Alexander Lebedev charged in Russia with 'hooliganism'
Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev has been charged with "hooliganism" for punching a rival businessman on television last year and faces five years in prison.
2:29PM BST 26 Sep 2012
Mr Lebedev, 52, who controls The Independent and London Evening Standard newspapers, was charged over the incident involving Sergei Polonsky, a real estate developer, his spokesman Artem Artemov told Bloomberg by phone while leaving the investigators' office with the businessman.
Mr Lebedev, a media magnate and banker, has said he believes he is being targeted by President Vladimir Putin for political reasons. Russia's Investigative Committee said in a statement he had been presented with the charges of hooliganism and battery.
His son, Evgeny Lebedev, took to Twitter to express his dismay.
He faces the same charge of hooliganism motivated by religious, political, racial, ethnic or ideological hatred as three women from the punk band Pussy Riot who were jailed in August after bursting into a Russian Orthodox church and belting out a profanity-laced anti-Putin protest.
Mr Lebedev is rare among the so-called Russian oligarchs in openly criticising the Kremlin, but he has denied any involvement in opposition politics.
"I know the position of the president," he said in an interview on Tuesday.
"He thinks it is true that I have been funding (the opposition), so I was violating rule No. 1 - if you have money you should not interfere (in politics)."
Prosecutors opened an investigation last year into Lebedev for throwing a punch at property developer Sergei Polonsky, himself a one-time billionaire, while they were on a primetime television talk show.
Mr Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment. He had previously said that the Kremlin had not put pressure on Lebedev or other wealthy Russians over their business interests.
Most wealthy Russian businessmen have avoided criticising the Kremlin since the arrest in 2003 of former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky after he defied Putin by taking an interest in opposition politics. He is still in prison.
Source: Agencies
