A German court has banned Mediahuis Luxembourg S.A., the most important media holding in Luxembourg, from referring to Uzbek-born Russian metals and media tycoon Alisher Usmanov as the owner of the luxury superyacht Dilbar.

Mediahuis Luxembourg is the leading publishing company in Luxembourg and owns newspapers and online platforms, including Luxemburger Wort, Luxembourg Times and others.

On May 5, 2025, the Regional Court of Hamburg ruled that the following statement published by Luxembourg Times was false and prohibited its further publication: “The luxury yacht Dilbar was seized in Hamburg’s harbour in 2022 following Russia’s invasion under EU sanctions. The yacht is owned through a company and trust by Uzbek-Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov.” The court found the statement to be in violation of Usmanov’s rights and prohibited its distribution.

In the event of non-compliance with the prohibition, Mediahuis may be fined up to €250,000 for each individual offense. Moreover, if such a fine is not enforceable, it may be replaced with an administrative detention of up to six months per offense, with a maximum of two years in total.

The disputed paragraph from the article has been removed from the Luxembourg Times website.

Since 2023, Usmanov’s legal counsels have obtained ten court rulings and injunctions against media outlets that were attributing property in Germany and other various assets in the country to Usmanov. His lawyers contend in reality, these properties and assets are held in irrevocable trusts and belong to their managers – independent trustees. In addition, some 40 cease-and-desist letters have been served, resulting in hundreds of media outlets withdrawing or correcting their articles.

Joachim Steinhöfel, a lawyer specializing in press law and representing Usmanov, said: “Media outlets have persistently and unlawfully alleged that Mr Usmanov uses family members, shell companies, or trusts to conceal ownership of some assets — claims that are demonstrably false. Long before the ruling on Luxembourg Times, we obtained multiple court injunctions and cease-and-desist declarations prohibiting such defamatory assertions or promises to cease and desist, which were secured by contractual penalties. Despite their legal invalidity and subsequent removal or correction, such articles have nonetheless been cited in investigative files and EU sanctions documents targeting our client.”

 

Usmanov has been on a long-running campaign to challenge accusations that he is “close to Putin” or an “oligarch”, and won numerous defamation cases against the European press making these claims without presenting sufficient justification.

The claims are a problem as the prosecutorial authorities and EU sanctioning bodies have relied on these reports to justify both investigations and sanctions on Usmanov. As Politico reported, many of these claims are based on shoddy, one-source anonymous sources reporting that does not meet normal journalistic ethical standards.

“Decisions derived from such flawed sources lack both legal and moral legitimacy,” Steinhöfel said.

Usmanov and his sister Gulbakhor Ismailova have brought a number of defamation cases between 2023 and 2025 against various European, mainly German, media, which have acknowledged their inability to prove their allegations and subsequently undertook in writing to cease their illegal distribution.

One of Usmanov’s most noteworthy victories was in January 2024 when the US magazine Forbes had to take down several claims against Usmanov that were used to justify the imposition of the EU sanctions on him. Usmanov has also won legal battles against the German newspaper Tagesspiegel, Austria’s Kurier, and major German television and radio channels RTL and ARD/Westdeutscher Rundfunk.

In April 2025, the German newspaper Münchner Merkur took down 15 articles about Usmanov and Ismailova at once. Some of these articles had been used to trigger investigations into Usmanov in Germany, and their content was later included in the EU’s dossiers used to justify sanctions against both Usmanov and Ismailova.

In February 2025, Germany’s leading news agency, dpa, informed its partners in the FRG and international media partners of the retraction of its April 13, 2022, article claiming that Ismailova was presumably the owner of the yacht Dilbar, citing the retraction by the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) of its April 2022 statement on the X platform (formerly Twitter).

The BKA deleted the original post after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Usmanov’s legal counsel and confirmed that it would no longer propagate it. Dpa also advised them to withdraw the publication “to avoid any legal dispute.” The article in question disappeared from the websites of numerous media, such Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Zeit, Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung and others.

In March 2025, Tagesschau, Germany’s longest-running and most-watched television news program, was also forced to remove similar content from its website.