A victory for the International Fencing Federation (FIE). The Hamburg Regional Court has ruled against the broadcasting by one of the television channels of the German public broadcasting group ARD « of slanderous statements" in a report broadcasted on August 4, 2024. It suggested the existence of a " referee corruption system" within the FIE, created by Alisher Usmanov (photo above), the elected president of the body, who has been in retirement since March 2022 (he has been replaced since that date by an interim president, the Greek Emmanuel Katsiadakis). Following the broadcast of the investigation, the billionaire of Uzbek origin filed a request for an injunction before the German court against WDR, one of the channels of the consortium of ARD. The judge in charge of the case found that the claims in the report were " inadmissible reports based on suspicion". They can therefore no longer be reproduced or broadcast. The same accusations, relayed by other media, had already been deleted following preliminary procedures.
