Mktrchyan v 2Trom Media Group: High Court awards £105,000 over Uzbekistan corruption claims

Mr Justice Fordham has awarded businessman Ovik Mktrchyan £105,000 in general and aggravated damages, together with a final injunction and indemnity costs of £117,663.38, in a defamation claim against 2Trom Media Group Ltd and its director Viktor Tokarev, the publishers behind the website The London Post.

The judgement, handed down in the King's Bench Media and Communications List on 29 July 2026, followed a remedies hearing on 23 July at which neither defendant appeared or was represented. Judgement in default had already been entered against both defendants by Master Davison in February 2026, after they failed to acknowledge service of proceedings issued in April 2025. Fordham J was satisfied that the defendants had received proper and repeated notice of every stage of the case, including the hearing itself, and found no justification for an adjournment.

The claim concerned an article published on The London Post in October 2024 alleging that Mr Mktrchyan was a central figure in a corruption network linked to Uzbekistan, accused of embezzling state funds and using his acquisition of a stake in Asia Alliance Bank to seize state assets corruptly. The court found these allegations, which formed the basis of the default judgement on liability, to be unanswered and uncontested.

In assessing remedies, Fordham J examined evidence that the publication formed part of a wider, coordinated disinformation campaign against Mr Mktrchyan that began on Russian-language platforms in mid-2024 before escalating into English-language coverage. The court noted findings by an arbitral tribunal in Houston, which had separately examined related allegations against the claimant and concluded they were unsupported by credible evidence.

The judgement also scrutinised the credibility of The London Post itself, drawing on reporting by Press Gazette, CityAM and Byline Times describing the outlet as consistent with a "pink slime" operation, publishing low-quality or repurposed content alongside targeted attacks on prominent figures from former Soviet states while obscuring its ownership. The court noted that the website had falsely claimed to be regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation, a claim IPSO's own membership records did not support.

Fordham J placed particular weight on evidence that the claimant's companies were refused banking services by two UK providers in the weeks following publication, findings the judgement treated as a foreseeable consequence of the reputational harm caused by the article. The judge assessed the scale of publication as running into the thousands of UK readers, notwithstanding the website's stated 50,000 monthly visits, and found the harm aggravated by the defendants' complete failure to respond to any correspondence, including formal service at their registered Companies House address.

Beyond damages, the order requires the defendants to remove the article and refrain from repeating the substance of its allegations, with a penal notice attached warning of contempt proceedings for breach. The court also directed that a summary of the judgement be published prominently on The London Post's homepage under section 12 of the Defamation Act 2013, remaining searchable for twelve months, with the precise wording to be finalised following further submissions.

Costs were assessed on the indemnity basis, which Fordham J found justified by the defendants' total non-engagement with proceedings despite having been served at every stage in accordance with statutory requirements.