Arsenal’s second largest shareholder, Alisher Usmanov, owns 30.4% of the club and is worth an estimated $16bn, so how did the 64-year-old make his money and are all those stories about him true?
3. Suppression of criticism
In 2007, the British ambassador for Uzbekistan claimed that Usmanov was “a gangster and racketeer who rightly did six years in jail”. He said the 64-year-old’s pardon came under instructions from an alleged drug trafficker.
In response, Usmanov’s legal team allegedly pressured the website to remove the article. They contacted independent blogs and websites asking them to remove all references to the allegations.
Later, Usmanov hired PR company RLM Finsbury, who allegedly edited his Wikipedia entry to remove any references to the above freedom of speech row. They also reportedly removed details of his overturned criminal conviction, and replaced these sections of the page with paragraphs about Usmanov’s charity work.
The company apologised and stated: “This was not done in the proper manner nor was this approach authorised by Mr Usmanov. We apologise for this and it will not happen again.”
This news was initially reported by The Times, but their article on the subject has also subsequently disappeared, and you can now only find references to the initial quotes and story in other publications and websites.
When articles disappear like this, it’s difficult to report on the way Usmanov made his fortune in the way we have for Stan Kroenke or Emirates Airlines. That won’t stop us digging, though.