WikiLeaks Joins Forces With Billionaire Lebedev
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Novaya Gazeta, the Moscow newspaper controlled by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev, said it agreed to join forces with WikiLeaks to expose corruption in Russia.
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Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, which publishes secret government and corporate documents online, has materials specifically about Russia that haven't been published yet and Novaya Gazeta will help make them public, the newspaper said on its website today.
"Assange said that Russians will soon find out a lot about their country and he wasn't bluffing," Novaya Gazeta said. "Our collaboration will expose corruption at the top tiers of political power. No one is protected from the truth."
The weekly newspaper is known in an industry dominated by state-run companies for its critical reports of the Kremlin and investigative coverage of Russian affairs.
Novaya Gazeta correspondent Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote about graft under then-President Vladimir Putin and chronicled abuses by military forces in Chechnya, was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building in 2006, on Putin's birthday.
Novaya Gazeta received unlimited access to the WikiLeaks database, which has a "wide range" of materials, including documents about Politkovskaya's murder as well as information about Russian politicians' ties to organized crime, Nadezhda Prusenkova, a Novaya Gazeta spokeswoman, said by phone from Moscow. The newspaper will start releasing materials next month.
WikiLeaks was condemned by the U.S. government for posting thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic and military documents. Assange was released from a London prison on bail on Dec. 16. He turned himself in to British authorities Dec. 7 after Sweden issued a warrant for his extradition on counts of sexual molestation and rape.
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