In 2021, the British government may have allowed Prigozhin to counteract the sanctions imposed on him

Hackers gained access to correspondence between British lawyers and lawyers of the head of the Wagner PMC, Yevhen Prigozhin. They passed these letters to journalists from openDemocracy and The Intercept.

In 2020, the Bellingcat investigative group found that Yevheniy Prigozhin was directly involved in the Wagner private military company. Elliot Higgins posted a link to this text on his Twitter page. In the UK, where Higgins was based, libel laws are stricter than in the Netherlands, where Bellingcat is registered. That's why Prigozhin's lawyers decided to attack Giggins.

The British law firm Discreet received permission from the UK Treasury to represent Prigozhin in court.

At the time, he was already under sanctions. Prigozhin's lawyers from the Russian company Capital Legal Services wanted to get journalist Higgins to refute his statement about Prigozhin's involvement in the PMC.

Since the sanctions were imposed on Prigozhin for his involvement in a private military company, this means that Russian and British lawyers were countering the sanctions with the permission of the ministry that imposed them.

Photo: Mikhail Svetlov | Getty Image