FRIDMAN et al v. BEAN LLC et al

Filing 17

AMENDED COMPLAINT against BEAN LLC, GLENN SIMPSON with Jury Demand filed by MIKHAIL FRIDMAN, GERMAN KHAN, PETR AVEN.(Lewis, Alan)

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

MIKHAIL FRIDMAN, PETR AVEN, AND
GERMAN KHAN,
Plaintiffs,

x
:

Case 1:1 7-cv-0204 1 (RJL)

BEAN LLC (A/K/A FUSION GPS) AND
GLENN SIMPSON,
Defendants.

x
AMENDED COMPLAINT
JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
Plaintiffs Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan, by their attorneys
Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, allege as follows:
INTRODUCTION
1.

This is a defamation case brought by three international businessmen who

were defamed in widely disseminated political opposition research reports commissioned
by political opponents of candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election cycle.
The reports (which came to be known as the “Trump Dossier” and the “Dossier”) were
published both before and after the 2016 election by the Defendants: the Washington,
D.C. based firm Fusion GPS (“Fusion”) and its principal, Glenn Simpson, a former
journalist specializing in political opposition research. In that role, the Defendants traffic
in procuring damaging information about political candidates. The reports are gravely
damaging in that, directly or by implication, they falsely accuse the Plaintiffs—and Alfa
(“Alfa”), a consortium in which the Plaintiffs are investors—of criminal conduct and

alleged cooperation with the “Kremlin” to influence the 2016 presidential election. But
neither the Plaintiffs nor Alfa committed any of the acts recklessly attributed to them by
the Defendants. To the contrary, the Plaintiffs and Alfa are collateral damage in a U.S.
political operation conducted by the Defendants, whose focus is an alleged relationship
(between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign) which has nothing whatsoever to do
with the Plaintiffs.
2.

The specific “report” that includes facially defamatory statements about

the Plaintiffs is one of seventeen written Company Intelligence Reports 2016 (“CIR5”)
that comprise the Trump Dossier. The Defendants included Company Intelligence
Report 112 (the “Report” or “CIR 112”) (which makes statements about the Plaintiffs) in
the Trump Dossier, even though the Dossier’s purpose and intended subject matter have
nothing to do with the Plaintiffs’ past, current or intended future activities. Broadly,
those reports purport to describe details of an alleged scheme between the Russian
government and the Trump presidential campaign to unlawfully manipulate the result of
the 2016 presidential election in favor of candidate Trump. The Defendants gathered
these reports as part of their engagement to conduct “opposition research” (known as
“oppo research” by its practitioners and the media) against Trump. Opposition research,
in essence, is the gathering of information for the purpose of eventually discrediting or
otherwise harming a candidate for a public office. Opposition research is neither
objective nor neutral. Instead, it is skewed from the outset in favor of appearing to find
negative information about individuals—the essence of the product that political
opposition research practitioners such as the Defendants are hired to produce.

-2-

3.

As described below, the Defendants were initially hired to conduct this

opposition research by Republican political opponents of candidate Trump during the
primary phase of the 2016 election cycle. That engagement was terminated when it
became clear that Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee. At that point,
Defendants solicited and obtained an engagement with the Democratic National
Committee and the campaign of candidate Hillary Clinton to gather discrediting
information about Mr. Trump, including any connections he might have to Russian
businesses or Russia’s government. To perform that research, the Defendants hired a
private investigator—a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, who
operated through a London—based entity known as Orbis Business Intelligence Limited
(“Orbis”). Steele claims to have used his own Russian sources—who were never
identified—to compile the reports, which were then delivered to the Defendants over the
course of several months in 2016. Eventually, the reports, including the false and
defamatory Report at the heart of this case, were assembled in the document that has
come to be known to the public as the Trump Dossier. Steele has acknowledged that his
reports are unverified “raw intelligence” and has refused to identify his alleged “sources.”
Indeed, not one of the reports in the Dossier has ever been verified and none of its
sources has ever been publicly identified. Defendants recklessly placed the Dossier’s
allegations of criminal action by Plaintiffs beyond their control which allowed those
allegations to get into the hands of media devoted to breaking news on the hottest
subjects of the day: the Trump candidacy and his election as President.
4.

CIR 112, dated September 14, 2016, falsely accuses the Plaintiffs of

criminal bribery in the 1 990s and participation in an alleged Trump-Russia scheme to
-3-

influence tile 2016 presidential election. That alleged scheme was the overall subject
matter of the Dossier. At all relevant times Defendants were aware that CIR 112 was not
verified, that its content was provided by unidentified sources whose credibility could
therefore not be assessed by a reader of the Dossier, and that the accusations made in CIR
112 about Plaintiffs defamed them. Defendants could easily have removed that Report
from the Dossier before they started peddling it to media and journalists in September
and October 2016. They chose not to do so. Nor did they attempt to determine the
veracity of that Report with the Plaintiffs themselves.
5.

At all times during the Defendants’ engagement of Orbis and Steele, it

was either intended or clearly foreseeable that if the Dossier’s contents were made
available to third parties, including journalists, such provocative material would be
published and republished, including to the public at large. Indeed, that is the entire
purpose of”oppo research” in American politics. Those third parties included
government officials, as well as news media and journalists who could make its content
public.
6.

On information and belief, Defendants arranged for Steele to brief selected

members of the print and online media about the information he was compiling on
candidate Trump and his campaign. Consistent with the intended purpose of “oppo
research” to publicly discredit its target, Steele’s briefings were designed to generate
interest in the Dossier and secure eventual public dissemination of its content. Briefings
were held for journalists from the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, Yahoo
News, and others in September 2016. The New York Times, The Washington Post and

-4-

Yahoo News were given a second briefing.’ Shortly thereafter, Yahoo News published an

article by Michael Isikoff that described some of the content of the Dossier (referred to
there as “intelligence reports” and “reports”), which was still being compiled at that
time.2 Many other media articles reported speculative accounts of the Dossier’s existence
and contents. In late October 2016, Steele gave an interview to David Corn, a writer for
Mother Jones magazine, which, on October 31, 2016, published an article by Corn

headlined “A Veteran Spy Has Given The FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation
to Cultivate Donald Trump.”3 Corn’s article stated that he had “reviewed” the early
reports in the Dossier, and then quoted from those reports as well as statements made by
Steele in the interview. The publication to third parties and public dissemination of the
Dossier’s content had begun in earnest.
7.

In addition to cultivating media interest, the Defendants also organized or

approved a meeting in Great Britain between Steele and David Kramer, who held no
public office but was the director of a private foundation affiliated with U.S. Senator John
McCain. The purpose of that meeting was to show Kramer the content of the sixteen pre
election reports in the Dossier so he could brief Senator McCain, who at the time was a
well-known and outspoken critic of Trump’s candidacy. Subsequently, in November

Defendants’ Response to Claimants Request For Information, Gubarev, et aL v. Orb is Bushiess
hitelligence Limited and Christopher Steele, Claim No. HQ 1700413, In the High Court of Justice,

Queens Bench Division, May 18, 2017, P.8 (“The Orbis/Steele Response”).
2 Michael Isikoff, US. Intel officials probe ties between Trump advisor and Kremlin, Yahoo,
News, Sept. 23, 2016, https://www.yahoo.com/news/u-s-intel-offlcials-probe-ties-between-trump
adviser-and-kremlin-I 75046002.htrn I.
David Corn, A Verteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to
Cultivate Donald Trump, Mother Jones, Politics, Oct. 31,2016, https://www.rnotherjones.com/
politics/20 16/1 0/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/
-5-

2016, Defendants provided (and thereby published) a copy of all sixteen of the Dossier’s
then existing reports to Kramer—for redelivery and further publication to Senator
McCain—including the report (CIR 112) that falsely accused and defamed Plaintiffs.4
8.

As the 2016 presidential election neared, both print and online media in

the United States and abroad began to expand their coverage of the Dossier and its
alleged content. That coverage only intensified after Trump won the election. On
January 10, 2017, one of those media entities, BuzzFeed, Inc., published the entire
Dossier on the Internet, describing it there as “explosive.” The copy of the Dossier that
BuzzFeed published included the false and defamatory allegations of CIR 112 about the
Plaintiffs and Alfa, along with the article entitled “These Reports Allege Trump Has
Deep Ties to Russia.”5 The Dossier misspells Alfa’s name throughout, incorrectly
spelling it as “Alpha.” BuzzFeed’s article did not mention CIR 112 or its allegations, but
focused instead on president-elect Trump and his alleged relationships with Russia,
explaining that it “was publishing the thU document so that Americans can make up their
minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels
of the U.S. government.”6
9.

The Defendants intended, anticipated, or foresaw a high likelihood that

allowing their clients (named infra), third parties (like David Kramer and Senator

The Orbis/Steele Response, pp. 5-6.
Ken Bcnsinger, Miriam Elder, Mark Schoofs, These Reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To
Russia, BuzzFeed News, Jan. 10, 2017, https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports
allege-trump-has-dcep-ties-to-russia?utrn_term.isl Q2ka2J.
6

Id.

-6-

McCain) and the media access to the Dossier’s defamatory content would result in its
republication by news media outlets, including online news media such as BuzzFeed.

10.

Plaintiffs seek an award of compensatory and punitive damages for the

harm to their personal and professional reputations, current business interests, and the
impairment of business opportunities that resulted from the blatantly false and
defamatory statements and implications about them published recklessly to third parties
by the Defendants and republished by BuzzFeed and countless other media around the
world.
THE PARTIES
11.

Plaintiffs Fridman, Aven, and Khan are ultimate beneficial owners of

Alfa. Fridman and Khan are each citizens of both Russia and Israel, and Aven is a citizen
of Russia. Plaintiffs are not widely known in the United States, had no role or
involvement in any aspect of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and made no public
comments about it.
12.

On infonirntion and belief, defendant Bean LLC is a Delaware corporation

that conducts business under the name Fusion OPS. Fusion is registered to transact
business in Washington, D.C., where it is headquartered and conducts its operations.
13.

Defendant Glenn Simpson, on information and belief, is a principal of

Fusion. He was the primary actor involved in securing the Dossier from Orbis and
Steele, arranging for press briefings about it in the late summer and early fall of 2016,
and publishing the Dossier to various recipients including Fusion’s clients, third parties
like David Kramer and Senator McCain, other government officials and the news

-7-

media. Simpson conducts his business for Fusion from an office in Washington, D.C.,
where his business included his activities with respect to the Dossier. Both Simpson and
his subcontractor Steele used their prior experience as, respectively, an investigative
journalist for the Wall Street Journal and an operative in British intelligence who had
covered Russian matters, to give their “oppo research” output a gloss of credibility and
reliability which, in this case, was unwarranted. Simpson has described Fusion’s work as
“journalism for rent” and claimed publicly that he and Fusion uphold strict standards that
Simpson developed in his years as ajournalist: “You can’t just say what you know. You
have to say how you know it. And you have to be able to prove it.”7 And yet, Simpson
and Fusion did not live up to their own professed standards when they published the
Dossier. As Steele (Defendants’ supplier of the Dossier’s unverified, anonymous “raw
intelligence” content) recently told a journalist, he did not interview his sources himself,
but gathered his information through “intermediaries” and “subsources.” And as Steele
further acknowledged, as much as 30% of the Dossier’s content may not be “accurate.”8
Those are the “standards” by which Defendants operated when they published CIR 112.

Jack Gillurn, Shawn Boburg, ‘Journalism for rent’: Inside the secretivefirm behind the Trump
dossier, The Washington Post, Investigations, Dec. 11,2017 (available at
https://www.washingtonpost.corn/investigations/journalisrn-for-rent—inside-the—secretive-firm
behind-the-trump-dossier/20 17/12/1 1/8d5428d4-bd89- 11 e7-afS4-d3e2ee4b2afl_story.html?
utmterrn.5 15241 4bbcce).
Luke Harding, How Trump walked into Futin ‘s web, The Guardian, News, Nov. 15, 2017,
https://www.theguardian.corn/news/20 I 7/nov 1 5/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke;
https://theguardian .corn/us-new/20 17/nov 15/christopher-steele-trump-russia-dossier-accurate.
-8-

JURISDICTION AND VENUE
14.

§

This case is within this Court’s jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C.

I 332(a)(2). Venue is proper in this District pursuant to 28

U.S.C. §

1391. The matter

in controversy in the cause of action asserted herein exceeds $75,000.
FACTUAL ALLEGATIONS
15.

On information and belief, the Defendants were engaged in 2015 by the

Washington Free Beacon to conduct research from public sources about several
Republican candidates for President, an engagement which ended in May 2016 when
Donald J. Trump was emerging as the likely winner of the nomination.9 Even prior to
that termination, Defendants approached Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) and HFACC, Inc., the campaign organization
supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton’s candidacy for President, to solicit an engagement
that would continue the research regarding Donald Trump which it had been pursuing on
behalf of its previous client. Perkins Coie retained Defendants to provide such research
services in April 2016, an engagement which continued until October 2016.10 The
Defendants were tasked with conducting “oppo research” against Trump, including the
gathering of compromising and salacious information about Trump’s personal behavior

~ Alicia Cohn, Conservative site funded project that led to Trump dossier, The Hill, Home News,
Oct. 27, 2017, http://thehill.corn/homenews/news/357599-conservative-publication-originallyfunded-trump-dossier-report.
10 Adam Entous, Devlin Barrett, Rosalind S. Helderman, Clinton ca~npaign, DNCpaidfor
research that led to Russia dossier, The Washington Post, National Security, Oct. 24, 2017
(available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc
paid-for-research-that-Ied-to-russia-dossier/20 17/10/24/22).
-9-

and business dealings in Russia. The Defendants in turn engaged Orbis and Steele for
assistance in fulfilling this task.
16.

Orbis proceeded to research Trump’s personal behavior in Russia and

business dealings with Russian government officials, business leaders, and business
entities. Steele compiled the “investigative” results into at least seventeen written CIRs
for delivery to the Defendants in Washington, D.C. By Steele’s own description, the
CIRs were “raw intelligence” containing unverified information from sources he did not
personally interview.~~ The CIRs produced between June 2016 and the end of October
2016 (including CIR 112) were provided and thus published to lawyers at Perkins Coie
and by them to their clients at the DNC and the HFACC.
17.

After Trump received the Republican nomination for President in July

2016, many media reports subsequently surfaced asserting, con~ectly, that Fusion had
entered into a new engagement with Democratic Party operatives interested in using the
oppo research to support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. These media reports vastly
increased other media’s and the public’s interest in the content of the Dossier.
18.

As they continued their work for their new clients, the Defendants knew,

anticipated or reasonably should have foreseen that, once in the hands of third parties
such as David Kramer, Senator McCain, journalists like Michael Isikoff and David Corn,
Perkins Coie, the political operatives at the DNC and HFACC, and their media contacts,
the CIRs would be further disseminated publicly, thereby fostering widespread discussion
about them in the United States when, in fact, Plaintiffs had no role whatsoever in any
actions the Russian government or other Russian actors may have taken with regard to
The Orbis/Steele Response, p.7, #17.
-10-

the 2016 election in the United States. That is exactly what happened. Much of the
ensuing media attention and public discussion focused on Defendants’ and Steele’s roles
in the creation and dissemination of the Dossier, and the interviews solicited by them.
During this campaign to promote the public dissemination of their “oppo research,”
which, upon information and belief, included the provision of background briefing to the
media by Defendants without attribution, Defendants never vouched for the credibility of
their sources or the accuracy and reliability of the content of the Dossier and CIR 112.
Despite the fact that they did not know whether the unverified, anonymous, inherently
harmful accusations in CIR 112 about Plaintiffs were true or false, Defendants
intentionally published the Dossier, including CIR 112, to Perkins Coie, David Kramer
and John McCain, and foresaw (or reasonably should have foreseen) that it would then be
republished to (1) Perkins Coie’s clients (the DNC and the HFACC); (2) employees of
the DNC and the HFACC; and (3) journalists and media. Elements of the Dossier,
possibly including CIR1 12, may have been published even more extensively by being
made available for viewing during arranged briefings ofcertainjournalists. Worldwide
publication of the entire Dossier, whether by BuzzFeed or anyone else, was inevitable
after these reckless actions by Defendants.
19.

CIR 112 specifically discusses the Plaintiffs. Its heading, “RUSSIA/US

PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: KREMLIN-ALPHA GROUP CO-OPERATION,” is
defamatory in the Trump/Russia context of the entire Dossier, as this heading suggests
that Alfa and its executives, including the Plaintiffs, cooperated in the alleged Kremlinorchestrated campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—the overriding
focus of Steele’s reports. This is a plausible and, indeed, inescapable inference of fact
—11—

based on the headings of fifteen of the sixteen CIR’s that Defendants dated and/or
published before the end of October, 2016:

US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE DONALD
TRUMP’S ACTIVITIES IN RUSSIA AND COMPROMISING RELATIONSHIP
WITH THE KREMLIN (CIR 80- JUNE 20, 2016)
RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FURTHER INDICATIONS OF
EXTENSIVE CONSPIRACY BETWEEN TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN TEAM AND
THE KREMLIN ( CIR 95- UNDATED)
RUSSIA: SECRET KREMLIN MEETINGS ATTENDED BY TRUMP ADVISOR,
CARTER PAGE IN MOSCOW (JULY 2016) (CIR 94-JULY 19, 2016)
RUSSIA-US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: KREMLIN CONCERN THAT
POLITICAL FALLOUT FROM DNC E-MAIL HACKING AFFAIR SPIRALING
OUT OF CONTROL (CIR 97-JULY 30, 2016)
RUSSIA/USA: GROWING BACKLASH IN KREMLIN TO DNC HACKING AND
TRUMP SUPPORT OPERATIONS (CIR 100 AUGUST 5, 2016)
-

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: SENIOR KREMLIN FIGURE
OUTLINES EVOLVING RUSSIAN TACTICS IN PRO-TRUMP, ANTI-CLINTON
OPERATION (CIR 101 AUGUST 10, 2016)
-

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: REACTION IN TRUMP CAMP TO
RECENT NEGATIVE PUBLICITY ABOUT RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE AND
LIKELY RESULTING TACTICS GOING FORWARD (CIR 102 AUGUST 10,
2016)
-

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FURTHER DETAILS OF TRUMP
LAWYER COHEN’S SECRET LIAISON WITH THE KREMLIN (CIR 136
OCTOBER 20, 2016)
-

RUSSIA/UKRAINE: THE DEMISE OF TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN MANAGER
PAUL MANAFORT (CIR 105 AUGUST 22, 2016)
-

RUSSIA/US: KREMLIN FALLOUT FROM MEDIA EXPOSURE OF
MOSCOW’S INTERFERENCE IN THE US PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN (CIR
111 SEPTEMBER 14, 2016)
—

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: KREMLIN-ALPHA GROUP CO
OPERATION (CIR 112 SEPTEMBER 14, 2016)
-

-12-

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE
TRUMP’S PRIOR ACTIVITIES IN ST. PETERSBURG (CIR 113- SEPTEMBER
14, 2016)
RUSSIA: KREMLIN ASSESSMENT OF TRUMP AND RUSSIA INTERFER
ENCE IN US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION (CIR 130 OCTOBER 12, 2016)
-

RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: FURTHER DETAILS OF KREMLIN
LIAISON WITH TRUMP CAMPAIGN (CIR 134 OCTOBER 18, 2016)
-

20.

CIR 112 , in sections labeled “Summary” and “Detail,” makes a series of

factual allegations about the “current closeness” of an “Alpha Group/PUTIN
relationship,” including that “[s]ignificant favors continue to be done in both directions”
and that “FRIDMAN and AVEN [are] still giving informal advice to PUTIN, especially
on the US.”
21.

The Summary section of CIR 112 identifies a former employee of Alfa,

Oleg Govorun, who is now the head of a government department in Putin’s
administration, as a “key intermediary” in the “PUTIN-Alfa relationship.” CIR 112
alleges that Govorun “delivered illicit cash directly to PUTIN” “throughout the 1990s,”
when Govorun was an “Alpha executive” and Putin was the Deputy Mayor of St.
Petersburg.
22.

The first paragraph of the Detail section of CIR 112 states the full names

of Plaintiffs Fridman, Aven, and Khan. It then includes a report from an unnamed
“Russian government official:”
although they have had their ups and downs, the leading
figures in Alpha currently are on very good terms with
PUTIN. Significant favors continued to be done in both
directions, primarily political ones for PUTIN and
business/legal ones for Alpha. Also, FRIDMAN and
AVEN continued to give informal advice to PUTIN on
-13-

foreign policy, and especially about the US where he
distrusted advice being given him by officials.
23.

Under any reasonable reading of CIR 112, alone, and in the context of the

frill Dossier and the headings of sixteen of its seventeen CIR’s (“the Trump/Russia
context”), Plaintiffs Fridman, Aven, and Khan, along with Alfa, are alleged to maintain a
highly inappropriate, and even criminal, relationship with Putin, based on criminal
interaction dating back to the 1990s. By clear and defamatory implication, CIR 112
purports to tie the Plaintiffs to a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to interfere in the 2016
U.S. election.
24.

The second paragraph of the Detail section alleges that Mr. Fridman

“recently met directly with PUTIN” and that “much of the dialogue and business between
them was mediated” by Govorun, the former Alfa employee. The paragraph describes
Govorun as a “senior Presidential Administration official” who is “trusted by PUTIN:”
during the I 990s GOVORUN had been Head of
Government Relations at Alpha Group and in reality the
‘driver’ and ‘bag carrier’ used by FRIDMAN and AVEN to
deliver large amounts of illicit cash to the Russian
president, at that time deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg.
Given that and the continuing sensitivity of the PUTIN
Alpha relationship, and need for plausible deniability,
much of the contact between them was now indirect and
entrusted to the relatively low profile GOVORUN.
25.

These allegations are false. Oleg Govorun was not employed by Alfa

Bank until after Mr. Putin left St. Petersburg to join the Yeltsin administration in
Moscow. The defamatory nature of these allegations, even when read alone, is clear:
CIR 112 alleges that, in the 1990s, Alfa (a member of “Alpha Group”) and two of its

-14-

largest beneficial owners purportedly engaged in acts of criminal bribery of Vladimir
Putin, a public official, to secure favorable business treatment.
26.

Those statements, considered in the Trump/Russia context of the Dossier

as a whole, imply that the alleged improper relationship between Alfa, the Plaintiffs, and
Putin, which purportedly started in the 1 990s, is currently ongoing, and that Govorun, the
alleged “bag carrier” of the l990s, who is now a senior official in Putin’s administration,
serves as the trusted intermediary between the Plaintiffs and Putin in the alleged
cooperation of Plaintiffs in the Trump/Russia conspiracy.
27.

The third paragraph of the Detail section characterizes the “PUTIN-Alpha

relationship as both a carrot and stick:”
Alpha held ‘kompromat’ on PUTIN and his corrupt
business activities from the I 990s whilst although not
personally overly bothered by Alpha’s failure to reinvest
the proceeds of its TNK oil company sales into the Russian
economy since, the Russian president was able to use
pressure on this count from senior Kremlin colleagues as a
lever on FRIDMAN and AVEN to make them do his
political bidding.
28.

This passage is defamatory in several ways: read in the context of the

Dossiser’s Trump/Russia theme, it suggests that Plaintiffs Fridman and Aven use their
knowledge of past bribery of Putin—”kompromat”—as a means of criminally extorting
continuing favorable treatment for their business interests from his government. It also
implies that Alfa and two of its largest beneficial owners, Plaintiffs Fridman and Aven,
willingly maintain a close relationship with Putin and cooperated in some unspecified
way in the Kremlin’s alleged campaign to interfere in the U.S. election in an effort to
avoid retribution from Putin for not reinvesting business proceeds in Russia.
-15-

29.

The statements about the Plaintiffs in the context of the Dossier as a whole

are false, defamatory, and gravely damaging. The statements in the Detail section of CIR
112 about Plaintiffs allege a criminal relationship with Mr. Putin in the 1990s, in addition
to and apart from the defamatory implications described above, even if considered
independently, raising substantial questions about why these almost twenty-year-old
allegations were included by Defendants in a Dossier of “oppo research” about Donald
Trump. The statements of CIR 112, published in an unverified report attributed to an
anonymous “top level Russian official” of unknown credibility or existence, raise a clear
and plausible inference of reckless disregard of truth or falsity by Defendants.
CAUSE OF ACTION
30.

Plaintiffs repeat and reallege paragraphs 1-29 above.

31.

By their direct and intentional publication to third parties such as clients,

news media, journalists, and others, and by the foreseeable republication of the Dossier
and CIR 112 by someone in that group, the Defendants published to a worldwide public
false and defamatory statements concerning Plaintiffs and Alfa, including that:
(a)

they are implicated in the scandalous allegations involving Russia

and President Trump referred to in CIR 112 and the other CIRs in the Dossier;
(b)

they and other officials and employees of Alfa “cooperated” with

an alleged Kremlin campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election;
(c)

they are parties to a highly inappropriate, and even criminal,

relationship with Vladimir Putin;

-16-

(d)

they engaged in acts of criminal bribery of Vladimir Putin, then the

Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg, in the 1990s to secure favorable business
treatment; and
(e)

they continue to use their knowledge of past bribery of Putin as a

means of criminally extorting continuing favorable treatment for their business
interests from the Putin government.
32.

Readers of the CIRs and Dossier were also led to understand, incorrectly,

that as a result of their alleged past—and current—close relationships and corrupt
dealings with Mr. Putin, the Plaintiffs and Alfa were and are required to do Putin’s
bidding, including by cooperating in the Kremlin’s alleged efforts to influence the
outcome of the recent U.S. presidential election.
33.

The false statements by the Defendants referred to above defamed the

Plaintiffs and Alfa, and have caused and will continue to cause serious injury to their
personal, professional, and institutional reputations.
34.

The false and defamatory statements published and republished by the

Defendants concerning the Plaintiffs and Alfa, as well as the obvious implications of
those statements, were made negligently or with reckless disregard of whether they were
true or false.

35.

Defendants are liable for the defamation of Plaintiffs and Alfa, and the

resulting harm caused by the news media coverage of the Dossier, including the
republication by BuzzFeed and countless other media.
JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
Plaintiff hereby demands a trial by jury on all issues so triable.
-17-

WHEREFORE, Plaintiffs Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, and German Khan
denrnnd judgment against Defendants Bean LLC, Fusion GPS, and Glenn Simpson for:
a.

compensatory damages in an amount to be proved at trial, together with

interest and the costs and disbursements of this action, plus reasonable attorneys’ fees;
b.

punitive damages in an amount to be determined at trial; and

c.

such other and fhrther relief as this Court may deem just and proper.

Dated: New York, New York
December 12,2017
By:

/s/Alan S. Lewis
Alan S. Lewis, Esq. (#NY0252)
John J. Walsh, Esq.
CARTER LEDYARD & MILBURN LLP
2 Wall Street
New York, N.Y. 10005
Telephone: [phone]
Counselfor Plaint~ffs
Mikhail Fridman, ci aL
Of Counsel:
Kim H. Sperduto, Esq. (#416127)
SPERDUTO THOMPSON PLC
1133 Twentieth Street, NW Second Floor
Washington, D.C. 20036
Telephone:
202-408-8900

-18-