Posted on 07/09/2004 5:34:53 PM PDT by churchillbuff
MOSCOW - Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Magazine's Russian edition and author of a book about tycoon Boris Berezovsky, was shot and killed late Friday near his Moscow office, Russian news reports said.
The reports cited Moscow police as saying Klebnikov suffered four pistol shots and died in a rescue-squad vehicle. The radio station Ekho Moskvy said shells of two different caliber were found at the scene, indicating at least two attackers.
Police and Forbes officials could not immediately be reached for confirmation.
Forbes started its Russian-language edition in April. Klebnikov, U.S.-born of Russian heritage, previously had been a senior editor with the U.S.-based Forbes.
In May, the magazine attracted wide attention by publishing a list of Russia's wealthiest people, claiming that Moscow had more billionaires who worked there or amassed their fortunes there than any other city in the world.
"Here people fly and fall with staggering speed," Klebnikov said at a news conference when the list was released.
His 2000 book "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia" described how Berezovsky, now living in exile in Britain, allegedly siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars out of Russia.
After Klebnikov wrote a profile of Berezovsky for Forbes in 1996, Berezovsky filed a libel suit against the magazine in Britain.
The tycoon withdrew the suit in 2003 after the publication acknowledged it was wrong to allege he was involved in the murder of a television personality.
Russia's a dangerous place to be an honest journalist.
There is no freedoms in Russia the honey moon is over
KGB is running the place and foreign policy...
The Wild,Wild East......
Paul Jenkins' previous films include Soldat and the Storyville series Israel's Generals. Here, he talks about the dangers of making The Russian Newspaper Murders and why press freedom in Russia is unikely to increase.
BBC Four: How did you come across the story?
Paul Jenkins: I went to Moscow in December 2002 looking for a focus for a story about media freedom in Russia. People there continually talked about the conglomeration in Russia of criminal and political power.
Young journalists in Russia very quickly come to understand the limitations of their job, the fact that they can't exercise due journalistic scrutiny, particularly over industrial/political stories. The minor stuff is okay but if you're looking at heavy-duty political stories it can be very difficult and dangerous. It's clear that murder is a weapon in the arsenal of powerful businesses in Russia and investigative journalists stand to be beaten up or murdered.
Someone in one of the charities that monitor the Russian press suggested that I look at the Togliatti Observer and explained that the founding editor had been murdered in April 2002. She said that he was a very decent guy and a very decent journalist. It sounded interesting, so a few months later I sent my assistant producer, Dasha Plakhova, down to Togliatti to see if the story stood up. In October last year I sent Dasha out again to really start talking to the characters immediately prior to filming, at which stage the second editor of the newspaper was murdered and life got rather hairy.
BBC Four: Hairy seems an understatement. Making this film sounds like a nightmare...
PJ: I think 10% of my head was directing the movie and the other 90% was thinking about security. It's an unpredictable place. At one stage I arrived back in Moscow with two tapes which we'd filmed down in Togliatti which had the interviewees' testimonies on them. I thought it would be a good idea to have the tapes duplicated at the BBC office and then sent to London. While we were travelling to the BBC office my vehicle was rammed from behind by another car. My driver got out and started beating up the guy who rammed us; I ran across the six-lane highway and scuttled off to the BBC office.
BBC Four: Why do you think the editors were killed?
PJ: With Ivanov, the first editor, it was certainly a hit. He was killed with a silenced pistol. The most dangerous thing you can do in Russia is to start naming names in large-scale corruption. Corruption in a local town may extend to a national level and you may not know that while you are investigating it. That can be extremely dangerous.
Sidorov's murder trial, the second editor, is still ongoing, but there seem to be quite a lot of shenanigans surrounding his murder case and the evidence the local police have collected for his trial. It's also curious that the top advisors in Russia are taking an active engagement in that case. It's rather murky, as the film shows. The problem in Russia is that it is terribly easy to murder someone with impunity. The commission of murder in Russia is very easy and you can be fairly sure that while the actual killer might be caught, very rarely is that true of the actual commissioner of the killing. So murder becomes an attractive option if you want to silence a journalist.
BBC Four: The second half of the film becomes a bit like a detective movie as you follow the defence lawyer's investigations. How did you latch on to him?
PJ: Honestly speaking I think the film is quite broken backed. At precisely the point where the audience want more coverage of the murders in the town, the film segues away to Moscow. I just hope it's clear to people why it does that.
I had to do a security assessment, not only for myself and the crew, but also for the people taking part in the film and helping us on the ground in Togliatti. There was an uncomfortable period where one wondered whether, in fact, we were the reason for the second editor's murder because we were bringing attention to the paper's investigations. After a period of study, it became clear to me that we probably weren't responsible for the murder but we may have influenced the timing - assuming of course that it was indeed retribution for journalistic activity, and not hooligan activity as the authorities are claiming.
What happened was that we didn't feel safe to film in a detailed way in Togliatti after Alexei Sidorov's murder, and indeed, the subject of our filming had gone, because he was the central character we would have been filming in the town. So I was forced to segue away and very quickly we picked up on Novaya Gazeta and started filming them in Moscow. But I still wanted to give basic coverage to the situation in Togliatti and was planning to go back there anyway. Then I learned that Karen Nersisyan, a leading human rights lawyer in Russia who was representing the families of the two murdered editors, was going back to Togliatti to continue his investigation. I thought, great, here is not only a very interesting way to cover the story, but it also gave me a pretext for coming back into the town.
BBC Four: The film starts with a quote from Putin: "Russia has never had a free press, so I don't know what l'm supposed to be impeding". Did you get any sense that the situation for the independent press in Russia will improve?
PJ: Putin is a popular president in Russia and I think Russians have become really pissed off in recent years over the degree of chaos and corruption in society. When Putin came in he was offering control, centralisation, and getting a grip on criminal gangs and the oligarchs. So for Putin, and a lot of Russians, information freedom and media freedom are a long way down their agendas.
I think their view is, "Let's sort out the economy and the corruption first and deal with the bleeding heart liberal issues, third or fourth or ninth". They don't see that the media has a vital role to play in uncovering corruption and bringing it to the public consciousness so that action is actually taken throughout the country. If journalists don't feel that they are adequately protected by the state, then they won't do their job, so there are huge ramifications for the people concerned with the prosperity and security of the country.
Especially when crossing paths of oligarchs. Maybe poor Bere not such nice guy after all? Unlike so many in West who make him to be a poor misunderstood crook.
Darn!! Paul had a part in my documentary. He was able to prove the connection between the Iraqi oil vouchers given to Russians and Clinton's agreement to not pull the trigger on Osama in the late 90s. I'm also certain that a comparison of the shells that got Paul and the round that really killed Vince Foster would develop very interesting results. I hope to have all this in the documentary.
...or one person with two guns.
And it's a dangerous place to be in business. I will never forget sitting with my then B/F out on my deck one sunny Sunday morning, opening up the Washington Post, and finding that one of his colleagues in a Russian venture had been assassinated by the Russian Mafia. This was the second business associate to be killed in a few months; they had gotten a Scottish lawyer not long before. We decided at that point that he was getting out of Russian business dealings.
KGB Gone Wild
Why do some of you think that the "KGB" is behind this? Do you have any facts to shed additional light on this subject or is this just ranting? Isn't it more likely that Berezovky's goons are behind this?
From The New York Times:
U.S. Investigative Journalist Is Shot to Death in Russia
By C. J. CHIVERS and SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY
Published: July 10, 2004
MOSCOW, July 10 - A prominent American journalist who had written incisively about the connections of politics, business and crime in Russia throughout its post-Soviet reorganization was shot to death Friday night outside the magazine offices where he worked.
Paul Klebnikov, the editor in chief of Forbes Russia magazine, was shot four times as he left work and walked toward a nearby subway station, a local radio station reported. The radio cited witnesses who said he was shot by a bearded man who had stepped from a car.
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Mr. Klebnikov, 41, had moved to Moscow last year to open Forbes Russia, a Russian edition of the American business magazine, at which he had worked since 1989. Under his editorship, Forbes Russia published its first issue in April.
The magazine was published during a crackdown on the independent media here, but Mr. Klebnikov had vowed he would not be deterred.
"Forbes has over the decades won a reputation for independence, and we don't want to give that away lightly," he said at the magazine's introduction.
Mr. Klebnikov's brand of investigative journalism had long irritated many of Russia's elite. The new magazine under his stewardship bore his stamp.
In May it published a list of Russia's 100 wealthiest business people, including 36 billionaires. Such lists are sensitive in a country with high rates of poverty and unemployment and a common belief that many of today's wealthiest Russians had swindled public resources during the early and murky years of post-Communist privatization.
Although no motive for the killing was immediately clear in the hours after his death, the Committee to Protect Journalists, an organization based in New York, noted both the difficult climate for the news media here and the sensitivity of the list of 100 wealthiest Russians. It urged the Russian authorities to investigate the case thoroughly.
"Russia is consistently one of the world's most dangerous places to be a journalist, and we call on the Russian authorities to aggressively investigate and prosecute this case," said the committee's director, Ann Cooper.
A descendant of émigrés who had fled Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, Mr. Klebnikov was born in New York, the son of an interpreter at the United Nations. Like many of these descendants, he had remained deeply connected to his family's heritage, and had traveled to Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse.
As a correspondent with both an economics background and fluency in the Russian language, Mr. Klebnikov was especially well equipped to report on Russia's new political and business class.
In his work, he had been sharply critical of Boris Berezovsky, the media and oil magnate who was influential in former President Boris Yeltsin's administration, but who later sought asylum in Britain, saying he was marked for murder in Russia.
Mr. Klebnikov wrote two books. The first, "Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism," was a biography of Mr. Berezovsky. The second, "Conversation With a Barbarian," dealt with organized crime in Russia's continuing war in Chechnya.
Mr. Klebnikov was married and left three children. Steve Forbes, president and editor in chief of Forbes, sent condolences to the family in a statement from New York.
"Paul was superb reporter - courageous, energetic, ever-curious," Mr. Forbes said. "We eagerly anticipated reading his stories. The information was always fresh, insightful, fascinating. He exemplified the finest traditions of our profession and served his readers well."
The killing of Mr. Klebnikov follows the general tightening of independent news media in Russia. Television here has gradually slipped under effective control of the state. Just hours before Mr. Klebnikov was fatally shot, the program "Freedom of Speech," the last live political talk show in Russia, broadcast what appeared to be its final show. And last month, Leonid Parfyonov, who was host of a popular and provocative current affairs program, was fired after broadcasting an interview with the widow of a former president of Chechnya who was killed by a car bomb in Qatar in February.
Mr. Parfyonov said the authorities had asked him not to broadcast the interview. Two Russian intelligence officers were recently convicted of the killing.
Both of these programs appeared on the network NTV, which had come under serious pressure after a "Freedom of Speech" program in October 2002 featured relatives of hostages pleading with the Russian government not to storm a Moscow theater that had been seized by Chechen rebels. The government attacked the theater nonetheless. More than 120 people died.
The channel's troubles began almost immediately after President Vladimir V. Putin came to power. Vladimir A. Gusinsky, the founder and owner of the Media Most empire of which the channel was part, was briefly jailed, then forced to cede control and leave the country.
Erin Arvedlund contributed reporting from Moscow for this article.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/international/europe/10russ.html
Why do some of you think that the "KGB" is behind this? Do you have any facts to shed additional light on this subject or is this just ranting? Isn't it more likely that Berezovky's goons are behind this?
Okay, some of it may be ranting but where are the protective powers in Russia? They seem to only be around when it is in their interest.
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