Victor Roncea Blog

The Russian billionaire bidding to buy The Independent newspaper is poised to gain a massive cash injection from the Kremlin in a deal personally sanctioned by Vladimir Putin.
Alexander Lebedev, who bought London’s Evening Standardfor £1 a year ago, is selling his stakes in the airline Aeroflot and inRussia’s largest aircraft leasing corporation back to the Government.
He told The Times in an exclusive interview that the deals would earn him more than £450 million.
Mr Lebedev said that the cash was destined for new projects in Russiaand that none would be spent on his burgeoning newspaper interests inBritain. However, the financial boost casts a revealing new light onthe relationship between the Kremlin and a man usually viewed as one ofits most outspoken critics.
Mr Lebedev told The Timesthat he had agreed to sell his 26 per cent stakes in Aeroflot and inthe Ilyushin Finance Corporation at a 20 per cent discount. Both willbe bought by the state-owned Vnesheconombank, which is headed by MrPutin, the Prime Minister.

The bank’s supervisory board, which is composed entirely of governmentministers, will meet on February 17 to consider the sales formally butMr Putin has already approved them. Mr Lebedev said: “The decision hasbeen taken. My understanding is there is a written government decisionon it with the word ‘agreed’.”
Mr Lebedev, 50, denied recent reports in London that he had been shortof cash and laughed off suggestions that he was now being bailed out byMr Putin at a critical moment in negotiations for The Independent, saying: “That’s pretty public. Couldn’t he give me a billion under the table?”
He said: “It doesn’t change anything in my business life, this extracash. Anyway, I have committed it to a few other things; none of thatwill be ever used for newspapers because I am funding the EveningStandard out of my pocket.”
Asked whether he planned also to fund The Independentfrom his personal resources, he replied : “Yes, absolutely, yes.”Although he declined to discuss details of his negotiations with thecurrent owners, Independent News and Media, he distanced himself fromsuggestions that he would turn the loss-making paper into a free-sheetas he had done with the Standard.
Mr Lebedev said: “If you claim that you are saving a good newspaper andthat you want to reform it you don’t do that by hitting other papers.
“Let’s assume we make the Indyfree, you’d affect seriously the business models of other newspapersand frankly, that’s a very important reason [not to do it].”
Mr Lebedev also played down suggestions that he had lined up Rod Liddle, the former editor of Radio 4’s Todayprogramme, to edit the paper. He said: “I love Rod Liddle and hate him… He’s a provocateur because he sometimes believes the opposite ofwhat he’s saying. Whether he’d make a good editor-in-chief I don’tknow.”
Insisting that he was a supporter of a free press in a democracy, hesaid that he would tap new readers among an estimated 5 million Britonswho he described as “liberal democrats … who really need The Independent in the way it used to be”.
It had lost a sense of purpose but had “a very good chance to be aglobal newspaper” campaigning on the environment and corruption issues,he said.
However, the extent of his business links with the Kremlin have raisedconcerns among some commentators about his own independence.
Granville Williams, a member of the national council for the Campaignfor Press and Broadcasting Freedom and a specialist on media ownership,called on the Government to ensure that The Independent remained autonomous.
“These new deals with Putin raise concern that the quid pro quo would be for The Independentto draw red lines around its Russian coverage,” he said. “Although MrLebedev has a good track record on free speech, I’d want the Governmentto ask for firm guarantees that The Independent will not feel afraid of reporting Russia negatively under his ownership.”
Other media analysts, however, said that The Independentwas a “natural fit” for Mr Lebedev. “It’s ideologically his true home,”said Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis. “I don’t think he’s damagedthe Standard and, indeed, he may have saved it. Maybe he’ll save the Indy as well.”
Mr Lebedev said that he knew President Medvedev and Mr Putin but foundit easier to “treat them as one” rather than as separate politicalfigures. He had not seen the latter for two years, after a Moscowtabloid that he owned printed a false story alleging that Mr Putin hadsecretly divorced his wife, Lyudmila, and married Alina Kabayeva, aformer Olympic gymnast half his age.
Asked to characterise his relationship with them in light of thebusiness deals, he said: “If they want me as an ally then I’ll be morethan happy to call myself a modernisation force.”
Before now Mr Lebedev, who funds the Novaya Gazeta,the opposition newspaper where the murdered journalist AnnaPolitkovskaya worked, was regarded as one of the most vocal domesticcritics of Mr Putin’s clampdown on political dissent.
He disclosed that his efforts to form a moderate opposition party withthe former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had been blocked by theKremlin’s shadowy chief ideologue, Vladislav Surkov, the man who coinedthe term “sovereign democracy” to justify Mr Putin’s growingauthoritarianism as President until 2008.
An avowed Anglophile, Mr Lebedev spied for the KGB in the late 1980s atthe Soviet Embassy in London, rising to lieutenant-colonel in theforeign intelligence service — the same rank as Mr Putin. He went intobusiness after the collapse of Communism, becoming rich on complexbanking deals.
The Evening Standardwas losing £10 million a year when Mr Lebedev bought a 75 per centstake from Associated Newspapers last January, becoming the firstRussian owner of a British newspaper. He said that he had honouredpledges of financial support without interfering in editorialdecisions, adding: “I have built walls higher than the Chinese and I amstrictly observing this principle.”
There were “positive trends” financially after the Standardabolished its cover price and almost tripled the print run to 600,000as a free newspaper. Mr Lebedev said: “The positive trend comes fromadditional revenues from advertising, which is linked to increasedcirculation.”
Sources close to Independent News and Media said yesterday that theywere optimistic about concluding a deal with Mr Lebedev by February 15,when exclusive talks between the parties expire.
“Some issues have yet to be decided and the ball is not in our court,”Mr Lebedev said. One sticking point could be what to do with along-standing printing contract with Trinity Mirror, which would costMr Lebedev a lot to cancel.