German law firm Rechtsanwälte Steinhöfel has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Slovak news outlet Denník N, demanding it correct an article published on 11 March 2026 that contains multiple factual allegations about Russian businessman Alisher Usmanov – statements that European courts have already ruled unlawful.
The article in question appeared one day before the European Commission was due to decide on extending its existing sanctions regime and included an extended passage on Usmanov in the context of reporting on alleged Slovak government lobbying to remove two Russian nationals from the EU sanctions list. Usmanov’s lawyer, Joachim Nikolaus Steinhöfel warned Denník N that failure to provide a cease-and-desist undertaking backed by a contractual penalty will result in court proceedings.
“It reads as if its authors had taken particular care to assemble, in a single piece, every factual allegation that courts have previously found to be unlawful,” said Steinhöfel. “Anyone who republishes the same allegations under these circumstances is not engaging in genuine journalistic inquiry, but demonstrating serious journalistic negligence.”
The Hamburg Regional Court has previously issued injunctions against corresponding statements published by Kurier, Forbes Media LLC, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Der Tagesspiegel, and RTL, among others. Cease-and-desist declarations have additionally been signed by Il Tempo, Wiener Zeitung, Norddeutscher Rundfunk, WirtschaftsWoche, and Basler Zeitung. Between 2023 and 2025, a total of 18 court decisions and injunctions and 102 cease-and-desist declarations were secured on behalf of Usmanov and his family, resulting in corrections to more than 2,000 publications worldwide.
Steinhöfel also addressed the broader question of EU sanctions policy, arguing that a rule-of-law state damages its own credibility when it disregards binding court rulings in its sanctions reasoning. He pointed specifically to the Hamburg Regional Court’s January 2024 Forbes decision, which concerned an allegation that the EU Council nonetheless left unchanged in its sanctions justification.
