The owners of Alfa Bank sued BuzzFeed over the “Trump dossier”

The owners of Alfa Group, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan, filed a lawsuit against BuzzFeed for publishing a document containing an analysis of relations between Donald Trump and Russia, reports the Associated Press .

The lawsuit was filed in a Manhattan court, the plaintiffs did not specify the damage they suffered, the defendants are the publication itself, its editor-in-chief Ben Smith, a correspondent and two editors.

The publication's representative, Matt Mythenhall, considered that since the data published by BuzzFeed is the subject of an investigation, the information is undoubtedly of public interest. He called the lawsuit itself an attempt to intimidate the publication.

The lawsuit stems from a January publication by BuzzFeed , which also contained a report prepared by a former British intelligence agent. The document said, among other things, that Fridman, Aven and Khan gave Putin advice on foreign policy, and Alfa Group had dirt on Putin regarding his business activities in the 1990s.

It was alleged that Oleg Govorun, the current head of the Presidential Directorate for Social and Economic Cooperation with the CIS Countries, and in the 1990s, the deputy head of Alfa Bank’s department for interaction with state security agencies, brought Vladimir Putin cash.

It was also alleged that the FSB blackmailed Trump, who at the time of publication of the report had already won the US presidential election but had not yet taken office, with compromising information. Mentioned, in particular, was an alleged episode with prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz Cartlton hotel , whom Trump asked to urinate on the bed on which the 44th US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle were sleeping.

BuzzFeed acknowledged that much of the information it published was unverified and supposedly unverifiable. Trump called the data presented “fake news,” and Putin said that “those who order such fakes against Mr. Trump, fabricate and use them in the political struggle are worse than prostitutes, they have no moral restrictions.”