Alarm at Takeover Bid for Major Kyrgyz Media Group
Staff at leading newspaper fear the real motive behind a complex lawsuit is an ambition to exert political control.
Alarm at Takeover Bid for Major Kyrgyz Media Group
Staff at leading newspaper fear the real motive behind a complex lawsuit is an ambition to exert political control.
Staff at Kyrgyzstan’s leading newspaper Vecherny Bishkek are campaigning to preserve their independence in the face of what they believe is a takeover bid by top political officials.
The media group of which the large-circulation Vecherny Bishkek is the jewel in the crown is at the centre of a complex legal battle featuring historical claims of political pressure by past officials.
The Vecherny Bishkek group owns a total of four newspapers, a printing press, and the Rubicon Advertising Agency, which provides substantial revenues to the company.
The Russian-language Vecherny Bishkek is Kyrgyzstan’s main newspaper in terms of circulation. Rubicon, meanwhile, is the group’s financial heart – control of it is control of the whole group.
THE LEGAL CASE
In a court decision issued in January, half the stock in the Rubicon agency belonging to current owner Alexander Kim was transferred to one Alexander Ryabushkin, who held a 50/50 share with Kim until 2000.
Ryabushkin is now seeking damages for earnings lost over the last 15 years amounting to millions of dollars.
In 2000, Ryabushkin sold his 50 per cent share in Rubicon to the Petrovsky Corporation.
Kim says he was put under pressure to sell his half of Rubicon, too, but got to keep the shares while ceding one per cent to the Petrovsky company, thus giving it a majority stake. In open letters to current president Almazbek Atambaev, staff at Vecherny Bishkek allege that at this time, the Petrovsky company had close links to the family of Askar Akaev, who was Kyrgyzstan’s president from 1990 until he was ousted in a popular uprising in 2005
After the change of government in 2005, a court awarded Kim the 51 per cent holding of Petrovsky Corporation, which by then was not active, on the grounds that it had siphoned cash out of Rubicon.
Ryabushkin later brought lawsuits in a bid to wrest his original shares back, but this was thrown out by the courts on the grounds that he had sold them back in 2000 and had no further legal claim to them.
Last year, however, he launched a new legal action, and in successive court actions was awarded 50 per cent of Rubicon. Kim has decided not to challenge this, but is going to fight Ryabushkin’s damage claim since he argues this would bankrupt him.
CLAIMS OF A POLITICAL MOTIVE
The dispute has gone far beyond legal wrangling, as staff at the Vecherny Bishkek group suspect Ryabushkin is acting as a proxy for senior political figures who want to control the country’s main newspaper.
Dina Maslova, chief editor of Vecherny Bishkek’s news site VB.kg, told IWPR that the aim is to turn the newspaper into a vehicle for praising President Atambaev and his administration.
Vecherny Bishkek employees have written two open letters to President Atambaev alleging that people in his entourage – but not him personally – are behind a covert takeover bid.
Dina Maslova, chief editor of Vecherny Bishkek’s news site VB.kg, told IWPR that the individuals involved were “very high-ranking”.
“Quite a lot of our sources in government, parliament and the State Committee for National Security have told us this,” she said.
Asked whether she thought the president himself was aware of what was going on, Maslova said she suspected those involved had been giving him “distorted facts”.
“If the president doesn’t see this, of if he takes no measures to protect the public from the influence of a few individuals, that would be a very bad thing,” she added.
Ryabushkin denies any links to senior political figures and says he is just trying to right a wrong done to him when Akaev was in power.
“I just want to get back what legally belonged to me,” he told journalists.
Sergei Vorontsov, a lawyer acting for Vecherny Bishkek, told IWPR that any legal action should properly between Kim and the Petrovsky Corporation, but that the United States-based company had not had a presence in Kyrgyzstan since 2005 and had not responded to his attempts to contact it.
Atambaev’s spokesman Janar Akaev told IWPR the president did not allow his staff to engage in intrigue.
“I don’t think that either the president or his entourage needs this PR campaign by Vecherny Bishkek, so these statements are not true,” he said. “We haven’t built a perfect, wholly independent judicial system yet, but we are trying to.”
After the first open letter from Vecherny Bishkek employees, President Atambaev ordered the security service and the prosecutor’s office to conduct a “thorough investigation of all the circumstances of the case and provide unbiased information to the public”. Nothing has been made public to date.
The second letter prompted the national security service to warn that it would be calling in signatories for questioning, and was checking the wording of the document to see whether it contained “calls for the violent overthrowing of the constitutional system”, a criminal offence.
Meanwhile, Ikram Ilmiyanov, an influential presidential adviser who was among those accused by Vecherny Bishkek staff, resigned. In a statement released by the president’s press office, Ilmiyanov said his plain-speaking style had made him a lot of enemies, “and it’s they who are spreading rumours that then get picked by the media”.
“Over time, it gets harder and harder to bear these concerted smears,” he said, while adding that he felt no need to justify his actions or sue his accusers.
Atambaev’s media advisor Farid Niazov accused Vecherny Bishkek of making “groundless allegations” containing “no specific facts”
“They say I put pressure on the courts, but not who told them that, or how I applied this pressure. This is mere speculation and allegation; it is invented,” he said at a press conference, noting that he would not be resigning.
Vecherny Bishkek has become such an institution in Kyrgyzstan that politicians, human rights defenders and NGOs have rallied to its defence.
Tolekan Ismailova, a leading human rights activist who heads the Bir Duyno-Kyrgyzstan NGO, said the case raised concerns about media independence, judicial fairness, and political control – all recurring issues since Kyrgyzstan became in 1991.
“The government must unswervingly uphold the fundamental principles of freedom of speech, the inviolability of private property, and independent and fair trial,” she told IWPR. “Unfortunately, we’re experience a sense of déjà vu.”
Ismailova said that political control of the media was rife under Akaev, and then under his successor Kurmanbek Bakiev, who was similarly ousted in a popular revolution in 2010.
“The White House [Kyrgyz president’s office] must deduce that this kind of thing cannot go on,” she said.
Timur Toktonaliev is IWPR's Kyrgyzstan editor.
