In mid-September 2023, information spread on the Internet that Anatoly Chubais filed a lawsuit against Russia for the protection of honor and dignity with the European Court of Human Rights. We decided to check the authenticity of such messages.

The news that the ex-head of Rusnano, who left Russia in March 2022, filed a lawsuit against the Russian Federation in the ECHR, published some Media. This information was widely circulated in social networks (For example, Twitter And "VKontakte"), blogs and on YouTube. This news was also popular on Telegram, it was published by the channels “Russian format"(65,000 views at the time of writing this analysis), "Artyomovsk"(21,000), "Live Kuban"(5000), etc.

On September 12, 2023, speaking at the plenary meeting of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russian President Vladimir Putin commented Chubais’s departure from the country: “The fact that Anatoly Borisovich is hiding there for some reason... I was shown some photograph from the Internet, where he is no longer Anatoly Borisovich Chubais, but some Moshe Izrailevich, lives there somewhere... Why is he doing this, I don’t understand why he ran away.” Judging by reports in the media and social networks, it was this phrase that allegedly became the reason for the ex-official’s lawsuit. The text of the news in most sources is almost identical: “Anatoly Chubais filed a lawsuit against Russia for the protection of honor and dignity with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The reason was the words of the Russian president, who called the former head of Rusnano Moisha Izrailevich. “The country that, in the person of its president, allows such words addressed to me, must either justify them or make a public apology. I don’t like scandals, but here I am ready to go to the end,” Chubais said.”

Putin's comment appears to be based on what circulated in May 2023 rumors that Chubais and his wife Avdotya Smirnova received Israeli citizenship - they were spotted at the Israeli Ministry of Internal Affairs allegedly while receiving foreign passports. Later the ex-official himself refuted this information; however, in his commentary the statement about replacing temporary documents with permanent ones, and not in principle about obtaining any Israeli identity cards, was called unreliable.

On ECHR website in the list of cases where the Russian Federation is the defendant, there is no claim from Chubais at the time of writing this analysis - and cannot be, since in September 2022 Russia stopped be a party to the European Convention on Human Rights. In this regard, the ECtHR decided, that new complaints will be accepted for consideration only if the violation of the convention occurred before September 16, 2022. Even earlier, March 15, Russia came out from the Council of Europe (CoE), and a few months later Putin signed law that Russia will not implement ECHR decisions made after this date.

In any case, for the ECHR to accept a claim for consideration, it must comply with certain criteria. In particular, before turning to this court, Chubais had to exhaust all legal remedies in his homeland (that is, go through all the courts in Russia with his claim and not receive satisfaction). This, obviously, could not be done, since less than a week passed from the moment Putin spoke about Chubais to the moment the news spread on the Internet.

When and under what circumstances Chubais uttered the phrase that is attributed to him by the authors of notes in the media and users of social networks is unknown. “Verified” could not find it on the pages of the businessman in Facebook* And Twitter (judging by the date of his last publications, he has not published them for a long time), nor in any reputable media to which he or his representatives could give interviews.

The earliest publication about Chubais’s claim in the ECHR that Verified was able to find is fast dated September 13, 2023 in the Telegram channel “but here’s my Yandex wallet” (17,000 views). The description of this channel states: “Parody, satire on political reality. Only verified fakes.” This is not the first time that its authors have published satirical news, which then spread across unscrupulous media and social networks under the guise of being real. “Verified” has already examined more than a dozen cases when the primary source of such messages was a post in this Telegram channel (note that from time to time its author himself ironized the situation). Thus, the news that Polish Prime Minister called on Zelensky to temporarily transfer the territories of Western Ukraine to Poland, which the blogger Danya Milokhin, upon returning to Russia, said that he had given the country a second chance, or that the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell called on African countries to starve for independence.

Thus, the information that Chubais filed a claim with the ECHR is a joke, originally published in a Telegram channel that specializes in made-up news and directly states this. “Verified” was unable to find any public comments from the ex-official about whether he considered the statement of the President of the Russian Federation an attack on his honor and dignity, but, be that as it may, he still could not file a claim with the ECHR for a number of reasons.

Cover photo: Anatoly Chubays on Facebook*

*Russian authorities think the company Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.