Vladimir Gusinsky's case

Mr. Gusinsky's company, Media-Most, owns the nation's leading independent television station — NTV — and his news programs and publications have been critical of Kremlin policies.

Throughout the 1990s NTV, a channel that was built from scratch by Vladimir Gusinsky and a team of journalists, provided Russia’s only television news that was not under close Kremlin scrutiny. Mr Gusinsky is under house arrest in Spain as Moscow attempts to have him extradited on fraud charges.

The Gitin Case

The criminal proceedings against Gitin were launched by the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Krasnoyarsk Area on March 24, 2000. Gitin was arrested in Moscow and brought to a remand prison in Krasnoyarsk. In April he was indicted on charges of taking a bribe of excessive proportions. Between April and July 2000, Gitin was kept under arrest, before being released under guarantees from his colleagues in the Yabloko party and the State Duma. During the investigation, Gitin suffered two heart attacks.

On January 24, 2001, the Public Prosecutor’s Office halted its criminal investigation against Viktor Gitin, Head of Yabloko in Krasnoyarsk Area and deputy of the State Duma of the second convocation, due to a “lack of corpus delicti” (Article 5 of the Criminal Code of the RF).

Larisa Yudina

The Supreme Court of Kalmykia sentenced the killers of editor-in-chief of the newspaper Sovetskaya Kalmykiya segodnya (Soviet Kalmykia Today) Larisa Yudina on November 29, 1999 in Elista.

Yudina was killed on June 7, 1998. The majority of the mass media connected the crime with president of Kalmykia Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. Soviet Kalmykia Today criticized him sharply and frequently. An investigation revealed that she was being threatened and that efforts were being made to bribe her. The journalist was lured into a deadly trap by an offer of documents testifying to the embezzlement of budgetary funds by the presidential administration.