MOSCOW, October 18 - RAPSI. Moscow’s Lyublinsky District Court ordered Spanish newspaper El Pais to redact a 2009 article featuring information on Russian national Vladimir Kokorev’s involvement in a Spanish money laundering scheme, a court spokesperson told RAPSI.

According to the text of the decision, in 2009 El Pais published an article under the headline, “Exposing the Obianga Clan’s figurehead.” In contained, in part, a reference to a police report alleging that the anticorruption division of Spain’s police suspected three Russians of laundering money for various high-ranking Equatorial Guinean officials, including President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. The newspaper listed the suspects by name, Vladimir Kokorev and his wife Julia among them.

A Russian blogger published in his blog fragments of the article translated into Russian. Kokorev then called on the court to recognize the information as false and discrediting to his honor, dignity, and business reputation. The court sided with Kokorev and ordered the Russian blogger, El Pais, and journalist Jose Mario Irujo to redact the information they had disseminated.

According to Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Vladimir Kokorev is a specialist in Romance Philology and a doctor of Historical Sciences. His wife Julia Kokoreva has a degree in Spanish philology and is an expert on Latin American studies. Since 1997 the couple has been living in Las Palmas (Canary Islands), Spain, where they moved from Equatorial Guinea.