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Today in Focus

How oligarchs use English courts to silence their critics

Today in Focus

The Guardian

Daily News, News

4.5778 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Use of Slapps by the super-rich against journalists is increasingly common, and campaigners say new legislation to deter such actions does not go far enough. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/infocus

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is the Guardian.

0:09.0

Today, why have British courts become a magnet for the very wealthy to intimidate journalists? Picture this, static cars, idling engines, angry horns.

0:27.0

Now, picture you, zooming past it all, light and breezy.

0:38.0

Ah, the sweet feeling of whizzing past traffic.

0:42.0

Book your train journey via a vantage. feeling of whizzing past traffic.

0:43.0

Book your train journey via avantewestcoast.co.uk.

0:47.0

avante westcoast.

0:49.0

Feel good travel. Act, who used to work for the Serious Fraud Office.

1:03.1

And because of what I was reporting on at the time,

1:06.8

which was the activities of oligarchs

1:09.2

from the former Soviet Union in the UK,

1:12.2

even if you're having what's going to be a pretty banal meeting with

1:15.2

someone, if that person's come to the attention of an oligarch, these days often you

1:19.9

have to take precautions.

1:26.0

Tom Burgess is an investigation's correspondent for the guardian, and if his job sounds a bit spy-thriller blockbuster,

1:30.0

well, it's because it can be.

1:33.0

I arranged the meeting on signal and an encrypted messaging app.

1:38.0

I drove along and circuitous way, did a big loop at the end,

1:42.0

and we'd arranged to meet up in the car park right by the Thames in the middle of London under the National Theatre.

1:50.0

It's that kind of shadowy car park with the big pillars and the odd noise echoing around.

1:55.0

So when your phone can't be tracked, you can't remotely activate a microphone on it or anything like that.

2:00.0

And then, um, met this guy, someone who had looked into these oligarchs and they're big mining

...

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