Tory donor’s name removed from kleptocracy report after ‘meritless’ libel threat

Chatham House’s costs to defend the case were estimated at £500,000, according to Margaret Hodge Photograph: Michael Molloy/Alamy

Chatham House, the internationally renowned foreign affairs thinktank, has removed a reference to a Conservative party donor from a report on kleptocracy after a threatened legal action for libel, according to a statement made in parliament.

Dame Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP for Barking and former chair of parliament’s public accounts committee, told parliament that Dmitry Leus, a former banker of Russian-Turkmen origin, had threatened to sue Chatham House after he was named in its December 2021 report “The UK’s Kleptocracy Problem”.