozhin did run the Wagner Group, his mercenary army. And we know
this because he has boasted about it: he has opened an office building in St
Petersburg with Wagner written on it, and he has openly recruited for new
mercenaries in Russian prisons.
- This wasn’t a war crimes
tribunal. Prigozhin was in Russia, merrily spending the money his mercenaries
were earning for him, using some of it to sue perhaps Britain’s best
investigative journalist
 | | Eliot Higgins - aged 44 - founder of Bellingcat |
- There is no suggestion that
Prigozhin’s British lawyers knew he was lying at the time he contacted them.
But one way or another, even with all the facts of Higgins’s investigation
before them, they were prepared to put their name to letters accusing Higgins
of causing harm to their client’s reputation.And worse, they could do so
because the UK’s Treasury let them, even though Prigozhin was sanctioned, and
could not transfer the money that paid their fees without official
permission. Lawyers are particularly gifted at explaining why it’s not only
reasonable but also right for them to be allowed to do whatever it is they
already want to do, and I am sure Prigozhin’s argued forcefully that their
client, like anyone, has the right to legal representation. But should this
have extended to the right to bring a libel case against Eliot Higgins over
some tweets he didn’t like? This wasn’t a war crimes tribunal. Prigozhin
wasn’t on trial for his life or his liberty, sitting in a cell in The Hague.
He was in Russia, merrily spending the money his mercenaries were earning for
him, using some of it to sue perhaps Britain’s best investigative journalist
for writing the truth.
- Since the autumn, lawyers have
had a “general
licence” to take fees from sanctioned individuals in Russia and
Belarus without having to check with officials first. But before that, officials
from the Treasury’s Office for Financial Sanctions Implementation had to make
a decision on whether to allow lawyers to be paid by any sanctioned
individuals. There have been examples
of commercial litigation having been adjourned because the lawyers
could not be paid, so we know officials have been willing to exercise those
powers.
- But in this case they did not.
Officials from the Treasury’s Office for Financial Sanctions Implementation
listened to his lawyers’ arguments, and then had to make a judgement about
priorities. How would justice be served: by enforcing the sanctions intended
to stop Prigozhin using his wealth, or by allowing him to use that money to
sue a journalist? In the event, they sided with the oligarch, despite
everything that was already revealed about how he earned his fortune,
including in Bellingcat’s own spectacularly-well-documented reporting.
- This is a disgrace. Over the
last year, we have heard endless British politicians talk about how important
it is that Britain stops being a home for kleptocrats and their wealth. Now
we can see if they were being serious, by how they respond.
- The Solicitors Regulation
Authority and the Bar Standards Board must both, as a matter of urgency,
examine the conduct of Prigozhin’s lawyers. Their respective codes of conduct
lay out straightforwardly how lawyers must behave. I’m not accusing anyone of
anything but, on the face of the facts as we know them, we need to know when
it became clear that Prigozhin was lying before we can be sure all the
lawyers involved acted in the interests of justice.
- And an independent enquiry must
look into how the OFSI came to its decision to allow the money to move into
those lawyers’ accounts, and must publish its findings. The OFSI is a new
organisation, established post-Brexit to manage the UK’s independent
sanctions policy, and inexperienced people can be forgiven for making
mistakes. But after this, even more than before, how can anyone trust the
Treasury to act in the interests of everyone, rather than of those able to
afford the most expensive lawyers, unless we can see its justification for
this – on the face of it – grotesque decision?
- Britain is globally notorious
for our willingness to shield oligarchs from other countries, to help them
move and increase their wealth, and this has been highly profitable to a
decent-sized chunk of our professional classes for decades. But now is the
moment when the government must show whose side it’s on: that of the
oligarchs, or that of their victims. No amount of chat about standing with
Ukraine, and no number of photo opportunities with Volodymyr Zelensky, will
disguise the truth if it makes the wrong choices now.
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