The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Russian businessman in law fight over Trump file
Boss of IT company demands damages over spy’s dossier allegations
A Russian venture capitalist wants “very substantial” damages after allegations in a former British spy’s 2016 dossier about alleged links between Donald Trump and Russia suggested he was involved in “cyber-crime”, a judge has been told.
Lawyers representing Aleksej Gubarev, who runs an IT infrastructure solutions business, have told Mr Justice Warby that Christopher Steele’s dossier made “grave” allegations “as to knowing involvement” in the hacking of the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election.
Mr Gubarev, and a company he runs called Webzilla, took legal action after BuzzFeed published the “Steele Dossier” in January 2017, the month Mr Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States.
He says he has been defamed by Mr Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence, a London-based corporate intelligence consultancy co-founded by Mr Steele.
Orbis and Mr Steele are fighting the claim at a High Court hearing in London, which began yesterday.
Andrew Caldecott QC, who leads Mr Gubarev’s legal team, said the dossier consisted of memoranda, written by Mr Steele, whose “general subject matter” was the relationship between Mr Trump, his election campaign team and Russia.
“One memorandum within the Steele Dossier named the claimants, making grave allegations as to knowing involvement in the hacking of the computer systems of the United States Democratic National Committee in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election,” he told the judge. “Needless to say, once published, the Steele Dossier, or the gist of its allegations, went viral.”
Mr Caldecott said the allegation, in one memorandum, was an “allegation of guilt” by someone said to be a former British intelligence official.
He added: “The suggestion that Mr Gubarev and his companies were knowingly using their servers for cybercrime – created, we submit, an obviously likelihood of serious financial loss.”
The dossier had been commissioned by a Washington DC consultancy acting for a law firm, the judge heard.
But Mr Caldecott said the “ultimate client” had been the “Democratic National Committee and/or Hillary Clinton’s presidential election campaign”.
Mr Caldecott said there was a “practical ceiling” of about £325,000 on defamation damages awards.
He said there was “no suggestion” the allegations against Mr Gubarev and Webzilla were true.
He said Buzz Feed had apologised and “redacted” the names of Mr Gubarev and Webzilla from their website.
And, he said, Mr Gubarev was not suggesting that Orbis and Mr Steele had been “malicious”.
Mr Caldecott said the “central question” was whether Orbis and Mr Steele were “responsible in law” for the publication of the Steele dossier by Buzz Feed.
He said Mr Gubarev’s case was that they were.
Mr Steele disagrees and says the claim should be dismissed.
Gavin Millar QC, who leads Mr Steele’s legal team, said Buzz Feed’s publication of a “confidential memorandum” was “unauthorised”.
He said neither Orbis nor Mr Steele intended the memorandum at the centre of the case to be made public, did not provide it to Buzz Feed and could not have foreseen that anyone would acquire or publish a copy.