German federal court clears procedural hurdle in Alisher Usmanov’s EU Council lawsuit
Germany’s Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has ruled that a lower-instance Hamburg court president unlawfully blocked Alisher Usmanov’s lawsuit against the Council of the European Union, his legal team said on Monday. The decision removes a procedural obstacle to his challenge over statements published to justify sanctions against him.
Usmanov filed the action at Hamburg Regional Court back in December 2023, seeking an injunction against statements in the EU’s Official Journal that he considered false and defamatory, as well as challenging the publication of personal data, his lawyers said.
A judge ordered the documents to be served on the Council in Belgium, but the court’s president refused to arrange service after consulting Germany’s Federal Office of Justice, which cited objections from the Foreign Office, according to the lawyers’ statement seen by Kursiv Uzbekistan.
«Access to the courts is a fundamental right. It does not bend to the foreign policy of the day,» Usmanov’s lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel said.
The BGH overturned that refusal and a higher regional court decision upholding it, the statement said. The federal court found that the court president lacked authority to block service and that the federal office’s recommendation was not binding.
Read more: Hamburg court rules in favour of Alisher Usmanov in case against FAZ
Disputed grounds for sanctions
The EU imposed sanctions on the Uzbek-born businessman in February 2022, following the outbreak of the Ukraine war. The rationale behind the sanctioning included a Forbes publication that claimed Usmanov was President Vladimir Putin’s ‘frontman’ and ‘solved his business problems’.
Usmanov successfully challenged those allegations, and his lawyers confirmed that the Hamburg Regional Court prohibited Forbes from repeating them in January 2024.
The EU Council removed Usmanov from its sanctions list on 22 September 2026. His lawyers say the injunction claim remains relevant because the earlier statements remain publicly accessible.
Read more: Usmanov wins another legal battle Against German media
Separately, German prosecutors closed a money-laundering investigation in November 2024 following a €4m payment.
