Russian-Uzbek billionaire Usmanov sues UBS in Germany, lawyer says

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian-Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov has filed a lawsuit against the bank UBS Europe SE in Frankfurt over what his lawyers said were unsubstantiated reports made about his transactions that triggered an investigation of him.

UBS declined to comment.

“We have filed a lawsuit against UBS Europe SE Frankfurt on behalf of Mr Usmanov personally for the court to establish the fundamental facts and the bank’s liability for damages,” Peter Gauweiler, a lawyer representing Usmanov, said in a statement on Monday.

“The Frankfurt am Main General Prosecutor’s Office and the Council of the EU have issued numerous erroneous decisions for which UBS is partly responsible, in particular, due to the use of its suspicious transaction reports as an instrument for the purposes of criminal prosecution and EU sanctions policy.”

Usmanov’s lawyers said that UBS’s actions had led to financial losses and “enormous damage” to their client’s reputation.

“Taking into account the damage to Mr. Usmanov’s reputation and the value of the worldwide assets affected thereby, the effects for UBS may be ‘tsunami-like’ in nature,” Gauweiler said.

(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow; additional reporting by Oliver Hirt in Zurich; Editing by Mark Trevelyan and Gareth Jones)