| Paul Klebnikov | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 3, 1963 New York, USA |
| Died | July 9, 2004 (aged 41) Moscow, Russia |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Spouse | Helen Train |
| Children | Alexander, Gregory, and Sophia |
| Parents | Alexandra and George Klebnikov |
Paul Klebnikov (Russian: Па́вел Ю́рьевич Хле́бников[1]) (June 3, 1963 – July 9, 2004) was a Russian-American journalist and historian of Russian history. He worked for Forbes Magazine for over 10 years and at the time of his death was Chief editor of the Russian edition. His murder in Moscow in 2004 was seen as a blow against investigative journalism in Russia. The organizers of this crime have never been found.[2]
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Paul Klebnikov was born in New York to a family of Russian émigrés with a long military and political tradition; his great grandfather was an admiral in the White Russian fleet who was assassinated by Bolsheviks, and his great-great-great-grandfather Ivan Pouschine participated in the Decembrist revolt in 1825. Klebnikov attended St. Bernard's School and Phillips Exeter Academy, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1984. He wrote a doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics on Pyotr Stolypin, the reformist Tsarist prime minister.
Klebnikov joined Forbes in 1989 and gained a reputation for investigating murky post-Soviet business dealings and corruption. He rose to the position of senior editor, specializing in Russian and Eastern European politics and economics, before becoming the first editor of Forbes' Russian edition when it was launched in April 2004. Observers have suggested Klebnikov may have made powerful enemies because he investigated corruption and sought to shed light on Russian business.
He wrote the book Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia,[3] a biography of the Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, accusing him of various crimes including fraud, money laundering, links with Chechen mafia, a murder and supporting Chechen separatist movement.[4][5] Klebnikov also detailed the role Berezovsky played in Putin's rise to power, as well as shaping Russian opinion in support of the Second Chechen War through the use of his media conglomerate ORT. The book was an expansion of a controversial article in Forbes entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" which included the phrase "Power. Politics. Murder. Boris Berezovsky could teach the guys in Sicily a thing or two."[6]. Berezovsky filed a libel suit against Forbes.[7][8][9] In 2003 the case was settled when Forbes offered a partial retraction.[10][11]
In 2003 Klebnikov published his second book Conversation with a Barbarian: Interviews with a Chechen Field Commander on Banditry and Islam, in which Klebnikov provides the transcript of his 15-hour conversation with a Chechen crime lord, politician and separatist commander Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev. The book focused on the reasons of Chechen War and Chechen mafia and tried to explain them in a broad context from the standpoint of religions and civilizations.
On July 9, 2004, Klebnikov was attacked on a Moscow street late at night by unknown assailants who fired at least nine shots from a slowly moving car. Klebnikov was shot four times and initially survived, but he bled to death in the hospital because the ambulance took almost an hour to come, it had no oxygen bottle, and the hospital elevator that was taking him to the operating room broke.[12] Before he died, Klebnikov said that he saw three assassins in the car, and that he never met any of them before. The publisher of Forbes' Russian edition has said that the murder is "definitely linked" to his journalism.[13] The paper speculated that a list of the 100 wealthiest Russians written by Klebnikov in May 2004 may have motivated the attack.[14]
When Klebnikov was murdered obituaries praised his dedicated journalism but noted concerns about a strain of anti-semitism in his reporting of prominent Jewish figures such as Berezovsky.[15][16][17]
On October 7, 2004, Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) officer Roman Slivkin was arrested on suspicion of involvement in Klebnikov's murder.[18] On November 29, 2004, two main suspects (ethnic Chechens Kazbek Dukuzov and Valid Agayev) were arrested in Minsk, Belarus, to where they allegedly fled from Russia. They were being held in Minsk KGB jail and were handed over to Russians almost three months later on February 22, 2005. The delay in extradition, the Belarus authorities said, was because they were waiting for paperwork and necessary evidence from the Russian side. On November 21, 2005, according to the press release from the Russian Prosecutor General, the indictment was sent by prosecutors to court. According to the indictment, ethnic Chechens Kazbek Dukuzov, Magomed Dukuzov, Musa Vakhayev, Magomed Edilsultanov and others were a criminal gang, and they were involved in racketeering and contract killings. A paralegal from Moscow, Fail Sadretdinov, was co-indicted with them because he allegedly paid the same gang to murder a Moscow businessman Aleksey Pichugin. Kazbek Dukuzov, Vakhayev and Sadretdinov were arrested, while other people indicted were still wanted by the police.
The trial began on January 10, 2006, in closed session because Russian authorities claimed case-related documents contain information about secret surveillance methods used by law enforcement. All of the accused pleaded not guilty. Soon the original judge, Mariya Komarova, fell ill, and on February 13, 2006, according to the Russian law, she was replaced by a different judge, Vladimir Usov. The trial had to be restarted from the very beginning, including the new jury selection process. The trial ended on May 5, 2006, with a jury verdict of not guilty for all the accused and they were released from custody in the courtroom. On November 9, 2006, the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal of three suspects in the killing of Klebnikov and ordered a new trial. The new hearings were scheduled to start in February 2007, but were delayed the following month after one of the suspects failed to show up.[18] In the meanwhile, Fail Sadretdinov was sentenced to 9 years of imprisonment on an unrelated fraud charge.[19]
In August 2006 a source close to the case told Reuters that the investigation was focusing on a possible link between Klebnikov's murder and his interest in the possible misappropriation of Russian funds intended for the reconstruction of Chechnya, ravaged by the decade of fighting between Chechen rebels and Russian troops.[20] Michael Klebnikov, Paul's brother, said it was a remarkable coincidence that the same eight jurors also acquitted the same two men of the murder of Yan Sergunin, a former Russian deputy prime minister of Chechnya, with whom Klebnikov had been in contact; Sergunin was shot dead outside a Moscow restaurant just two weeks before Klebnikov's murder.
On December 17, 2007, the retrial, classified as secret, was restarted but immediately halted again because of the continued disappearance of Kazbek Dukuzov.[21]
The United States Senate has asked Russia to accept help in the investigation of Klebnikov's death, but Russia's Prosecutor General Yury Chaika stated that Russia can cope on its own. Robert Levinson was involved in an FBI investigation in Klebnikov's death.[22] On July 9, 2007 the U.S. Department of State released the following statement:
July 9 marks the third anniversary of the murder of American citizen Paul Klebnikov, who was the editor of Forbes Russia magazine. The U.S. Government recognizes the attention the Russian Government at the highest levels has devoted to this case and encourages it to rededicate itself to making resolution of this case a law enforcement priority. We reiterate our readiness to provide assistance to Russian authorities in bringing the perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice. The intimidation and murder of journalists is an affront to free and independent media and all who respect democratic values, and must not be tolerated. We urge Russia to take steps that protect all journalists, enable them to operate inside Russia without fear for their lives, and guarantee freedom of expression.[23]
The issue has been raised in conversations between U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.[21]
Forbes reported on July 10, 2009, that "The Russian government recently agreed to resurrect a suspended investigation into the 2004 murder of Forbes journalist Paul Klebnikov and to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Justice on the inquiry."[24]
In 2004, the Committee to Protect Journalists posthumously named Klebnikov one of four winners of the CPJ International Press Freedom Awards.
In the wake of Klebnikov’s murder in 2004, colleagues, friends and family joined together to form the Paul Klebnikov Fund.[25]. The Fund’s stated mission is to promote a civil society in Russia by strengthening a free and independent press and by fostering community values through the preservation and protection of neglected but historic buildings. Each year the Directors award the Paul Klebnikov Fund Prize for Courage in Journalism. The recipients spend several weeks working at an American newspaper, developing an appreciation for American journalistic standards. The Fund also facilitates internships and training programs with western media organizations in Russia. The Fund is a non-profit organization, administered by the International Center for Journalists in Washington, D.C..
In 2005, to honor Klebnikov's commitment to scholarship and research on Russia and the former Soviet states, the London School of Economics established the Paul Klebnikov Prize for outstanding masters degree students in Russian and Post-Soviet Studies.
Also in 2005, Klebnikov's Exeter classmates endowed an annual Klebnikov Lecture to honor his memory. The first Klebnikov Lecture was held on May 12, 2006, at the 25th reunion of Klebnikov's Exeter class (1981), and featured remarks by Wall Street Journal correspondent and Exeter alumnus Jon Karp.[26]
Project Klebnikov is a global alliance specifically devoted to developing new information on the Klebnikov murder and to furthering some of the investigative work Klebnikov began, with reporters and editors drawn from the full spectrum of international media outlets.
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