While Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov cruises on his Dilbar yacht off the coast of Monaco, in faraway Maryino (a district of Moscow), the full machinery of the Russian court system is fighting over his money and what he himself calls his “good name.”
Yesterday, 22 of our 23 motions were denied. The court also refused to summon any of the witnesses.
Usmanov’s side, meanwhile, was allowed to submit a huge stack of documents—a couple hundred pages, a good half of them in English—and we were told: you have 10 minutes to review them.
Of course, we couldn’t review them properly in 10 minutes. But we read them that evening. Remarkable stuff.
For example, Usmanov submitted a certificate from the tax authorities stating that he is a tax resident of Russia. His representative is outraged that I denounced Usmanov for losing his Russian tax residency.
And attentive readers will be just as astonished as we are, because it was Usmanov’s own press office that reported that since 2015 he has no longer been a tax resident of Russia.
Does anyone know whether Usmanov has sued his own press office?
Maybe it’s like that old joke about Lenin? He told his wife he was going to see his mistress. He told his mistress he was going to see his wife. And then he went to his office—to work, work, and work.
He told Switzerland he was a Russian resident. He told Russia he was a Swiss resident. And then off he went to the Dilbar—to saw away, saw away, and saw away.