The assault team, including investigators from the FSB, the domestic successor to the Soviet KGB, searched the premises for documents and videotapes. First they said they were seeking evidence on the alleged misdeeds of a former Finance Ministry official. Then they said they were investigating Media-Most itself, looking into charges of privacy violations and possible tax irregularities. Gusinsky, who flew back from Israel to manage the crisis, accused Putin of using Soviet-era tactics. “It looks like everything is going backwards–the same masks, the same special services, the same witch hunting,” he said.
Media-Most’s headquarters were invaded once before, in 1994. That raid was ordered by Aleksandr Korzhakov, then chief of Kremlin security, in an apparent attempt to intimidate NTV, which had given unsympathetic coverage to the first Chechen war. The Media-Most empire–which includes the weekly news-magazine Itogi, published in cooperation with NEWSWEEK–also has supported one of Putin’s chief rivals, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Aleksandr Voloshin, the head of the presidential administration under both Yeltsin and Putin, has openly vowed to break up Gusinsky’s media empire. The company claims the Kremlin is trying to force it out of business by putting pressure on Gazprom, a natural-gas giant partly owned by the state, to recall a $211 million loan to Media-Most. It also claims the Kremlin blocked its efforts to sell one of its subsidiaries, Most-Bank, to raise money for the Gazprom debt.
Putin himself had nothing to say about last week’s raid. His office issued a statement insisting “the president strongly believes that freedom of the press is a cornerstone of democracy… but everyone must be equal under the law.” Senior Kremlin aides said privately that the order for the raid didn’t come from Putin. If so, the initiative most likely originated with the presidential administration or the FSB. That possibility made some people wonder who is really in charge of Putin’s Russia.
