Catherine Belton | |
---|---|
Occupation | Writer |
Language | English |
Genre | Politics |
Notable works | Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West |
Catherine Elizabeth Belton MBE is a journalist and writer. From 2007 to 2013, she was the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times . In Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West , published in 2020, Belton explored the rise of Russian president Vladimir Putin. It was named book of the year by The Economist , the Financial Times, the New Statesman and The Telegraph . It is also the subject of five separate lawsuits brought by Russian billionaires and Rosneft.
She lives in London and reports on Russia for The Washington Post .
Belton graduated from Durham University (Van Mildert College) in 1996 with a degree in Modern Languages. [1]
From 2007 to 2013, Belton worked at the Financial Times as the newspaper's Moscow correspondent, having previously written about Russian current affairs for both The Moscow Times and Business Week. She was also in 2016 the legal correspondent. In 2009, the British Press Awards shortlisted Belton for the Business journalist of the year award. [2]
Belton was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to journalism. [3]
Published in April 2020 by William Collins in the UK, and in June by Macmillan, Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West is an account of Russian president Vladimir Putin's rise to power, and the Kremlin's influence on the West. [4]
Luke Harding (author of Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West), writing for The Guardian , described the book as "the most remarkable account so far of Putin's rise from a KGB operative to deadly agent provocateur in the hated west... This is a superb book. Its only flaw is a heavy reliance on well-placed anonymous sources." [5]
The Economist named Putin's People as one of its books of the year in the category of politics and current affairs, saying "this [book] is the closest yet to a definitive account. It draws on extensive interviews and archival sleuthing to tell a vivid story of cynicism and violence." [6] The Financial Times also chose it as one of its best books of 2020. [7]
In March 2021, Roman Abramovich filed a lawsuit in London against Belton and her publisher, HarperCollins, for defamation. Harbottle & Lewis represented Abramovich over the matter. [8] Belton, on the account of three former Abramovich associates, alleges that Abramovich acquired Chelsea Football Club in 2003 under Putin's instructions. [9] [10] The libel suit was settled with minor amendments. Although the book carried a denial from him, future editions will explain Abramovich's motivations in more detail. [11]
Further lawsuits have been brought against HarperCollins by Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven; and against both the author and publisher by Shalva Chigirinsky, and Rosneft. [12] HarperCollins have stated they will "robustly defend" the actions. Nick Cohen in The Observer described the litigation as "a pile-on from Russian billionaires on a scale this country has never witnessed" adding "London’s lawyers are hard at work. Carter-Ruck, CMS, Harbottle & Lewis and Taylor Wessing have a billionaire apiece in a kind of socialism of the litigious." [13]
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich is a Russian oligarch and politician. He is the former owner of Chelsea, a Premier League football club in London, England, and is the primary owner of the private investment company Millhouse LLC. He has Russian, Israeli and Portuguese citizenship.
Mikhail Maratovich Fridman is a Ukrainian-born, Russian–Israeli businessman, billionaire, and oligarch. He is one of the co-founders of Alfa-Group, a multinational Russian conglomerate. According to Forbes, he was the seventh-richest Russian as of 2017. In May 2017, he was also ranked as Russia's most important businessman by bne IntelliNews. In August 2022, Fridman had a net worth of $11.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky, also known as Platon Elenin, was a Russian business oligarch, government official, engineer and mathematician and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Andrey Nikolayevich Illarionov is a Russian economist and former senior policy advisor to Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia, from April 2000 to December 2005. Since April 2021, he is a senior fellow at the non-governmental organization Center for Security Policy, which is based out of Washington, D.C. in the United States.
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Petr Olegovich Aven is a Russian oligarch, businessman, economist and politician who also holds Latvian citizenship. Until March 2022 he headed Alfa-Bank, Russia's largest commercial bank. In March 2022, he resigned from the board of directors at Alfa-Bank and LetterOne Group to help them avoid sanctions. In 2022 he was named the 665th richest person in the world, with a net worth of around $4.7 billion.
Sergei Viktorovich Pugachev, also spelled Sergey Pugachyov, is a Russian-born French business magnate. He is a doctor of technical sciences and a member of the International Engineering Academy as well as the author of three monographs and 40 research papers.
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Nikolay Petrovich Tokarev is a Russian businessman and oligarch. He is the president of the Russian pipeline company Transneft.
Financial Management Company Ltd (FIMACO) was a Jersey company founded in 1990.
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Putin's People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West is a book authored by Catherine Belton, former Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times. The book discusses the rise to power of Vladimir Putin and the people around him. The publication of the book sparked a series of lawsuits by the individuals and organizations mentioned in it.