A Hostile Takeover   

IN JANUARY, A DELEGATION of star-status journalists from NTV trekked across Moscow's Red Square for an unprecedented audience with Russian President Vladimir Putin to plead their case. Five hours later, they emerged drained of any hope that the raids by tax police, the arrests and the lawsuits against their network would end.
At the time, not even high-profile rescue efforts by CNN founder Ted Turner and billionaire George Soros, who offered financial bailouts, could save them. The message from Putin was clear: NTV, Russia's only independent national television network, would remain under siege. So would its owner, media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, who faces multimillion-dollar fraud charges and has fled to Spain.
On April 4, the journalists' worst fears became reality. A state-controlled energy giant, Gazprom, holding about half of NTV shares, took over the network, quickly installing its own management team. News accounts noted that Gazprom was headed by an aide to President Putin.
As journalists remained barricaded at the network's headquarters on April 5, Ted Turner confirmed that he was negotiating with Gusinsky to buy a stake in Media-Most, a holding company that owns NTV shares. A series of subsequent events appears to have thwarted Turner's effort.
Early on April 15, security forces staged a raid on NTV, ending an 11-day standoff in which journalists refused to leave the station or accept Gazprom's control.
In the wake of the takeover, a group of rebel journalists, led by Yevgeny Kiselyov, the fired general director, set up "NTV in exile" at a smaller cable station also owned by Gusinsky. TNT, known as an entertainment and sports channel, is likely to be a temporary solution‹it reaches about half of Russia's population and its makeshift studio falls short of what the former NTV staff would need for quality programming. As of mid-April, about 350 staffers had been fired or had walked out. To Kremlin observers, there is more at stake than the fate of a popular television network.
Critics believe the high-profile move to quash an independent media voice serves as a clear indication of where the "new" Russia is heading. Putin is seen as waging an all-out war against press freedom by attacking a broadcast outlet that often had been critical of his policies and did not support his presidential candidacy. It sends a resounding message to other upstart media outlets.
There also is the sense that the Russian president is attempting to crack down on the exclusive clique of "oligarchs," including Gusinsky, who made millions in the 1990s by using Kremlin connections to buy state property at bargain-basement prices. Tax officials have charged that the debts of Gusinsky's Media-Most holding company far outweigh its assets, placing it in violation of Russian corporate law.
Gazprom claims Media-Most owes the company more than $260 million in unpaid loans. The general manager of Gazprom calls the move to take over the only national network not controlled by the Kremlin "purely a business matter."
After being arrested in Russia, charged with fraud and released in June, Gusinsky fled to his lavish villa near the southern Spanish port of Cadiz. The media magnate was placed under house arrest while awaiting an extradition hearing. In April, a Spanish court refused to extradite Gusinsky, ruling that the charges against him wouldn't constitute a crime in Spain.