Kremlin Accused of Wanting to Run Network

Amid a hard-fought struggle for control of Russia’s largest independent media group, the Media-Most company and its supporters accused authorities Tuesday of using blackmail and intimidation to try to gain control of its television network, NTV.

The group’s best-known journalists and broadcasters told a news conference that the Kremlin wants to control NTV, which is often critical of the government. Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev also weighed in, warning that press freedom in Russia is at stake in the fight over Media-Most.

With accusations flying, the prosecutor general’s office on Tuesday announced an investigation into claims that the company had backed out of a deal to sell its majority share to the state-controlled gas monopoly Gazprom, which already owns a minority share.

Media-Most owner Vladimir A. Gusinsky signed the deal to surrender control of his debt-laden company to Gazprom in July but claimed Monday that he had done so under duress. He made the agreement at a time when he was facing fraud charges and was barred from leaving the country, and a number of weeks after he had been jailed for several days.

Russian newspapers Tuesday published details of the takeover agreement, including a nonbinding and confidential provision that offered to drop the charges against Gusinsky and let him leave the country. The provision was signed by Mikhail Lesin, Russia’s minister of press, television and mass communications.

Six days after the agreement was signed, the prosecutor general’s office did drop charges against Gusinsky and allowed him to leave the country. He has been overseas since.

Gorbachev, chairman of a media watchdog set up by NTV, read a statement on his group’s behalf describing the provision as “crude state blackmail.” Gorbachev said he wanted to raise the issue personally with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin.

“What is at stake here is not only the fate of NTV and of Media-Most, but also a threat to freedom of speech in Russia,” Gorbachev said.

There was no immediate response from the Kremlin.

While Gazprom argues that it is merely trying to enforce an agreement, liberal analysts, media watchdogs and journalists see the struggle over Media-Most as part of a Kremlin campaign to bring critical media--in particular the powerful national television networks--to heel.

“One obvious reason behind this campaign is to make some oligarchs, and primarily media tycoons, change their political tune or altogether discard their media empires, as in Gusinsky’s case,” said analyst Andrei A. Piontkovsky, director of the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies in Moscow.

He said the state is using its muscle to redistribute wealth from oligarchs who are out of favor to tycoons with close links to the Kremlin, such as Roman A. Abramovich, who controls the oil company Sibneft.

Piontkovsky said that the office of the prosecutor general, though supposedly independent, is openly being used by the Kremlin as an instrument of pressure and intimidation against Russian tycoons, including Gusinsky.

“The state uses its power structures like the tax police and prosecutor general’s office to initiate criminal proceedings against a certain company, or even press charges, then takes advantage of the atmosphere of shock to make oligarchs succumb to deals set up by the Kremlin and then drops the charges and stops the investigation altogether,” he said.

The Media-Most takeover deal came after Gazprom pressured Media-Most to pay $473 million in debts that are guaranteed by the gas giant. On Monday, Gusinsky publicly repudiated the July 20 deal to sell his group to Gazprom for $300 million plus assumption of the debts.

Alfred Kokh, director of Gazprom Media, the subsidiary that runs the gas giant’s media holdings, said Media-Most had given no serious indication of how it plans to repay the debts.

Vowing legal action to enforce the takeover deal, he insisted that Gazprom would preserve Media-Most’s independence by selling part of the group to foreign investors.

Kokh said there can be no media independence without financial independence, adding, “There is no doubt that a mass medium that is in default, that has in fact gone bankrupt, that accepts investment from the state, cannot be considered independent.”

NTV Director General Yevgeny Kiselyov, a well-known NTV anchorman, told the Tuesday news conference that the aim of the takeover was for the authorities to assume political control of NTV.

“It is clear that this condition is totally unacceptable to us,” he said. “We continue to insist that we would like to settle our financial relations with Gazprom on a purely economic basis, without any political pressure or any forcible interference in these negotiations.”

Another prominent broadcaster, Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of the Echo of Moscow radio station, which also is owned by Media-Most, maintained that the group’s problems are not financial but political.

“Vladimir Putin is dissatisfied with the general political line of the Media-Most media,” Venediktov said. “The president deems it wrong, and he openly talks about it. And he thinks that this line must be changed.”

Kokh accused Media-Most of transferring its assets offshore to prevent Gazprom from acquiring control.

The prosecutor will launch a criminal case against Media-Most if evidence of this emerges, Deputy Prosecutor General Vasily Kolmogorov told the Interfax news agency Tuesday.