Russian media tycoon Lebedev under pressure after Putin’s villa report

Ekho Moskvy Radio

Russian businessman Aleksandr Lebedev, who together with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev controls the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, has become under “unprecedented” pressure after the paper published reports according to which a villa is being built for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in southern Russia, editor in chief of The New Times magazine Yegveniya Albats said in the “Special opinion” programme of the Gazprom-owned, editorially independent Ekho Moskvy radio on 15 February.

Albats said: “I can judge by what I read in the blog of Aleksandr Lebedev and by what I read in other blogs, in the FaceBook and so on – well, there is very little information – and as far as I can understand, absolutely unprecedented pressure is now being put to bear on Lebedev. I have no doubts that this is linked to the fact that Lebedev is a main shareholder in the Novaya Gazeta newspaper.

“As far as I understand, the main pressure on Lebedev began after Novaya Gazeta published materials according to which somewhere in the south someone somewhere sometimes is building a villa for Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Well, the Administrative Department of the President, in the person of [its head] Mr [Vladimir] Kozhin, said that they were not building anything. However, suddenly it turned out that for some reason these sites are being guarded by the Federal Bodyguard Service [FSO]. How it can happen that on the one hand nothing is being built and at the other hand the FSO is guarding this site, but secretly? Or alternatively our FSO people get paid small salaries and therefore have to moonlight somewhere in the southern regions, guarding who knows what.

“Well, when Novaya Gazeta started publishing these reports, as far as I understand, the pressure on Lebedev increased ten-fold. The second interesting thing is that when a criminal takeover attempt against Lebedev’s business took place, its participants included people whose surnames were similar to those featuring in the Magnitskiy case [Sergey Magnitskiy, a Hermitage Capital lawyer, died in Moscow remand prison]. This means – well, we know – that there are specially selected investigators, specially selected police officers and specially selected prosecutors who deal with politically motivated cases. We have spoken about this many a time in this studio. It is of a great concern to me that these surnames also appeared in the case of Lebedev.

Lebedev, generally speaking, is no boy scout, he is a person who has been through a perfectly respectable school, including the school of business, and he came out of the first main directorate of the KGB [State Security Committee] of the USSR, i.e. intelligence. As far as I can tell on the basis of what is being said in the blogs, he has found himself in a very difficult situation because, well, he could get a plane and fly away but here is Novaya Gazeta and his business, which he cannot abandon just like this.” займ на карту онлайн займ онлайн на карту без отказа https://zp-pdl.com/get-quick-online-payday-loan-now.php https://zp-pdl.com/best-payday-loans.php займы на карту без отказа