Taylor has also issued defamation damages claims against the journalists who wrote or contributed to the two articles, one of which appeared on Delfi's site.

From a small courtroom on the third floor of the Harju County Court building, a suitably rainy Estonian spring is just visible through a corner window.

It is just before 11 a.m, and present in court are the hearing's secretary, Marko Taylor's lawyer Helmeri Indela, and Mari Männiko and Indrek Leppik, lawyers for the defendants Ekspress Meedia and journalists Oliver Kundi and Riin Aljas.

An ERR journalist and photographer are also present ahead of the hearing, which will be behind closed doors.

The court secretary asks Taylor's representative, Indela, if Taylor will be attending. Indela responds in the affirmative, and two minutes before the hearing starts, Indela gets a call, telling the caller he is upstairs in courtroom number 3020.

An inaudible question is asked from the other end of the phone, and Indela responds, "one is here."

The minutes pass by, but no one else enters the courtroom. Ekspress Meedia's lawyers engage in small talk.

The photographer meanwhile is getting a bit impatient to take the pictures they need.

Three minutes after the session was supposed to start, the plaintiff's lawyer announces that Taylor messaged, saying he will not be coming today after all.

The court secretary moves to close the doors, and the photographer then leaves.

Judge Karin Mölder enters. The trial begins. This is the second hearing on Taylor's appeal, and the first where the matter could be discussed in substance.

Taylor's suit against Ekspress Meedia and its journalists stems from two articles published on May 3, 2022.

One article appeared on the Delfi portal, and the other on the website of the international investigative journalism consortium the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP).

The Delfi article was authored by Oliver Kund and Riin Aljas, who are also noted as contributors to the OCCRP story.

The articles are based on a leak from the Dubai property register, which listed 800,000 property units along with their owners.

The data, from 2020, was collected by the Washington-based Center for Advanced Defense Studies (C4ADS).

Both stories refer to the fact that that among others, two property units belonged to Marko Taylor, making him the second wealthiest Estonian in Dubai according to this register.

Both articles, more extensively in Estonian and briefly in English, also detail Taylor's background and his previous activities.

Months later, Taylor filed with the first-tier Harju County Court a 66-page lawsuit, with 38 separate appendices, against Ekspress Meedia, Oliver Kund, and Riin Aljas.

Taylor claims in the suit that discussing his past has caused him damage.

His former employer in Dubai, Mercans General Trading, terminated his employment contract directly as a result of the published articles, he said, causing him to lose close to €20,000 in monthly wages.

Taylor's lawsuit also states that the articles about him contained false statements presented as fact.

Additionally, Taylor claims in the lawsuit that writing about him has led to he and his family being placed in danger, to his personal data having been illegally processed, and to him being unable to find new work.

Other fallout was that he was forced to move back to Estonia due to the expiration of his Dubai residency permit, while his Dubai bank account was closed down.

Taylor says he believes he should be awarded €719,088 in material damages, covering three years of lost salary.

Additionally, he seeks non-material damages from Ekspress Meedia amounting to €239,698, plus €15,000 from each of the two journalists. He also wants the published stories modified so that he could no longer be identified in them.

The lawsuit outlines 10 points where, in Taylor's view, the articles made factual errors.

The court plans to review these on Wednesday.

Taylor's defense lawyer, Helmeri Indela, has filed a motion to declare the session closed, in the interests of protecting privacy. This would mean that the public, including the media, could not hear the court proceedings.

Indela's desire on behalf of his client is also that the discussion about closing the session be held in private.

This raises the discussion of whether the lawsuit could constitute a strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP).

According to Indela, there is no such thing as SLAPP, at least in the Estonian legal ecosystem. "If a person is defending their rights, it does not represent silencing," he stated in court.

Furthermore, Indela argues that there is no point in talking about gagging when a private individual is suing a listed company.

Indela also suggests that declaring the session closed might be in the defendants' interests in avoiding extensive public coverage if "Ekspress Meedia and its journalists become the first to learn their lesson."

After some discussion, the judge rules that the sessions may in fact remain public after all.

The court also discussed a lawsuit that Marko Taylor filed in Dubai, against journalists Oliver Kundi and Riin Aljas.

None of those present claim to be experts in UAE law, but Indela noted that if a decision were made there within a few months, the claims against the journalists in Estonia could be withdrawn.

Later, speaking with defense lawyer Mari Männiko, Indela did not say that he understood why, for instance, the courts in Dubai have opted to process such a case or how their decision could affect anyone.

When asked why not simply ignore that jurisdiction, Männiko responded that this hinges on a person's appetite for risk. She herself, for example, would not suggest people not defend themselves against lawsuits in the emirate of Dubai.

Kundi and Aljas do also have a legal representative on the ground there.

The session then moved on to analyze what Taylor considered to be the false statements.

These ranged from pontificating on whether Taylor had ever been tasked with placing hundreds of millions of dollars of U.S. government money, what "very soon" means in terms of time-frame, to whether the journalist erred when writing that Taylor's house was 280 square meters in size; the apartment 81 square meters, whereas they were actually 278.39 square meters and 81.06 square meters in size, respectively.

The parties failed to reach consensus. Disagreements ranged from the definition of words to perceiving the context of sentences.

A separate issue also arose on the last three allegedly false statements, which Indela had apparently neglected to make a claim for.

After some discussion, Indela pledged to file a new lawsuit concerning these statements.

The final portion of the session was dominated by a dispute over whether it was possible to ask the Estonian court to amend the English text, since court proceedings in Estonia should be in Estonian.

Judge Mölder allowed for this to be decided on ahead of the next ruling.

Finally, a suitable date for the next court session was found after comparing schedules. This was set for September 27 this year.

Following the hearing, a journalist asked Taylor's defense counsel Indela for Taylor's phone number.

Indela said he did not have the authority to pass it on, but pledged to give Taylor the journalist's contact details.

Indela did not want to discuss the case separately and beyond that, while Taylor had not contacted the journalist at the time of writing.

Speaking after the session, Männiko, while reluctant to comment on ongoing cases, said she did not believe that a nearly one-million-euro claim was consistent with Estonian court practice.

Männiko noted that the sums awarded in Estonia in comparable cases have generally been in the region of around €10,000.

"Court practice here is not such that you could get a million euros in damages," she remarked.

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