A Swedish billionaire who is developing a controversial luxury hotel in Aspen, Colorado, is suing one of the city’s newspapers for defamation, claiming The Aspen Times wrongly portrayed him as a corrupt Russian oligarch amid that country’s war on Ukraine.
Vladislav Doronin, who was born in the Soviet Union and built his fortune in Moscow’s real estate scene in the 1990s, says the newspaper’s coverage of him in both news stories and opinion pieces casts a pall on his $76.25 million Aspen land purchase and planned development, according to a complaint filed last month in U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.
It’s the latest escalation in a simmering fight between the newspaper and Doronin. The Aspen Times has been critical of Doronin’s purchase, while the billionaire’s public relations team has staunchly fought the “oligarch” label, denied allegations of corruption and emphasized Doronin’s disapproval of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
