Alisher Usmanov wins Hamburg court case over key allegations used to justify sanctions against his sister - Rechtsanwälte Steinhöfel

HAMBURG, Germany , Nov. 19, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hamburg Regional Court has handed down a landmark judgment on Alisher Usmanov's claim against a German individual who stated on Facebook that Mr Usmanov had allegedly used his sister to conceal assets in Swiss bank accounts. In 2022, similar assertions formed part of the rationale behind the EU and UK sanctions imposed against her.

Saodat Narzieva was included in the EU and UK sanctions lists in April 2022. The grounds for this inclusion were statements in the British newspaper The Guardian and on the websites of the OCCRP investigative journalists' consortium, reporting that Alisher Usmanov had allegedly transferred "significant assets" to Saodat Narzieva and that she "held 27 Swiss bank accounts linked to her brother".

Representatives of Alisher Usmanov and Saodat Narzieva denied these statements, which were subsequently refuted and later retracted or corrected by a number of media outlets. It was later shown that the narrative relied on a misinterpretation of internal and incomplete Credit Suisse account data and on erroneous readings of the "Suisse Secrets" leak. In September 2022, the EU Council removed Saodat Narzieva from the sanctions list, implicitly acknowledging that the factual basis for the measures was incorrect; however, the UK sanctions against her remain in force.

In September 2025, a German citizen published a post on his Facebook page that, among other things, contained the statement that Alisher Usmanov "used his sister, Saodat Narzieva, as the beneficial owner of accounts at Credit Suisse". After the author refused to remove the post, Alisher Usmanov filed a lawsuit. The Hamburg Regional Court found this statement to be unlawful and infringing Mr Usmanov's rights.

Pursuant to the judgment, failure to comply with the injunction may give rise to an administrative fine of up to EUR 250,000.00 to be imposed by the court, or to coercive detention of up to six months for each instance of infringement and up to two years in aggregate. The disputed Facebook post has now been removed.

In recent years, a number of media outlets from the USA, the UK, Ireland and Germany have voluntarily retracted similar statements about Alisher Usmanov and Saodat Narzieva.

"This is not the first time, that an EU court has confirmed that accusations against Mr Usmanov or his relatives are not backed up by facts," said media lawyer Joachim Steinhöfel. "Sanctions and reputations should not be built on journalistic errors. The Hamburg court's judgment, together with the fact that the EU Council has already removed Ms Narzieva from its sanctions list, shows that restrictive measures against her were introduced on false grounds and should now be lifted in all other jurisdictions where they remain in force."