British Judge Orders Christopher Steele To Pay Damages to Two Russian Bankers

July 9, 2020 (EIRNS)—In his dirty dossier against Donald Trump, former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele had claimed, wholly without basis, that Petr Aven and Mikhail Fridman had made pay-offs to Russian President Vladimir Putin starting in the 1990s. The judge found that Steele had not taken “reasonable steps” to verify the allegation, and has ordered Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., to pay £18,000, just under $23,000, to each of the bankers, for violating the Data Protection Act.

Justice Mark Warby of the High Court of England and Wales made the ruling having to do with long-discredited claims repeated in the report that the Russian Alfa Bank, connected to Aven and Fridman, was conveying secret messages between Moscow and the Trump campaign in 2016.