#5
Financial Times (UK)
December 18, 2001
Fight for Russia's TV6 turns into soap opera
By Andrew Jack in Moscow
The fight for control of Russia's TV6 network has all the intrigues and characteristics of a Boris Yeltsin-era political soap opera; it contains money, power and now sex too.
As Russia winds down for the end-of-year holidays, TV6 - which has tried recently to raise its profile as an anti-Kremlin broadcaster - is threatened by closure in a move its defenders say is an attack on freedom of speech. Others argue its demise has more to do with power struggles between feuding businessmen and politicians.
Until early this year TV6 was a low-budget television channel with little influence. That changed in the spring, after the state-backed gas giant Gazprom took control of NTV, the media empire previously controlled by the self-exiled tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky.
Boris Berezovsky, his sometime rival who himself fled abroad last year, offered TV6, in which he owns a 75 per cent stake, as a safe haven for NTV journalists. They were led by Yevgeny Kiselyov, its general director and lead anchorman, who said they were the victims of a previous Kremlin-inspired campaign.
Shortly afterwards, Lukoil, the largest Russian oil group which holds a minority 15 per cent stake in TV6, launched legal action to liquidate the channel, arguing that it had been excluded from exerting management influence at a company which was insolvent and should be closed.
Two judgments have since gone in Lukoil's favour, which may lead to TV6 being wound up in January. That has triggered accusations of interference in the decisions of the courts, which President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged are far from independent, signing on Monday a series of proposed reforms to the legal system.
Some see the action as the result of political pressure from the Kremlin. That may reflect the periodic anti-government line taken by TV6, or a more personal dispute with Mr Berezovsky, a former close supporter of Mr Yeltsin who has made no secret of his desire to use the channel to stage a political come-back.
Alexei Pankin, head of the media support programme at the Soros Open Society institute, says: "When Berezovsky predicted in the spring the demise of Mr Putin by the end of this year, it was a declaration of war."
In his latest remarks - reported on NTV rather than TV6 - last Friday, Mr Berezovsky accused Russia's secret services of organising the Moscow apartment explosions in 1999 which triggered the second Chechen war and helped Mr Putin win the election as president. He had in previous interviews said he had no evidence of any such link.
The following day, compromising video tapes of a man "resembling" Mr Kiselyov cavorting with prostitutes were released on to a Russian internet site. The affair recalls the tactics used to oust Yuri Skuratov, Russia's outspoken prosecutor general, in 1999.
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