Legal cases usually referred to as Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are often aggressively used by wealthy individuals or large businesses to intimidate and financially exhaust opponents, threatening them with extreme costs for defending a claim. SLAPPs have been used prominently by Russian oligarchs to silence critics including investigative journalists, writers and campaigners to avoid scrutiny, often on bogus defamation and privacy grounds that prevent the publication of information in the public interest.