How oligarchs, corporations and plutocrats use the law to gag their critics
DAVID HOOPER
Price: £25 hardback
As an outstanding libel lawyer, David Hooper’s masterful investigation is a terrifying exposé of Britain’s corrupt judicial system
Tom Bower, writer and author of Maxwell: The Outsider
This timely and important book focuses on the controversial issue of SLAPP cases – Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation – which are designed to censor, intimidate and silence critics by confronting them with aggressive lawyers, heavy legal costs and enquiry agents until they abandon their cases. David Hooper, veteran media lawyer, explores how the power of money has enabled the super-rich to crush their detractors and outlines the tactics they use to do so.
He examines how billionaire oligarchs, often ex-convicts and linked to organised crime, have tried to launder their reputation in the UK by suing for libel and found lawyers only too happy to pocket their roubles, while he also exposes the astonishing circumstances in which they did so.
Hooper traces the origins of SLAPP actions in a number of cases in which he was involved and describes his experiences with oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky, including how he needed an armed bodyguard while collecting evidence in Moscow. Both plaintiffs in the Berezovsky case were murdered, as was Hooper’s own client, the editor of Forbes Russia.
In another case, Hooper became the victim of a SLAPP action in Greece and he and over 100 other people were targets of a large hacking operation. His own enquiries led him to investigate a series of cases – unrelated but using the same hackers – that involved the most serious allegations of misconduct across the UK, the Gulf Region and the United States ever levelled against an English lawyer.
The UK also has its own Slappsters, of whom Nadhim Zahawi and Mohamed Amersi are the most recent examples. Yet they also come from Greece, Sweden, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Malta and the United States. In Buying Silence, Hooper reveals how those often with something to hide try to stop you knowing about it and how their lawyers help them do it: the well-paid legal profession does not emerge from his investigation with credit.
AUTHOR
David Hooper is a leading libel solicitor, having worked with top publishers and newspapers, as well as a serving prime minister and many key figures in business and politics. His previous books include Public Scandal, Odium and Contempt, Official Secrets: The Use and Abuse of the Act and Reputations Under Fire: Winners and Losers in the Libel Business. He lives in Monmouthshire, Wales.
PRAISE FOR BUYING SILENCE
A new kind of warfare – lawfare – is in operation … A shocking and vitally important book.
Baroness Helena Kennedy of the Shaws KC
This is a vital book on how the rich use the courts and the legal profession to muzzle news organisations when it comes to the disclosure of their nefarious deeds.
Graydon Carter, Founder of Air Mail and former editor of Vanity Fair
A detailed and shocking account by an experienced media lawyer of the scandal of SLAPP actions and the need for fundamental reforms of the law and the legal profession
David Davis MP
Compellingly told, eye-popping, sometimes hilarious and always illuminating … Buying Silence is an urgent call to arms, exposing why the British tradition of ‘free speech’ is increasingly a myth.
Mark Stephens CBE, solicitor
This book is a beacon of enlightenment, offering hope and solutions against legal bullying. A must-read for advocates of free speech.
Eliot Higgins, journalist and founder of Bellingcat
An extended plea for a re-balancing of English law to give more protection to free speech and create more barriers to so-called SLAPP suits (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation). It won’t be easy.
Air Mail
Hooper … is succinct, yet still includes the telling detail of someone who has been unnervingly close to the action … What Buying Silence captures especially well is the sheer gall of the age of ‘alternative facts’ in which those who have a surfeit of money are enabled by the legal system in their bids to re-landscape the truth.
Laura Slattery, Irish Times
Terrific … It is the most extraordinary thing for an ordinary British citizen to read how it is that English law has become this system of menace around the world … A very timely book.
Nick Cohen, The Lowdown
A powerful and compelling book. Hooper is well placed to know … He has been at the forefront of media law and involved in many of the power battles he recounts. … A timely and well-documented account … He pulls no punches with his own profession.
Frances Gibb, The Times
Buying Silence – David Hooper on the cost of free speech – the media lawyer shows how surveillance and intimidation are used to silence critics.
Mary Fitzgerald, Financial Times
A good book about some bad people … when publishers and reporters write about the rich, the corrupt and the greedy David Hooper’s book will be a useful weapon they can happily rely on.
Lord Garnier KC, Inforrm
Featured on the following podcast:
A Long Time in Finance: legal bullying and the war on truth
SLAPPs undercut our most important values: the freedom to speak and the right to know. If they are not effectively stopped, we will continue to be left in the dark about wrongdoing, malign influence and crimes that negatively affect our society and ultimately damage democracy, both here and abroad.
Susan Coughtrie, director of the Foreign Policy Centre and co-founder of the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition
A SLAPPstick analysis of how a rogues’ gallery of crooks, thieves and thugs have perverted the course of British justice – and what should be done to curb such intimidatory lawfare
Ben Schott, author, photographer and journalist
Oligarchs and plutocrats versus the media … The crushing appeal of SLAPP actions … Goldsmith, Maxwell and now the Russians … Lawyers and the money … Important stories that are never published … British media lawyer David Hooper suggests useful reforms …
Veronica Lenard, Gazette of Law & Journalism
Abergavenny Chronicle
Serialisation in The Times
The millionaire Tory party donor who used the law to silence critics
Shoehorning Slapps law into economic bill is foolish
