German Federal Court of Justice issues landmark ruling in case brought by Alisher Usmanov against the EU Council - German law firm Rechtsanwälte Steinhöfel
BERLIN, Nov. 2, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Germany's Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled that the refusal by the president of the Hamburg Regional Court to serve court documents in Alisher Usmanov's action against the European Union Council was unlawful. The action concerns statements used by the EU Council to justify sanctions against the billionaire, as well as the publication of his personal data. The BGH ruling paves the way for proceedings in the first-ever defamation action brought against the EU Council over the grounds it gave for imposing individual sanctions.
In 2022, the EU Council, which represents the governments of EU member states, imposed sanctions on Alisher Usmanov. In explaining its decision, the Council relied in part on claims published by the U.S. magazine Forbes that the billionaire was allegedly "Putin's frontman" and "solved his business problems." Mr. Usmanov successfully challenged the publication, and in January 2024 the Hamburg Regional Court prohibited Forbes from disseminating the statements.
In a separate action against the EU Council, filed with the Hamburg court in December 2023, Mr. Usmanov is seeking an injunction prohibiting the publication of the Council's own statements - as set out in the Official Journal of the European Union - which he considers false and defamatory.
For the proceedings to go ahead, the documents relating to the claim must be formally served on the defendant (the EU Council), so that it can review and respond to the claim. The judge hearing the case ordered service of the documents on the EU Council in Belgium. The Hamburg Regional Court's president, who was responsible for the court's administration, refused to arrange service. He made this decision after consulting Germany's Federal Office of Justice, which cited objections from the Federal Foreign Office.
The German newspaper Die Welt had previously reported, citing internal documents, that the federal government had opposed service of the documents on the EU Council, partly on foreign policy grounds. In correspondence concerning the related case against Forbes, a representative of the Federal Foreign Office explained that the aim was to prevent national courts from influencing EU sanctions.
The BGH has now found that the court president had no authority to refuse service. The court expressly stated that the refusal to serve the documents "is unlawful … and violates the applicant's rights." Regarding the recommendation of the Federal Office of Justice, agreed with the Federal Foreign Office, the court further held: "This recommendation is not binding."
On 21 October 2026, the BGH set aside both the refusal and the ruling of the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court that had previously upheld it.
Joachim Steinhöfel, the Hamburg media lawyer representing Mr. Usmanov, said: "Access to the courts is a fundamental right. It does not bend to the foreign policy of the day. The Foreign Office, under the previous government, wanted to keep our client from bringing the EU Council before a German court. The President of the Hamburg Regional Court made that wish binding on his own court: he blocked service of the claim although an independent judge had ordered it. For years, a court president sided with the executive against a judge of his own court. The law gave him no such power. The Federal Court of Justice has now said so and set his decision aside, together with the ruling of the Hamburg Higher Regional Court that had upheld it. A court president does not take instructions from the Foreign Office. Whoever confuses the two undermines the independence of the judiciary."
In September 2026, Mr. Usmanov was removed from the sanctions list by a decision of the EU Council.
Background:
Between 2023 and 2025, dozens of European media outlets and public figures, primarily in Germany, acknowledged that they could not substantiate their own claims about Alisher Usmanov and gave written undertakings to cease unlawfully disseminating them. Mr. Usmanov's lawyers secured 21 court rulings and 109 cease-and-desist declarations from media outlets worldwide, while their joint efforts with the press office resulted in corrections to more than 3,700 publications in 62 countries.
Among the most significant was the court ruling issued in January 2024 prohibiting the dissemination of statements made about Mr. Usmanov by the U.S. magazine Forbes, which had formed a key part of the justification for the EU sanctions imposed on him in 2022. Mr. Usmanov also won cases against the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, the Austrian newspaper Kurier, major German broadcasters RTL and ARD/Westdeutscher Rundfunk, and others.
From 2022, unfounded and politically motivated investigations were conducted against Mr. Usmanov in Germany, and information about them was deliberately disseminated in the international press.
In May 2023, the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court ruled that the search warrants under which the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor General's Office and the Federal Criminal Police Office had acted were unlawful and quashed them, noting the absence even of an initial suspicion that the alleged offence had been committed. In October 2024, after more than two and a half years of investigation, the Frankfurt am Main Public Prosecutor General's Office discontinued its investigation without bringing charges or establishing that a crime had been committed, with Mr. Usmanov's presumption of innocence fully preserved and with no possibility of reopening the investigation against him on the same suspicions. In January 2025, the Munich II Public Prosecutor's Office discontinued, on the same basis, its investigation into two suspected violations of Germany's Foreign Trade and Payments Act related to the EU sanctions restrictions imposed on Mr. Usmanov in 2022 and lifted in September 2026.
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