Moscow Fire Inspectors Close Kommersant

On his first day as the new editor of the leading Kommersant daily, Andrei Vasilyev did not have to produce a newspaper Monday.


Instead, he held a news conference to try to convince suspicious reporters that he will not be a tool in the hands of the paper's new owner - Boris Berezovsky - and to slam a fire department order shutting down the paper for safety violations. The order, issued late Friday, prompted the management of the newspaper to accuse Berezovsky's rival, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, of being behind the closure. Luzhkov and the fire inspectors denied the accusations Monday.


"This is not a question of fire safety," Vasilyev said Monday. "This is a question of political pressure, and a quite silly one at that. We got some good free PR [from] ... the Moscow city government."


He said inspectors made it clear to Kommersant managers the order was coming from outside their department.


The fire department order prevented Kommersant from publishing Tuesday's paper, its first of the week, and it was unclear when the newspaper would be able to resume publication. It is the first time in recent years that a national newspaper has been shut down for fire violations.


The fire department, in a letter published Monday in the newspaper Vremya MN, said it was in the process of inspecting all media offices. The inspections started in late May. Fire safety rules are routinely violated by media organizations and other Russian companies and offices.


The Kommersant Publishing House, which also puts out a series of magazines, sued the fire inspection department Monday in the Moscow Arbitration Court and intends to sue the officer who signed the order, Anatoly Giletich, in a civil court, Kommersant said.


Irina Orestova, Kommersant spokeswoman, said Monday afternoon in a telephone interview that the order remained in force.


The newly formed Press Ministry, often seen as a Kremlin watchdog over the media in the run-up to elections, supported Kommersant. The ministry issued a statement Monday urging Moscow city authorities to cancel the fire department's order. Kommersant, once the most respected and impartial Russian newspaper, has received much attention since its takeover by Berezovsky. The financier confirmed on Aug. 6 that he had bought a controlling stake in the publishing house. In early July, it was bought, at least on paper, by a U.S. company run by two Iranian-born businessmen.


On Aug. 5, editor Raf Shakirov was fired and said Berezovsky had attempted to buy his loyalty but failed.


Vasilyev said Monday that he received the offer to edit the paper from general director Leonid Miloslavsky, who had sold his 15 percent stake in the company to Berezovsky in July and was later reinstalled as the paper's CEO.


For the past two weeks, Vasilyev said he had been bargaining with Berezovsky for some guarantees of editorial independence, without which, he said, he would not have agreed to run the paper. But he would not say what these guarantees were.


Vasilyev, 42, worked for Kommersant from its inception in 1989 until 1992, and then in 1996-97 he served as editor of Kommersant weekly.


He also has worked on and off for ORT television, which is controlled by Berezovsky.


"I have had experience working with Boris Abramovich, and it was absolutely negative and ended with my firing," Vasilyev said.


He lost his job as head of ORT's news service in 1997, which Vasilyev said was because his department did not perform adequately in the media war against Anatoly Chubais over the sale of the Svyazinvest communication holding. But, "for PR reasons," he was promoted to deputy director of ORT.


But propaganda is not alien to him. In 1996, he said he was "dispatched by ORT" to help edit the notorious anti-communist newspaper Ne Dai Bog, or God Forbid, which was printed in millions of copies and distributed free across Russia during the presidential campaign. In recent months, he has done public relations work on a temporary contract with the Yukos oil company.


Now, Vasilyev said, Kommersant should not take part in media wars and should return to news reporting, strengthening, at the same time, its business coverage. The scandal around the newspaper's sale, he said, was prompted originally by a conflict between two owners of the paper - Vladimir Yakovlev and Miloslavsky - but then it became part of the media war between Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, in which Kommersant "took part on the side of Gusinsky."


"This must not repeat," Vasilyev said. "I don't like taking part in media wars."


Gusinsky is the head of Media-MOST, which owns NTV television and has been supportive of Luzhkov.


The scandal, Vasilyev said, affected the paper's relations with its advertisers but had little effect on its circulation. Contrary to the circulation figure printed in the paper -117,340 copies - Vasilyev said its newsstand circulation, not counting subscriptions, is now 36,000. The number of subscriptions was unknown but was unlikely to come close to covering the difference.


Russian newspapers routinely exaggerate their circulations, and Vasilyev impromptu comment was a rare case of a media executive citing a realistic print run.


Over the weekend, Kommersant's accusations against Luzhkov were trumpeted by Russian media, particularly by Berezovsky-controlled ORT television. It ran a lengthy interview Saturday with Miloslavsky, who said that high-ranking fire department officers, who came to shut down the paper, made it clear to him that their decision was made "for political reasons."


Orestova also repeated the company line, saying fire officials were "uneasy" about the order and said it was coming "from above."


The department that issued the order is part of the federal Interior Ministry, but has ties with the city administration.


Giletich, who signed the order, said he did so only because fire safety rules were gravely violated at Kommersant's building on Ulitsa Vrubelya in northwestern Moscow.


"There was never any talk that it was someone else's instruction [when the paper was ordered to close]. We did not speak about it at all," Giletich said on Ekho Moskvy radio Monday. Luzhkov said Monday that Kommersant's accusations were "absolutely absurd insinuations."


"Having the widest opportunities in this sphere, we never use them against any publications, even the notorious ones that constantly criticize us, such as [communist] Sovietskaya Rossia and [ultra-nationalist] Zavtra," Luzhkov was quoted by Interfax as saying.


No one at Kommersant denies that the fire regulations were violated.


The fire department said that, among other violations, the editorial building lacked properly marked smoking areas and journalists smoked at their desks, the building had no proper doors on its staircases and evacuation routes were littered with unused furniture. It also said the company had been warned in late June that the building could be closed down.