Alexander Fedotov, who owns the publishing house ACMG (publishes the journals Forbes, L'Officiel, SNC and others), filed a lawsuit to protect the honor, dignity and business reputation of the former editor-in-chief of Forbes magazine Nikolai Uskov, from a file of civil cases on the court site. The suit was registered on August 3.

Uskov told Vedomosti that he did not know anything about Fedotov's lawsuits. The representative of ACMG did not answer the calls and the request of Vedomosti on Monday night. RBC with reference to the director of public relations of ACMG Dmitry Ozman writes that Fedotov sued two lawsuits - on the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation and the disclosure of trade secrets. Details the interlocutor of the publication did not disclose. Information on the second lawsuit in the files of the court at the time of publication was not.

Uskov was editor-in-chief of Forbes from January 2016 to June 2018. He was sacked because of unsatisfactory quality of work, systematic violation of labor discipline and labor contract in the part of "non-competition", explained in ACMG. According to the representative of the company, Uskov had no right to take part in events of other brands, but repeatedly did it.

 ACMG offered Uskov various options for layoffs, but he refused, because of what had to go to unilaterally terminate the contract, said company representatives. Fedotov himself decided to dismiss Uskov at the end of May, sources close to Forbes told Vedomosti: recently the editor-in-chief and the owner were constantly in conflict, and Fedotov regularly threatened to fire Uskov. Uskov told The Bell that his dismissal is part of the pressure on the editorial board. "I, with my principles and approaches, seemed to him (Fedotov, Vedomosti) the only obstacle to the rapid and fabulous enrichment," Uskov wrote in his Facebook immediately after his dismissal.

Uskov himself filed a lawsuit in the Presnensky District Court on the publisher of the magazine. He has several demands: reinstatement as a Forbes editor-in-chief, recognition of disciplinary penalties as illegal, payment of wages for the period from dismissal to reinstatement, he said. Uskov also asked to pay moral compensation: 50,000 rubles, which corresponds to the minimum level in accordance with the Civil Code.

After the dismissal of Uskov, Nikolai Mazurin was appointed Acting Editor-in-Chief, but he did not work for long. Mazurin was dismissed immediately after he complained to the Moscow prosecutor's office: on July 25 the editorial board found that in the August issue of Forbes there was no article "Family Affairs" about the business of the brothers Ziyavudin and Magomed Magomedov. They are accused of embezzling 2.5 billion rubles from the budget, and Forbes journalists Sergei Titov and Elena Berezanskaya described how their business grew and how the relations of the brothers are structured. The article about the Magomedovs was drawn up and approved by Mazurin along with other materials of the issue, but suddenly he disappeared without the editor's knowledge, her employees said. Journalists did not know who gave the order not to publish the text. According to them, therefore Mazurin appealed to the prosecutor's office - in the opinion of the editorial board, such actions violate the law on the media, in particular Art. 19, prohibiting anyone to interfere in the activities of the editorial board, including the founder.

After the appeal of Mazurin to the prosecutor's office, the new acting editor-in-chief of the Russian Forbes was appointed Andrei Zolotov - this editorial board was announced on the evening of July 26. After that, the editorial staff sent an appeal to the head office of the American Forbes Media, asking not to approve Zolotov as editor-in-chief of the Russian version of the magazine, two editorial staff told Vedomosti.