The court ordered to return Forbes to the previous owner

The Moscow Arbitration Court considers the sale of the Russian magazine Forbes by Alexander Fedotov’s company invalid. The court ordered Magomed Musaev, the new owner of Forbes, to return the magazine to Mr. Fedotov, reports RBC. The amount of the transaction amounted to 500 thousand rubles, in court it was called “non-market”. Lawyers of the publication will file an appeal.

In Forbes, the court’s decision was called erroneous. The publication notes that the court missed important details that change the course of the case. “Everyone who is familiar with the media market remembers in what a deplorable and debt-laden state Mr. Fedotov left his projects, but the court ignored the fact that the new owner took on the repayment of the company’s huge debts (360 million rubles) to the budget, employees and contractors, which was expressly stated in the contract of sale,” the statement reads. statement on the Forbes website.

The publication also noted that so far “everything remains the same in the company”, since the decision of the first instance does not enter into force until the decision of the Court of Appeal.

In June 2022, Alexandra Fedotova, an employee of one of the companies, filed a lawsuit to invalidate the transaction, stating that the company’s shares were sold below market and par value.

In 2018, Faf Media, owned by Mr. Fedotov, sold Magomed Musaev 95 ordinary and five preferred shares of JSC AS Rus Media, the publisher of Forbes in Russia. The deal took place against the backdrop of a conflict between Alexander Fedotov and the editors. Mr. Musaev stated that the magazine needed a new owner who would allow organizing an independent editorial policy. In 2019, Alexander Fedotov was declared bankrupt, and the Faf Media company has been going through bankruptcy proceedings for the past two years.

The ACMG group of Mikhail Fedotov bought the Russian Forbes in 2015 from the German publishing house Axel Springler. The latter left the Russian market due to the entry into force of a law that, since 2016, has limited foreign capital in the media. Under Mr. Fedorov, two chief editors, Nikolai Uskov and Nikolai Mazurin, were fired from Forbes; both cases were accompanied by allegations of interference by the owner in editorial policy.

In 2018, after Magomed Musaev became the new owner of the Russian Forbes, the magazine’s press service reported that the owner of the brand (the American Forbes Media LLC) extended the license to publish Forbes in Russia until 2023. In May 2022 in the Russian Forbes notedthat the license was not revoked. At the same time, the magazine stopped the release of the paper version, citing a pause in the advertising activity of automakers and luxury brands.

Lusine Balasyan, Yuri Litvinenko