Dear Supporters!

So, thanks to you, my petition has passed the very important and symbolic milestone of 50,000 signatures. This is the most important and inspiring news!

Yesterday, one of the American human rights channels aired my detailed video interview, the main topic of which is the export of corruption by Russian oligarchs to Western countries. Using specific examples, I have demonstrated how this happens in relation to my story described in the petition. We talked about how destructive the export of corruption is for Western countries and the need to stop it. 

    (*) The photo for this update shows the interviewer's post about my interview.

On 26 February, The Daily Mail published a long article filled with photographs about my story. The article describes attempts to kill me, constant death threats, and bribery of my British lawyers (law firm Candey) by the oligarchs.

Continuing on the topic of the export of corruption, I will quote excerpts from one of my documents dated 17 February and addressed to The High Court. These excerpts are exactly about the signs of the use of corruption by the oligarchs in our judicial case. I cited 15 specific facts, but there was no reaction from the court.

1. Since both Defendants cite my accusations against the judges, I will comment on this issue separately.
2. To begin with, contrary to the statements of the Defendants, I have not made a single “baseless” allegation and all my words are always carefully justified (one can probably argue with my arguments, but it is impossible to deny the existence of arguments in principle).
3. There are the following facts that I rely on.
4. The first fact is that the Defendants are the Russian oligarchs and a company owned by them. These oligarchs are close to Putin, which is why the most important oligarch (the Fifth Defendant and some members of his family) have been sanctioned by the UK, EU, USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and so on. The fact that Putin's regime is totally corrupt is recognized throughout the civilized world and does not require proof.
5. The second fact is that the Defendants have been repeatedly accused of corruption before, regardless of my story. For example:
6. Investigative journalists believe that 20% of PhosAgro's shares were transferred by the Defendants to Putin's personal friend, Mr Litvinenko, as a bribe.
7. Mr Litvinenko's daughter, Olga, whose story is no less shocking than mine, and has been repeatedly described in the press (in particular, in the article of The Times under the shocking title "They kidnapped my daughter”). Olga Litvinenko directly accuses PhosAgro’s shareholders of corrupt activities not only in Russia, but also abroad, in particular, on the territory of the EU (so-called export of corruption). A criminal case has been opened on one of the episodes in Poland. Moreover, Olga Litvinenko long before starting of the war in Ukraine demanded that PhosAgro’s shareholders be included in sanctions lists for involvement in human rights violations and corruption (the so-called Magnitsky sanctions list).
8. Independent corruption investigators and, in particular, the most well-known structure that investigates and fights corruption, namely the team of Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny (who is widely known around the world due to the fact that Putin tried to poison him and then put him in prison on a fabricated criminal case). On 8 April 2021, Navalny's team explicitly stated that the real owner of 20% of PhosAgro’s shares worth more than 1 billion pounds is not Litvinenko, but Putin himself, and that this is a bribe (of colossal amount). It is noteworthy that there have been no denials either from the Defendants and Mr Litvinenko or from the Russian authorities.
9. Navalny's team stated the same just a few days ago in a video interview with Maria Pevchikh, director of The International Anticorruption Foundation, to the most popular Russian interviewer, Yuri Dud (who is recognized in Russia, of course, as a foreign agent). This interview was released 11 days ago and has already received over 15 million views. This interview is called "What Corruption Has Done To Russia”, and it was filmed in London. This 4-hour interview begins with a reference to Guryev and his Witanhurst mansion in London worth 300 million pounds and is the second largest after Buckingham Palace. Maria Pevchikh at the very beginning declares that London is the capital of Russian corruption, and then minutes from 20 to 30 are devoted to Mr Guryev, PhosAgro and Litvnenko, and Ms Pevchikh declares that the corrupt activities of these individuals (including in England) need a thorough investigation. Despite the direct accusations, a huge number of views and sufficient time available, not even the shortest comment was followed from the Defendants and other mentioned persons.
10. Summing up the first two facts, we can say that for the Defendants who have long been accused of involvement in corruption, corruption is the most favorite way to solve problems.
11. The third fact is that the corruption perception index in the UK last year (and the main events in our case took place then) catastrophically collapsed from 11th to 18th place and became the highest in history, which caused great concern among corruption fighters. Against the background of the Defendants' love for corruption, the sharp deterioration in the overall situation with corruption looks very alarming.
12. The fourth fact - the Defendants explicitly warned me on 21 June 2021, that they would bribe English judges (demanding under death threats that I assign plaintiffs' rights to related parties): “Look, Igor, I have such a question. Imagine that I am you. I am Igor Sychev, and you are the judge. And here sits our <…> defendant. 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?”
13. Thus, we already have a cumulative effect, which makes us think more seriously about the possible use of corruption. The Defendants are prone to corruption and its export, the situation with corruption in the UK has sharply worsened, and the Defendants also directly warned (threatened) that they would bribe English judges.
14. But this cumulative set is just a prelude to the most important things.
15. The fifth fact – the decision which is fateful for these proceedings was made on 27 May 2022 by Deputy judge Mr Beltrami KC, who, as it turned out later, is extremely closely connected with the Defendants' solicitors and who, contrary to the requirements of the Guide to Judicial Conduct, did not disclose this information to me either before or during the hearing. His decision was actually fateful and is cited in all subsequent decisions, including the decision of 20 January.
16. Mr Beltrami KC based his decision on the premise (!!!) that all of my allegations of wrongdoing against Defendants could theoretically be unfounded. Further events showed the incorrectness of this extreme (*) premise, namely, (1) in Latvia in October 2022 a criminal case was opened on the facts of death threats against me with demands to drop the claim, (2) in the UK in January 2023 the Legal Ombudsman considered my allegations against my last solicitors (Candey) sufficient to open an investigation. (*) It is extreme in the sense that there are two other possible premises in the theory: (1) that all of my accusations might turn out to be correct, or (2) that they might turn out to be at least partially correct. The premise chosen by Mr Beltrami KC is not only extreme, but also extremely advantageous for the Defendants.
17. Both cases were included in the list of wrongdoing, about which Mr Beltrami KC made the theoretical assumption that all of them may be unfounded.
18. In his decision, Mr Beltrami KC wrote that accusations are easy to make, but difficult to prove. But which difficulties can be in proving the facts of death threats with demands to drop the lawsuit, if these threats are confirmed by audio recordings (the information about which was before Mr Beltrami KC)?!
19. The sixth fact - to my requests to explain the reasons why Mr Beltrami KC withheld from me information about his close ties with the Defendants' solicitors, the Commercial Court in general, nor Mr Beltrami KC in particular, did not give an answer.
20. The seventh fact - even after that (when I started asking questions about the fifth fact), it turned out in an absolutely inexplicable way that the same Mr Beltrami KC was also appointed for the next (July) hearing. The mathematical probability of such a match is approximately 0.1% (the justification is given in my letter dated 7 September 2022).
21. The eighth fact is that in this July case Mr Beltrami KC did not recuse himself on his own initiative, but did so only after my request.
22. The ninth fact is that the Commercial Court did not respond to my letter dated 7 September 2022 in which I asked to find out how it happened that the same judge, closely related to the Defendants' solicitors, was appointed to conduct two unrelated hearings, and the probability of which is only 0.1%.
23. The tenth fact is that this case was classified on the court's website. Only after my numerous requests on this issue, I received an answer on 31 January 2023, stating that the reason for this secrecy was allegedly a technical error.
24. The eleventh fact – one of the most important hearings took place on 11 October 2022 and was accompanied by a series of oddities related to the actual secrecy of the hearing. First, the start of the hearing the night before was changed to half an hour earlier. Second, the information screens in the court lobby did not show the hearing. Third, the information screen in front of the courtroom also did not work. As a result, I, being a direct participant in the hearing, was hardly able to get to it. So far, there is no explanation for these oddities. Probably, if these explanations are received, they will also be reduced to a technical error (or rather, several technical errors at once).
25. A logical question arises – how often do several technical errors occur simultaneously in the same case? Do coincidences like the one described in paragraph 33 above often occur? Such a set of strange coincidences cannot but remind us of the story when, in Moscow with a 15 million population, it was exactly PhosAgro's security service officers who allegedly accidentally turned out to be attesting witnesses during a search of my home in the fabricated criminal case.
26. The twelfth fact is common to almost all court decisions made after Mr Beltrami KC (it also applies to his decision) and for which the presence or absence of unusual circumstances in the case is relevant. The fact that the history of my relationship with the Defendants is extremely unusual (to put it mildly), is a common ground and admitted by many people, including journalists, officials (for example, those who considered my applications for exclusion from the Interpol database and for granting refugee status) and many others. Moreover, it is correct to say that I have never met a single person before who would say about this story that there is nothing unusual in it. On the contrary, it is called shocking, monstrous, extreme, deserving of a novel or film adaptation. I was even approached by representatives of a British university in connection with my petition for permission to use my story for scientific student work. 
27. THE ONLY EXCEPTION TO THIS GENERAL RULE, WHICH DOES NOT REQUIRE ADDITIONAL PROOF, IS THE ENGLISH JUDGES, WHO DO NOT SEE ANYTHING UNUSUAL IN THIS STORY.
28. But it is surprising not only that the shocking circumstances of my relations with the Defendants do not impress English judges in any way and at all, but also that the judges carefully try not to call these facts by their proper names in court decisions (this is the thirteenth fact). In no decision can you find, for example, words such as "refugee", "death threats", "criminal case", "demands to drop the claim" and other words that are appropriate to describe the monstrous facts. The judges avoid calling a spade a spade (at least in those sections of their decisions where my arguments are described), and in extreme cases they talk only about some "wrongdoing" or “unusual things” (without any concrete details). But wrongdoing can be very different, including completely harmless against the background of the real wrongdoing that takes place in our case and is shocking in nature.
29. Moreover (this is already the fourteenth fact) - in all court decisions starting from 27 May 2022 (in which it is impossible to find references to at least a small part of the monstrous things committed by the Defendants against me), I am presented clearly in a negative light, and the Defendants look almost holy. Moreover, I would say that I am presented in a grotesquely negative light (to the point that from court decisions it can be concluded that I am a completely inadequate person). This is my behavior is called “out of the norm”, and not the behavior of the Defendants, in relation to which the scale of this “out of the norm” is huge and officially recognized (at least in part). One gets the impression that death threats from the defendant to the plaintiff are the norm.
30. If we draw artistic analogies and assume that black color has 50 shades, then I am presented in the darkest of them, and the Defendants in the lightest of 50 shades of white. This contrast is especially strange right now, given the geopolitical situation and the fact that it was the Defendants who were sanctioned by the entire civilized world, while I, on the contrary, have been under international protection since 2018. 
31. In addition, the petty nature of the claims against me is striking (this is already the fifteenth fact). If, without going into details, this is considered my “sin”, then how can it be compared, for example, with the fact that the Defendants repeatedly threatened me and my children with murder, demanding to drop the lawsuit? At least in none of my documents do I threaten anyone with murder.
32. And if you go into details, then this "sin" of mine is also extremely exaggerated. I did not check what the source of the information for paragraph 36(iii) was, but I do remember that no one asked me questions about this during the hearing. And if such questions would arise, then I would clarify the situation and the scale of my “sin” would decrease many times <…> and my "sin" turns out to be 6 times exaggerated.
33. I am well aware that the Defendants would prefer me not to respond to their applications at all, or that my response to their 2,600-page applications would be only 3 to 5 pages, which would consist solely of hints and headlines. It would have been even better if I had dropped the lawsuit, as the Defendants demanded under threats of killing me and even my children. 
34. Further, in paragraph 36(ii) I am accused of exceeding the 75-length limit by 3 pages. But even these sins cannot be compared, for example, with the fabrication of a criminal case in order to use it as an instrument of blackmail. In addition, I submitted the 75-page version in the shortest possible time.
35. BUT NOT ONLY (1) A COMPLETE DISREGARD FOR THE MONSTROUS SINS OF THE DEFENDANTS AND (2) A CLEAR EXAGGERATION OF MY "SINS" THAT CANNOT BE COMPARED WITH THE REAL SINS OF THE DEFENDANTS SURPRISES, BUT ALSO THAT THE SINS OF THE DEFENDANTS, SIMILAR TO THE PETTY AND EXAGGERATED OF MINE ARE ALWAYS FORGIVEN BY THE COURT.
36. The Defendants who, unlike me, are represented by dozens of lawyers, regularly violate the deadline for submitting documents and allow exceeding the page limits, but when I draw the attention of the court to these sins, the court does not take my claims seriously at all, as was the case with Mr Justice Picken. But my "sins" (despite the fact that I am a litigant in person) are carefully sought out and extremely exaggerated. This cannot but raise legitimate questions.
37. I AM SURE THAT SUCH A COLLOSSAL SET OF FACTS (15) WILL RAISE REASONABLE QUESTIONS FROM ANYONE WHOSE THINKING IS AT LEAST A LITTLE CRITICAL. THEREFORE, I HAVE EVERY REASON TO RAISE THE QUESTION THAT THE REASON FOR ALL THESE ODDITIES MAY BE CORRUPTION ON THE PART OF THE DEFENDANTS. I CANNOT THINK OF ANY OTHER EXPLANATION. AND FOR THE AVOIDENCE OF DOUBT, I WILL IN ANY CASE INSIST THAT THE DEFENDANTS' CORRUPTION ACTIVITIES BE THE SUBJECT OF A THOROUGH INVESTIGATION, WHICH I DEMAND IN MY PETITION.