The move is expected to cut down on the spreading of negative information about billionaire and politician Rinat Akhmetov, who is gearing up to float shares in his companies on international markets. The lawsuits, waged by high-profile law firms, could also signal a turning point in the way journalists and tycoons settle scores.

It was only a few years back that Ukraine had developed an international reputation as a dangerous place for journalists to report on corruption in high places. Since Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in late 2004, however, journalists have enjoyed greater media freedom than ever, without necessarily a concomitant rise in professional standards.

UK and US lawyers employed by the Donetsk-based tycoon filed a libel claim for an undisclosed amount of damages on March 29 against the Ukrainian Internet publication Obozrevatel and three journalists who work there.

The lawsuit was filed at the UK’s High Court of Justice, Queen’s Bench Division in London, and refers to four articles published by Obozrevatel about Akhmetov’s youth in January and February of this year.

Obozrevatel chief editor Oleh Medvedev, who has consulted fierce Akhmetov political opponent Yulia Tymoshenko, is one of the defendants named. Reporters Tetyana Chornovil and Yaroslav Bilik were also named as defendants in the lawsuit, a copy of which was received by the Post.

The UK law firm representing Akhmetov, Schillings, lists international celebrities, such Hollywood actress Brooke Shields, fashion model Naomi Campbell and filmmaker Roman Polanski as clients on its website.

Schillings partner Simon Smith said in London on the day the claim was filed: “Mr. Akhmetov brought this action in the High Court to defend his very substantial reputation as a business and political leader. By seeking redress in the courts of England, Mr. Akhmetov will ensure that there will be a fair legal process.”

In Washington, D.C., Akhmetov is represented by the prestigious Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP law firm. The firm’s lawyers Mark MacDougall and Randy Teslik said, “Mr. Akhmetov has instructed us to aggressively confront those who publish false and defamatory accusations about him, his family and his business, whenever and wherever they are found, in courts where he can be assured of full and transparent due process of law.”

Obozrevatel’s chief editor Medvedev held a press conference in Kyiv on April 2 to deny any wrongdoing.

“Besides some negative moments, there were a lot of good things said about Akhmetov that were included in the articles,” he told the Post the same day.

Medvedev said all the material published consists of a collection of taped interviews with people who knew the Ukrainian billionaire in his youth. 

“I think that for Ukraine, it was very important information,” he said. 

The Ukrainian editor said he had still not received a copy of the lawsuit as of April 2 and that he was surprised that Akhmetov’s lawyers had chosen a court outside of Ukraine.

“We will be defending ourselves, but it’s not clear where. I like London and Tony Blair, but I’m a Ukrainian subject to Ukrainian law,” Medvedev said.

A handful of Ukrainian and Russian journalists have in recent years been sued under UK law. Lawyers argued that their articles incurred damage to the reputation of clients on UK turf, having been read on the Internet.

According to Mary Mycio, director of the IREX U-Media legal program, which has consulted Ukrainian journalists and paid legal fees for them in certain cases, “plaintiffs who are public officials and public figures are more likely to win a lawsuit against the media [in the UK] than in the United States and, probably, Ukraine.”

Mycio said the Obozrevatel journalists will need “qualified counsel in England” to contest the lawsuit.

As for the claimant, “Akhmetov doesn’t have to win for there to be a chilling effect on Ukrainian media, who may be much more careful about what they write for fear of being hauled into a foreign courtroom.  That is not necessarily a bad thing, given the poor quality of most Ukrainian journalism.  But it will be bad if it means that media don’t publish even the things they can prove for fear of being sued.”

In general, Mycio said, lawsuits against media in Ukraine have become fair over the years.

“When politicians here first started filing libel lawsuits, the damage awards were exceedingly high – in the millions of hryvnia – and even led to the closure of some newspapers. Journalists are [now] more likely to win cases, and when they lose, the damage awards are usually reasonable,” she added.

Akhmetov’s choice of a UK court has its precedent in Russia. Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky sued the business magazine Forbes in the mid 1990s, which ended with the US-based publication publicly acknowledging that it was wrong to characterize Berezovsky as a mafia boss. Hungarian-based gas trader Eural Trans Gas, which controlled the lucrative business of supplying Turkmen gas to Ukraine, has in recent years sued journalists in Ukraine and Russia alleging that their reporting had damaged the company’s reputation.