Court Rules in Favor of Vladimir Kokorev in El Mundo Defamation Case

Online, May 23, 2012 (Newswire.com) - The Russian Legal Information Agency, RAPSI, disclosed earlier this month that Moscow's Lublisky City Court has ruled in favor of the plaintiff, Vladimir Kokorev. The Russian citizen who has been residing in Spain for the past 10 years, filed the defamation suit against one of Spain's largest and oldest news publications, El Mundo, for unsubstantiated allegations of money laundering it made towards him in an article it published in 2009 titled "A Russian couple suspected of money laundering for Teodoro Obiang" ("Investigan a una pareja de rusos por lavar dinero para Teodoro Obiang").

In the article, El Mundo, made various claims relating to the Kokorev's and their involvement in an alleged 26 million Euro money-laundering scheme for the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang, and his family, by purchasing real estate with funds Kokorev received via a Santander account in the name of a company called "Kalunga". The article, however, does not conclude that these purchases were equal to the amount in question, nor does it demonstrate any definitive correlation between the two.

During the Moscow hearings it was determined that Kalunga was in fact a shipping company once owned by Kokorev and that these funds were acquired in accordance with signed agreements Kalunga had with the government of Equatorial Guinea for the maintenance and repair of a number of shipping vessels.

RAPSI also reports that among the documents provided to the court by Kokorev was a certificate issued by the Spanish Police establishing that he is not, and has not in the past, been accused in any criminal proceedings and is not suspected of any wrongdoings.

The court resolved that the information published by El Mundo was both false and damaging to the reputation of Vladimir Kokorev and ordered Unidad Editorial Internet SLU, the internet publisher of www.elmundo.es, to publish a full retraction on it's website and to refute the allegations it made in respect to Vladimir Kokorev and his wife Yulia Kokoreva. A similar order was given to Infox, another online Spanish news site, which had also disseminated the false information.

At time of going to press neither party has carried out the orders as directed by the court. In fact, just two weeks after the Lubliskly ruling, two other Spanish newspapers, El Pais and La Provincia, chose to unilaterally ignore the decision of the court by publishing the same unsubstantiated allegations, citing anonymous sources in an effort to support their claims.