MOSCOW, September 19 - RAPSI. The Moscow District Federal Commercial Court has validated the dismissal of the National Reserve Bank's (NRB) defamation lawsuit against the Kommersant publishing house, a court spokesperson told the RAPSI on Wednesday.

The Moscow Commercial Court dismissed billionaire Alexander Lebedev's lawsuit in November 2011. On Thursday, the court dismissed the bank's appeal of the dismissal, and the judicial act came into effect.

The NRB and Lebedev had earlier filed four defamation lawsuits against Kommersant. Their actions were provoked by the paper's allegations that the NRB was under investigation due to the embezzlement of public funds allocated for the Rosiisky Capital Bank bailout.

The lawsuit was based on a March 4 story entitled, "NRB returns profits to shareholders."

NRB's lawyers said the false information negatively affected the bank's reputation and asked Kommersant to publish a retraction and pay 10 million rubles ($324,500) to the bank and 1 million rubles ($32,450) to Lebedev in compensation.

Kommersant called the claims unfounded.

Three other lawsuits provoked by Kommersant articles mentioning the criminal case were also turned down by the Moscow Commercial Court on similar grounds.

According to the NRB's website, the National Reserve Corporation-controlled by Lebedev-holds 59.83 percent of the shares in the bank. Lebedev personally holds 4.58 percent of the shares, his son Yevgeny holds 13.79 percent, VEB Capital Chief Yury Kudimov holds 18.38 percent, and the remaining 2.74 percent belong to the Federal Agency for State Property Management.