Ex-media tycoon arrested in Greece

MOSCOW -- In an apparent escalation of the Russian government's crackdown on wealthy oligarchs, former media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky has been arrested in Greece on a 2-year-old warrant charging him with fraud and money laundering in Russia, authorities said Saturday.

The once-powerful businessman -- whose media outlets regularly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and represented one of the last independent television news sources in Russia -- was being held at an airport detention facility in Athens, the Greek capital, after being detained during a flight stopover, Greek television reported.

It was not clear whether Russian authorities had renewed their attempts to take Gusinsky into custody or whether the Greek government, which has among the closest ties to Russia in Europe, acted on its own.

Several sources said Gusinsky, who holds dual citizenship in Russia and Israel and who has lived in Israel since 2001 in an attempt to avoid arrest in Russia, frequently traveled abroad, including possibly to the United States, France and Spain, but authorities had not pursued the Interpol warrant before this weekend.

"The real question is, why now?" said Liliya Shevtsova, a leading analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center. "One of the reasons why Gusinsky's arrest comes now and not any other time is the possible intensification of the attack on the oligarchs mounted by the Russian law enforcement bodies -- it is yet another evidence that at least part of the Kremlin team is rather resolute when it comes to dealing with the Russian oligarchs."

Since July, Russian prosecutors have been conducting a wide-ranging investigation of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos Oil, and have held key business partner Platon Lebedev and security director Alexei Pichugin behind bars.

Veiled message

Most analysts believe the probe is a message to Khodorkovsky -- who has donated some of his billions to opposition political parties and has been talked about as a presidential candidate himself --- to stay out of politics if he wants to remain in business.

Even before the recent, highly publicized Yukos confrontation, Gusinsky and fellow exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky had become Kremlin targets, forced out of most of their Russian business holdings and driven into exile to avoid likely imprisonment.

Berezovsky, living in Britain, published an open letter earlier this month warning of "a creeping anti-constitutional coup" in light of the crackdown on big businessmen.

Gusinsky had explored investments in Israeli media and even was said to have considered running for the Knesset, that country's parliament.

Criticized war in Chechnya

The 51-year-old tycoon, a former theater director who exploited his connections to build the Media-MOST banking and media empire, was the last independent owner of the NTV television station in Moscow before it was acquired by the government gas giant, Gazprom.

NTV and Gusinsky's other media outlets often negatively portrayed the war in Chechnya and reported about Kremlin corruption.

In June 2000, Gusinsky was arrested on charges of embezzling millions of dollars in government property.

Those charges were dropped, but the federal prosecutor later sought an international warrant accusing the tycoon, among other things, of smuggling $250 million out of Russia, according to Interfax. In original charges, Russian prosecutors accused Gusinsky of misrepresenting the assets of Media-MOST to obtain a $262 million loan from Gazprom.

Gusinsky was arrested at his house in Spain in December 2000, and moved to Israel the following April after a Spanish court rejected a Russian demand for his extradition.

Some sources close to Gusinsky questioned whether Russia actively is seeking to detain the businessman, or whether it might have been a case of bad timing.

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times' Moscow Bureau contributed to this story.

"The most interesting and unclear thing is the reaction of the Russian prosecutor general's office -- there simply is not any. In a situation when they logically should be jumping with joy, they are just silent. They (say they) give no commentaries until they receive some documents from the Greeks," said a former senior employee of Media-MOST, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of the Times Moscow bureau contributed to this story.