England’s legal regulator decides basic due diligence is optional in Wagner founder case

The Solicitor Regulation Authority generously decided that the law firm representing Wagner owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin could not have known that Prigozhin was lying when he sued open-source investigator Eliot Higgins for linking him to Wagner.

In late 2021, Prigozhin hired Discreet Law, a London-based firm, to sue Eliot Higgins, an open-source investigator who founded Bellingcat, for linking him to the Wagner Group. Prigozhin claimed that this had caused him “great distress.” The High Court struck out the case in May 2022.

The case was seen as a particularly egregious example of a strategic lawsuit against public participation” (SLAPP) – basically, an abuse of England’s generous libel laws to silence lawful investigations and discussions of matters in the public interest. Not only was the case based on a fraudulent claim – Prigozhin subsequently admitted his links to the group – but it targeted an individual with limited resources, rather than one of the many mainstream media outlets to make similar assertions. It also pursued Higgins in the UK, rather than the Netherlands, where Bellingcat is based.

Higgin’s lawyers decided to refer Discreet Law to the SRA for filing the SLAPP. Higgins himself estimated that the case had left him with £70,000 in legal costs. It has now emerged that the SRA has decided that Discreet Law could not have known that Prigozhin was lying, and therefore its lawyers will face no further action.

There are a number of surprising (and, for other investigators and journalists, worrying) aspects to the decision. First, there is the decision itself: By the time that Discreet Law brought the case, Prigozhin’s links with Wagner were well documented. Not only had mainstream Western media outlets picked up on Russian investigative reporting by this point, but the UK had already sanctioned him in December 2020 – with the designation directly linking him to Wagner. In other words, Prigozhin’s links to Wagner were part of the public record by this point. Discreet Law's claims that it took “steps to verify the accuracy of the instructions received from Mr Prigozhin” and “undertook independent research and gathered material which supported Mr Prigozhin’s instructions” are questionable. Even in the most generous interpretation, Discreet Law should have hired better researchers to conduct its due diligence.

Second, the lack of transparency over the decision is alarming. The SRA made it in May 2024 — two years down the line from the referral — but it is only now that it has become known (the story was broken by the Substack newsletter Democracy for Sale and verified by the Financial Times. There are no details about the decision on the SRA’s website, and thus we don’t have a full explanation of its basis – only the details revealed in media reporting on a letter sent by the SRA. One suspects that Discreet Law’s application to the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for permission to receive funds from Prigozhin played a role (itself an absurd decision), but that is no more than a guess. The impression is that Discreet Law leveraged claims of client confidentiality to limit SRA’s own disclosures about the case – something that hardly inspires confidence in the regulator.

The fate of Discreet Law is, in itself, an interesting story. It ceased trading at the end of 2023. One suspects the reputational damage from the case played a role. Yet it was only ever a spin-off from a bigger organisation. It was led by Roger Gherson and Joe Levtov; Gherson founded Gherson Solicitors LLP, at which Levtov is listed as a senior solicitor. That company continues to operate, claiming to provide “legal representation to CEOs of international, private and public companies and individuals in their often complex and contentious immigration matters.” I’ll leave you to make your own guesses about its client roster.