Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev is drawing up “contingency plans” for his UK media holdings, the Evening Standard and Independent, as he faces charges of hooliganism and battery that he says are designed to silence his criticism of corruption in Vladimir Putin‘s Russia.
The tycoon said his Russian-based banking, airline and agriculture businesses had suffered immensely in the past year, partly due to unprecedented pressure from Russia’s security services. He is also considering floating his stake in Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s chief opposition and investigative newspaper.
Lebedev declined to detail his plans for his UK papers. When asked if the contingency plans included a possible sale, he said with exasperated reference to the global crisis in media: “Is there anybody buying papers?”
“Contingency plans are always handy, especially in times of crisis,” he said.
Lebedev faces up to five years in prison if found guilty on charges of hooliganism and battery levelled against him last week for punching Sergei Polonsky, a property developer, a year ago while filming a TV programme for state-run channel NTV.
“My behaviour was wrong but I really felt threatened,” Lebedev said, repeating his claim that Polonsky had been provoking him throughout the 90-minute taping. “I admit I might have over-exaggerated the threat.”
He said the case was being pursued by Russia’s security services. An investigation was opened into Lebedev in October last year, days after Putin publicly called the punch up “hooliganism”.
Court documents obtained by the Guardian show that the investigation into Lebedev was “on order of the head of Russia’s investigative committee”, a high ranking body akin to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is headed by Alexander Bastrykin, a close Putin ally.
In June, Dmitry Muratov, the editor of Novaya Gazeta, accused Bastrykin of summoning his deputy at the newspaper to a forest outside Moscow and threatening to personally arrange his murder. Bastrykin denied making the threat.
Novaya Gazeta is famous for its investigations into corruption and human rights abuses. One of the paper’s leading journalists, Anna Politkovskaya, was killed in 2006. The case remains unsolved.
Lebedev bought 49% of the newspaper in 2007 alongside Mikhail Gorbachev, while the newspaper’s editorial board owns the remaining stake. Lebedev said there was a plan to publicly float his stake, targeting the newspaper’s readership.
Muratov, the editor, confirmed the talks but said no decision had yet been reached.
“We completely understand the situation with Lebedev – the whole repressive apparatus is working against him to try to exclude him from public life, to scare him. It’s part of the ‘cleaning-up’ of democratic life in this country,” he said.
“We’ve been discussing possibilities in case I completely run out of dough or something does happen to me,” Lebedev said. “In theory we have been discussing it and it might have to be done. We have to brace for that.”
“I have no sources of income,” he said.
The 52-year-old former KGB agent is worth $1.1bn, according to Forbes, and he insists he carries no debt. But Lebedev says his chief businesses will make losses this year – an expected $5m at Red Wings, a small airline, and 1.5bn roubles (£29.9m) at his National Reserve Bank, which has been raided by masked officers and investigated in another case Lebedev says is designed to put pressure on him. Lebedev also owns a stake in Aeroflot, Russia’s national carrier, and properties in Russia and Europe.
He has repeatedly insisted he is looking to sell up his businesses, but says it has not been easy. “There’s not exactly a queue of investors waiting to get into this country,” he said.
The case against Lebedev has revived concerns about Russia’s investment climate and the cost of speaking out in Putin’s Russia. It has drawn comparisons to the case of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man, who was jailed in 2003 on charges of fraud and tax evasion that he and his supporters say were politically motivated.
Lebedev said he believed the case against him was being pursued by members of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB. Lebedev tried to sue the FSB’s economic crimes sector, known as department K, in 2011 but the case was thrown out.
“They’ve been in the financial infrastructure of this country for years – in banks, and so on,” Lebedev said. He said he had received indications of their displeasure with his investigation into an estimated $100bn that has disappeared from around 120 Russian banks through artificial bankruptcies claimed since the 2008 financial crisis.
“If these people think someone is coming closer and closer, for $100bn, they can do a lot,” he said. “These people seem to be threatened and they have to find their own way of dealing with it.”
Lebedev said he believed Putin had not signed the order against him but said “he’s the one running the show [in Russia]”
Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, said he “did not know the details” of the case against Lebedev. He insisted the authorities had no qualms about Novaya Gazeta. “Novaya Gazeta is a tiny thing,” he said. “It’s not the only one to exist in this country – we have much more critical newspapers.”
Lebedev denied persistent rumours that he would emigrate to avoid the charges, although he refused to sign a protocol delivered with the charges last week restricting his movement. Lebedev said he was staying put for now: “I don’t want want to travel at the moment – I don’t want to provoke them. I’m staying here to be on the safe side.”
Yet he didn’t exclude the possibility of emigration in future. “As the publisher of a free newspaper, if I feel that I at least have some support here or some audience, then it’s worth defending your ground. If this is not even a public issue here, if there is no united opposition, if no one is investigating corruption and fraud, if the authorities really behave as if nothing is happening, then it’s completely useless. If I think it’s useless, then of course sacrificing my business and personal life and security then becomes meaningless.”
Where would he go? “Africa, Papua New Guinea.”