ENRC slapped down in Kleptopia case
Kleptopia author Tom Burgis and his publishers HarperCollins have won a resounding victory at London's High Court. At the conclusion of a preliminary hearing on Wednesday 2 March, Mr Justice Nicklin dismissed a libel case brought by Kazakh mining company Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation (ENRC) and ordered the company to pay both sides' costs.
Burgis' book traces the flow of dirty money around the world. Chapters focusing on ENRC detailed a series of corrupt mining deals in Africa, none of which were the subject of this libel suit. Instead, ENRC's claim focused on the book’s description of the deaths of three former employees, at least two of whom were whistleblowers.
Mr Justice Nicklin ruled that the a reader of Kleptopia might think the book suggested the deaths were suspicious, but there was no allegation that ENRC had ordered the killings to protect its business interests. In his ruling he said:
"Only individuals can carry out acts of murder or poisoning, only individuals can be motivated to do so to protect their business interests.”
Speaking outside court, Tom Burgis said that "a war has been going on for a long time and that's the war against democracy waged by kleptocrats, those who rule through corruption, whether that be in central Africa or in the former Soviet Union."
Concern about the abuse of the legal system by individuals with enormous personal wealth has been growing in the UK, which is a favoured location for launching SLAPP suits. At the end of 2021, a libel case brought against another HarperCollins author, Catherine Belton, by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was settled out of court.
In January, the House of Commons debated abuse of the legal system and the need for an anti-SLAPP law, in part informed by work done by the UK working group of CASE, the Coalition against SLAPPs in Europe - an effort that Blueprint is part of.
In the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a British MP Bob Seeley named and shamed in parliament UK legal firms who have been involved in SLAPP cases. There are already signs that sanctions imposed by the UK on Russian and Belorussian individuals with government links may be having wider knock-on effects on London’s lucrative reputation management industry.
Today’s news was excellent news for Tom Burgis and HarperCollins, but it is not quite the end of the story. ENRC, which is a serial SLAPP litigant, is separately suing Burgis and the FT over a related feature article and podcast. A hearing in that case is scheduled for the end of March.