http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2216018,00.html
ROMAN
ABRAMOVICH, Russia’s richest man, was reported yesterday to have bought Kommersant,
the business daily, raising fears that one of the last bastions of press
freedom in the country could be muted.
Mr Abramovich,
the owner of Chelsea Football Club, is widely believed to have close ties to the
Kremlin. At its request, he agreed last year to serve a second term as governor
of the remote Arctic region of Chukotka.
Separately,
Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, announced that he and
a business partner had bought a significant share in another newspaper, Novaya
Gazeta, to try to preserve its independence.
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The two
reported deals threw an uncomfortable spotlight on media freedom in Russia on the
final day of a conference of world newspaper editors in Moscow. On Monday
President Putin told the opening session of the World Newspaper Congress that
Russia enjoyed freedom of the press and that the state was reducing its
involvement in the sector.
But critics say
that the state has indirect control over most of the important news
publications and direct ownership of all the national television networks and
radio stations.
Gazprom, the
state-run gas monopoly, bought Izvestia, a leading daily newspaper, last
year, and most of the others are owned by businessmen loyal to the Kremlin.
One notable
exception is Kommersant, which has regularly published scandals and
scoops that have reflected badly on the authorities, and it has faced a series
of lawsuits as a result.
Media experts
say that the Kommersant deal would signal the end of its days as the
most aggressively independent news outlet in the country.
Abramovich is
one of the oligarchs, known in Russia as “wallets”. “If a ‘wallet’ buys
something, that means the authorities need it,” Aleksei Simonov, the head of
the Glasnost Defence Foundation, a press freedom watchdog, said. “From my point
of view, this will do nothing good for media freedom in Russia.”
The business
daily, which has a readership of about 100,000, was owned until recently by
Boris Berezovsky, the exiled tycoon, who was granted political asylum in
Britain in 2003.
But he sold his
share to Badri Patarkatsishvili, his Georgian business partner, in February to
try to save the paper from Kremlin pressure.
Mr
Patarkatsishvili is said to have sold it on to Mr Abramovich’s investment
company, Millhouse, for $120 million (£65 million), according to Ekho Moskvy,
an independent radio station.
Pavel Filenkov,
the commercial director of Kommersant, denied that the paper had been
sold, but he told The Times that there had been discussions about such a
deal.
John Mann, a
spokesman for Millhouse, said that he could neither confirm nor deny the
reports. No one at Mr Patarkatsishvili’s offices was willing to comment.
If confirmed,
the transaction would mark a dramatic turn in Mr Abramovich’s career, less than
a year after he sold his oil company, Sibneft, to Gazprom
Last
week, it was confirmed that Mr Abramovich was in talks to buy a big stake in
the Russian steel firm Evraz, signalling that the Kremlin had approved his
return to the world of big business in Russia.
Novaya Gazeta, which is published twice weekly and has a readership of about
100,000, has a better chance of preserving its independence under its new
owners, Mr Simonov said.
Mr Gorbachev
said that he and Aleksandr Lebedev had bought a 49 per cent share in the
newspaper, which has a reputation for good investigative journalism but suffers
chronic financial problems. The remaining 51 per cent is owned by the staff of
the paper.
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Mr Lebedev is a
wealthy businessman, a member of parliament and a prominent anti-corruption
crusader. Mr Gorbachev initiated the Glasnost reforms that allowed independent media
to flourish in the first place in the 1980s. He says that he supports President
Putin, but he has often criticised Kremlin moves that have restricted media
freedom.
“We need to
provide a pluralism of opinions and the reliability of its publications, and it
must be reflective of public opinion in Russia,” Mr Gor-bachev said yesterday.
“We, as
shareholders, will co-operate with the editorial collective and will not adapt
it to our corporate needs,” he said. “We should — this is one of our goals —
promote the newspaper’s qualitative development in the interests of democratic
values.”
Dmitri Muratov,
the Editor-in-Chief of Novaya Gazeta, said that the deal would allow him
to compensate his journalists better and enable the paper to launch a new
format and expand with more issues each week.
“I am sure that
Mr Gorbachev didn’t invest in us for commercial reasons,” Mr Muratov said. “He
wanted to protect our independence.
“We won’t be used
as a political or commercial tool. We will speak for society, not the
Government.”
MOSCOW
MOUTHPIECES
· Rossiskaya
Gazeta, pro-Kremlin, owned by the Russian Government, circulation 374,000
· Izvestia, pro-Kremlin,
owned by Gazprom Media, circulation 209,000
· Komsomolskaya
Pravda, pro-Kremlin, owned by the metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin,
circulation 686,000
· Argumenty i
Fakty, pro-Kremlin, owned by Promsvyazbank, circulation 2.9 million
· Moskovsky
Komsomolets, pro-Kremlin, owned by Pavel Gusev, circulation 800,000