Dear Supporters and Potential Supporters

Thank you so much for your support, with which the petition has gained about 6,000 new signatures since the last update.  

I have not published updates for a long time, as I was busy preparing an appeal against the decision of Mr Justice Picken, who essentially ended my lawsuit against Putin's oligarchs without consideration on the merits and ordered me – who is an obvious victim of the criminal actions of these oligarchs - to pay them millions of pounds in compensation for their costs. When this decision was being made, everyone knew and understood perfectly well that as a result of what these oligarchs had done to my life, I lost my home, family, usual (for any person) life and became practically a beggar.

The two main documents filed with the Court of Appeal are available here: the first and the second. 

I decided to make them public, for the reason that my case is actually classified on the court's website, despite the fact that this case is formally public. I wrote about this oddity, which is beneficial only to my defendants-oligarchs, in the update to the petition on 21 December, addressing once again this question to the court as well (in this case, already publicly). I have not received any response to my previous requests (both non-public and already public), and the case file on the court's website remains classified. Taking this opportunity and taking into account that the court is aware of my petition, I once again apply to the court leadership to answer this simple question - why?

In the same update to the petition, I also asked why it happened that the hearing conducted by Mr Justice Picken was also in fact closed. Formally, it was public, but from the technical side, everything was organized so that those who wanted to attend the hearing simply could not find out where and when it was being held. First, on the evening before the hearing, the start time was changed. Second, all the information screens in the courthouse simply did not show my case and where it is being considered. Because of this, I myself, being a direct participant in the hearing, was hardly able to get to it. There is no answer to this question either. 

The second important thing I would like to say (especially since it is now an appropriate time to sum up the results of the past year) is about what was my main disappointment and unpleasant surprise of the past year. This is the ease with which Putin's oligarchs manage to engage (successfully) in corruption in the UK. If earlier I was sure that corruption is impossible or practically impossible in England, then in 2022 I was convinced of the opposite. What struck me most was not the fact that the Russian oligarchs try to engage in corruption (I didn't expect anything else from them), but the ease with which some Britons agree to be corrupt.

There was and there is no doubt that the Russian oligarchs bribed my British lawyers (Candey), which I have been saying publicly already for six months, and no one (neither the oligarchs nor Candey, which threatened me with libel suits and criminal prosecution) is even trying to challenge it in any way. There are no promised defamation claims and no criminal proceedings against me. So why do you, Candey - I ask publically again - remain silent and do nothing of the same things that you intimidated me with when I terminated our contract, directly accusing you of collusion with my opponents – the Russian oligarchs? It is nonsense when a law firm (for which reputation is probably the most important thing), which is publicly accused of bribery, does not even try to refute it or even comment it in any way. 

This story is described in the main text of the petition and I will briefly remind the essence. I and my lawyers from Candey had to submit to the court a response to 2600+ pages of documents of the defendants - oligarchs. Just before the deadline, Candey began aggressively demanding that our response to these 2,600 pages should be only 3-5 pages long, consist exclusively of headlines and hints, and contain no supporting evidence. In particular, I was required to state by hints and without evidence (1) about constant death threats against me with demands to drop the claim, (2) about a completely ridiculous criminal case fabricated by the oligarchs against me in Russia (which is confirmed by the European authorities and Interpol), (3) that the most important document of the 2600 pages of the oligarchs turned out to be a primitive forgery and (4) other very serious things. How is it possible to make statements about such blatant and extremely serious things, putting these statements in the form of hints and without attaching confirming evidence (which I have even in excess and which are mostly irrefutable)?! This is an absurdity and nonsense that benefits only the oligarchs. 

Of course, there is no other explanation (and cannot be) for such strange (and aggressive) demand of Candey than that it is the result of collusion with the oligarchs. 

Now I am making public the audio recordings and the description of my last two conversations with Candey's lawyers, after which I decided to terminate the contract with them, accusing them of colluding with the oligarchs. 

Why did I decide to make them public? Because Mr Justice Picken in his judgment misinterpreted the story of the termination by me of the relationship with Candey. At the same time, Mr Justice Picken had both the audio recordings themselves and the transcripts of the main fragments. Now anyone can easily hear that the reason for the termination has been precisely the aggressive insistence of Candey to state our answer on 3-5 pages, presenting the answer in the form of headlines and hints. 

Mr Justice Picken has not indicated why, having this irrefutable and undisputed by anyone evidence, he wrote the following, which is absolutely untrue: “in essence, it appears to have entailed their [of Candey] unwillingness to advance a witness statement running to some 400 pages”. The real reason is precisely their demand for 3-5 pages, and the length of my answer was finally determined by the court itself (130 pages, which is 40 times more than 3-5 pages), arguing this as follows: “I quite understand that three to five pages is too short". 

It so happened that at the hearing, Mr Justice Picken spoke out about corruption issues in the UK. He said that the UK is a democratic country and corruption is not possible here in principle, reproaching me for mentioning corruption. The reason for this dialogue was a small fragment of my conversation (recorded on a dictaphone) with unofficial representatives of the oligarchs, who said literally the following: 

• My interlocutor (Mr Bobylev): Look, Igor, I have such a question. Imagine that I am you. I am Igor Sychev, and you are the judge. Please tell me, now you are a judge and you are a bribed judge. This is not possible in the English court, but we will imagine for a moment that you are the bribed judge. What would you cling to to make a decision not in my favor? Here you are the judge, you are the bribed judge, you need to cling to something. The judge is guided, except for his wig, by his conscience, he is not guided by anything else, this is in any legislation of the world. Now, what would you say? What would a bribed judge cling to? 
• Me: I can't even imagine. 
• Mr Bobylev: Is everything going so fine for you? But in principle, we were told the same thing.

These unofficial representatives of the oligarchs were uttering these words against the background of demands to assign my rights in the lawsuit to them, using including death threats. As you can easily see from the audio recording and its transcript, in this short fragment, the words “bribed judge” are pronounced 4 times. But the oligarchs and Mr Justice Picken clung to the phrase of my interlocutors that in England it is impossible to bribe judges. But if this is impossible in principle, then why were my interlocutors so persistently asking me what exactly a bribed judge might be clung to? In order to put the dots on this question and find out first-hand answer why my interlocutors told me this, I sent them an official letter and asked to respond within a week. I wrote that in the absence of an answer, I would consider this as confirmation of my obvious and self-evident version, which I formulated as follows: “For the avoidance of doubt, I regard this fragment of our conversation as an attempt to find out from me what weak points I see in my case, to which a bribed judge who needs to work off a bribe can cling. Since you acted in collusion with the defendants, I regard these words as a direct warning (threat) that they can bribe judges, and therefore they are looking for what exactly the judge bribed by them can find fault with”.

The representatives of the oligarchs, who demanded that the lawsuit be assigned to them, accompanying this demand with death threats and talks about bribed judges, have not provided an answer. 

As for the theoretical possibility or impossibility of corruption in the UK, about the impossibility of which in principle Mr Justice Picken spoke, I will simply note that England, as it turned out, is not even among the top ten countries with the lowest level of perception of corruption. And even in countries with the lowest perception of corruption, corruption scandals still happen from time to time (on the Internet it is easy to find references to specific corruption stories in England). As for the possibility of corruption stories in the UK, the British Parliament on this issue is not so categorical as Mr Justice Picken. Therefore, to declare the impossibility of corruption in principle, at least, is not correct.

In the photo is my Russian lawyer Valery Stepanov, who died in Russia under strange circumstances shortly after he submitted his written witness statement in my case. By the way, he also participated in the penultimate conversation with Candey and you can hear his voice on the audio recording. The reason why I decided to attach his photo is that he regularly besieged me when I said that in England the Russian oligarchs would not dare to corruption. After the story with Candey, he asked me: “Well, what do you think now?!”.

There is paragraph 100 in his witness statement: “Taking into account such a large-scale level of lawlessness and obvious absurdity that has developed in Russia in relation to Sychev in relation to his conflict with PhosAgro, he cannot count on even the most elementary legality and justice in Russia”. 

I decided to quote this, because by the decision of Mr Justice Picken, in fact, I am deprived of access to justice outside of Russia as well.

Finalizing, I want to say that as soon as the petition gains more than 15 thousand signatures, I will send it to the addressees, as I learned that this number of signatures is more than enough. Therefore, I kindly ask you not to stop supporting my petition and thank you again to all Supporters!