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Alexander Lebedev sentenced to 150 hours of community service Alexander Lebedev sentenced to 150 hours of community service
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Russian media magnate Alexander Lebedev was ordered on Tuesday to do 150 hours of community service but avoided a jail sentence after being convicted of battery for punching a rival during a television talkshow. The Russian media tycoon Alexander Lebedev was sentenced to 150 hours' community service on Tuesday after being found guilty of battery for punching a fellow businessman on television two years ago.
Lebedev saw the trial as Vladimir Putin's revenge for his criticism of the government, and the financial backer of the Independent and London Evening Standard said he planned to appeal against the verdict. Lebedev, the financial backer of the Independent and Evening Standard, avoided a hefty prison sentence after prosecutors surprisingly dropped their demands that he be found guilty of "hooliganism motivated by political hatred", a charge that carries up to five years in jail.
"I am ashamed of this verdict," Lebedev's lawyer, Genry Reznik, said after the judge sentenced his client in a Moscow court. A Moscow judge handed down an even more lenient sentence for battery than that demanded by prosecutors, who had been seeking "limits" to Lebedev's freedom for 21 months, probation-style restrictions that would ban him from attending large gatherings.
Lebedev had faced up to five years in jail on charges of hooliganism motivated by political hatred but the judge dismissed the more serious charges against him and the state prosecution dropped the jail threat last week. Lebedev said he would appeal. "You remember when Naomi Campbell attacked a policeman? She was probably guilty. I wasn't," he said, referring to the supermodel who pleaded guilty in 2008 to assaulting two police officers at Heathrow. "I was protecting myself against a dangerous hooligan," he said.
Lebedev jumped out of his chair and hurled punches at property developer Sergei Polonsky as they recorded a television talkshow in late 2011. Polonsky was knocked backwards and off the studio podium but Lebedev, 53, portrayed the punches as a pre-emptive strike because he felt under threat. The eccentric Russian businessman was charged in September 2012, a year after he punched Sergei Polonsky, a real estate tycoon, during the filming of a heated TV chat show on the global financial crisis. The charges were brought after Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, publicly referred to the incident as an act of hooliganism.
Lebedev is rare among oligarchs in speaking out against the Kremlin since the imprisonment of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was arrested in 2003 after falling out with Putin. Khodorkovsky's Yukos oil company was broken up and sold off, mainly into state hands. Lebedev always insisted that the case against him was fabricated, motivated by overzealous law-enforcement agencies that had taken a cue from Putin and sought to punish him for his campaign against corruption and his co-ownership of Novaya Gazeta, Russia's main investigative newspaper.
Lebedev, who co-owns a campaigning Russian newspaper critical of Putin, also portrayed the case as part of a broader crackdown on the opposition since the former KGB spy returned to the presidency in May 2011 following protests. It appears that high-ranking Russian officials intervened in the months-long case just before the verdict was to be handed down, Lebedev said last week.
"The judge was not free to rule 'not guilty', like all the judges who sentence millions of people a year," Lebedev said, noting that Russia's conviction rate stands at more than 99%.
His son Evgeny, who owns his father's two newspapers, said: "I am relieved that my father has been spared a custodial sentence, and that this deeply worrying time for our family is finally at an end.
"We are grateful for the messages of support we have received from friends and well-wishers, in Russia and around the world," he said.
A jail term for Lebedev, a highly public figure both in Russia and abroad, would have dealt a further blow to Russia's already poor reputation on human rights and clean conduct of business.
Polonsky never appeared at the trial, spending much of it in Cambodia, where he was later charged with assaulting a group of fishermen. He is now believed to have fled to Israel. Last week, he also called for the charges against Lebedev to be dropped, following months of issuing written and video statements calling for the media tycoon's head.
Lebedev said that if he lost his appeal and was forced to do community service he had some ideas, including improving corporate governance at the state gas behemoth Gazprom, conducting a corruption investigation for the Economy Ministry or working as a special prosecutor on corruption.