Vladimir Gusinsky

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Vladimir Aleksandrovich Gusinsky (Владимир Александрович Гусинский in Russian) (born 1952), a Russian - Spanish media baron, is known as the founder of Media-Most holding that included Most Bank, the NTV channel, the newspaper Segodnya and magazines.

After moving abroad in the summer of 2001 he created a satellite TV broadcasting company RTVi which portrays the events in Russia as presented by the TV network Echo's journalists. The related web site newsru.com carries textual, photo and video news from Russia.

On August 23rd 2003, Gusinsky travelled from Israel to Athens, where he was arrested under a greek - russian treaty.[1] Intense pressure from Americans (mainly from US ambassador in Athens Tomas Miller) and Israelis on the Greek government, caused his release within 5 days. [2]

According to the Union of Councils for Soviet Jews [3], Gusinsky is a very close friend of U.S. Congressman Tom Lantos.

He holds Israeli and Spanish citizenship and often resides in Spain.

Vladimir Gusinsky is responsible for creating the first independent TV channel in Russia as well as setting the course for professional and objective TV news coverage in Russia. The emergence of 'NTV+', an offshoot from NTV channel, was a groundbreaking event for Russian media. NTV+ was the first satellite channel ever to broadcast in the former USSR. Is now owner of the RTVi channel.