The Court of Hamburg rules to ban distribution of Nikolay Maximov's false allegations

The Court of Hamburg has issued a ruling banning the publication of Nikolay Maximov’s false claims made in an interview to the German business weekly Wirtschaftswoche in December 2010.

The Court analyzed the interview and found no evidence in favor of Mr Maximov’s allegations. The Court decisions emphasizes that his claims are lacking factual integrity, and that the article is clearly one-sided and biased. The way the journalist interpreted these claims clearly indicates that he was looking to discredit NLMK.

In the interview to the German paper Nikolay Maximov made another attempt to claim that:
- Maxi-Group was a profitable company;
- Maximov was looking for a strategic investor;
- NLMK [Vladimir Lisin] did not invest a dime into Maxi-Group;
- NLMK took Maxi-Group over in a raid;
- NLMK withdrew assets from Maxi-Group, devaluating it;
- Nikolay Maximov is a victim of raiding actions and the political regime
- Russian courts and law authorities are biased and controlled by business;
- NLMK controls the courts and bribes judges.

NLMK was thus once again able to prove in court that Maximov’s claims are false, groundless and lawless. The Court ruling puts a ban on any further distribution of such information.

The decision of the Hamburg Court is in line with similar cases in Russian courts related to Nikolay Maximov’s allegations, for example, against the InterRight news agency (http://www.inright.ru/articles/economy/20110425/id_583/), and the Vedomosti paper.

The Hamburg Court fully supports the conclusions made by the Court of Amsterdam on November 17, 2011 on dismissing Maximov's request for leave to enforce the arbitral award of the ICAC (Moscow), that indicate that “The statements quoted by Maximov as evidence for a conflict of interests came (directly or indirectly) from Maximov himself or advisers engaged by him.”