Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska rejects claims that the former chief of Donald Trump's electoral staff, Paul Manafort, had worked for him covertly for over 10 years

Oleg Deripaska
© Mikhail Metzel/TASSRussian tycoon Oleg Deripaska
Russian businessman Oleg Deripaska on Monday filed a legal action for libel against Associated Press, information from the archives of a court in Washington said.

The lawsuit was filed in connection with direct or tentative libelous statements made by the agency, the report said. It added that the AP published an article by Jeff Horwitz and Chad Day that, according to the lawsuit, contained false accusations against Deripaska implicating him in criminal and other offenses.

"On March 22, 2017, the AP, by and through its writers Jeff Horwitz and Chad Day, published an article (hereinafter the "Article") that falsely accused Mr. Deripaska of involvement in criminal acts and other improprieties," the document says.

"This is an action for defamation by direct statements and by implication," it says.

"The Article is structured to imply falsely that Mr. Deripaska's commercial dealings from the period between 2005 and 2009 were somehow related to alleged criminal conduct and improprieties related to the campaign of then-presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and the 2016 U.S. Presidential election," according to the document.

"The AP had (and has) no basis for reporting that any contract between Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Manafort provided for the undermining of democratic movements," it said.

Somewhat earlier, Deripaska dismissed the allegations about his involvement in the propulsion of Moscow's interests as an element of the anti-Russian campaign in the U.S. mainstream media.

He rejected once again the reporters' claims that the former chief of Donald Trump's electoral staff, Paul Manafort, had worked for him covertly for over 10 years to promulgate the interests of Russian leaderhip and had generated an ambitious political strategy for undermining the anti-Russian opposition in the former Soviet republics.