GREECE: A Russian tycoon, Mr Vladimir Gusinsky, was remanded in custody by an Athens court yesterday while Greek authorities decide whether to extradite him on fraud charges to his homeland, which he fled to escape what he called Kremlin persecution.
Mr Gusinsky was detained last Thursday on arrival in Athens from Israel, amid heightened tension between Russia's political and business elite over a wide-ranging investigation into the country's biggest oil firm.
A colourful theatre impresario-turned-media magnate, Mr Gusinsky moved to Israel from Spain in 2001, after a Madrid court threw out a Russian request to extradite him for allegedly swindling Moscow out of about $260 million in loans.
Russian media said the Greek courts were considering the same charges, rather than later Russian accusations of money-laundering lodged against the "oligarch", one of a coterie of men who made millions during Russia's murky privatisations of the 1990s.
Russia's Prosecutor General and Interpol bureau declined to comment on the case yesterday. It was unclear whether Moscow had already sent an extradition request to Athens.
Mr Gusinsky maintains that all charges against him were aimed at silencing his Media-Most empire, which counted among its stable of publications and broadcasters the popular NTV television channel, which was often fiercely critical of the Kremlin's campaign in rebel Chechnya.
Mr Gusinsky's arrest resounded around a Moscow business world already rattled by the detention on fraud charges of a billionaire shareholder in the Russian oil firm Yukos.
A team of investigators in Moscow have also accused a Yukos security official of murder and begun investigating the company's accounts.
