Last week we all watched the most mediocre takeover operation in a joint-stock company - I mean the meeting of shareholders of NTV on April 3rd. Citizen Koch could end the war with one blow. We had to turn the meeting into...

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And last week we all watched the most mediocre takeover operation in a joint-stock company - I mean the meeting of NTV shareholders on April 3rd.

Citizen Koch could end the war with one blow. It was necessary to turn the meeting into a show, to catch up with television cameras there, to willingly let Kiselyov into Gazprom, and then, leaving someone to reason under the camera, it was necessary to hastily, leaving the enteveshnikov in Gazprom, take the OMON and dump them in Ostankino, fly into the office - and that's it. Kiselev returned, and in his office - Jordan and OMON at the entrance.

Mr. Koch has failed the instructions of the authorities. Nine months ago he was told to shut people up: people keep screaming.

Throughout his strategy, Mr. Koch proceeded from the assumption that his opponent could be intimidated, and failed to understand that oligarchs, unlike officials, do not take bribes and do not succumb to threats. They are, so to speak, from the other end of the bribe. The opposite of Alfred Koch.

It was necessary to put another oligarch to take over NTV. The whole operation would have ended sometime last August. The whole point is: to increase the payment for signal distribution fivefold, put the NTV frequency up for a competition, introduce a temporary administration under any pretext, immediately hack the first criminal case that comes to hand, bankrupt the channel completely and drop in there with the riot police.

Another mistake was the appointment of Boris Yordan as the general director of NTV. It gives fantastic trump cards for protection. For Jordan's knowledge of Russian business is not limited to lectures on how it works transparently "in the USA, where I grew up."

The penultimate time Boris Jordan set the norms of fair capitalist play at the Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works. Boris Jordan managed 17% of the plant's shares for George Soros. Soros did not receive a penny from these shares, and in the end Soros ordered them to be sold. Jordan sold the shares to NLMK management, and, as they say, the amount of money that Soros received for the shares was comparable to the amount of money that Jordan received from the management for "consultations."

And as soon as the amount "for consultations" was paid, Jordan went to his longtime partner Potanin and offered him to buy a 34% stake in NLMK from the minority shareholder of the plant - TVG.

You will probably be surprised. 34% of the shares is nothing, it's a fiddle at a shareholders' meeting. Why the hell should the tight-fisted ONEXIM pay more money for this fiddle than at the loans-for-share auction for Norilsk Nickel? Answer: in metallurgical circles, they say that Yordan promised Potanin: you will buy 34%, and I know how to steal back the very 17% that I sold and processed myself. Let me remind you: this is after the fee for "consultations".

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It didn't burn out, and Mr. Jordan is now setting the standards for honest American capitalism at another Russian company, the Novorossiysk Shipping Company. His Sputnik Foundation has just achieved a partial deprivatization of the shipping company.

The problem is that Boris Jordan is a Russian businessman, but an American citizen. And within the framework of the war for NTV, the natural course is to initiate a case against him in an American court. And much of what is considered a rule in Russia is considered a crime in America.

The government's idea to appoint an official Koch to fight against the oligarch Gusinsky is obviously doomed to failure. These are people of too different caliber. The list of Gusinsky's sins is huge.

But what has never been in Gusinsky is pettiness.

What is Koh? Friends told a scene: the competition for Svyazinvest was won, the winners are equipping the ship, the sunset, the Gulf of Finland, as usual, two girls for one man's snout, and drunken Koch, who, triumphantly, shouts that the prosecutor's office sucked him off.

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oh, one of those who ride on steamboats, and Gusinsky is one of those who equip steamboats. The crown of Koch's life is French love with the prosecutor's office, and Gusinsky is one of those who need Satan himself to be in the place of a pliable partner.

For Vladimir Gusinsky, freedom of speech has never been a goal. The goal was power and money. "If you don't make friends, I'll go." Mr. Koch forced the oligarch to choose between money and "Damn it all!", and he, of course, chose the latter.

Thanks to Mr. Koch, we had nine months of independent television in Russia. Let us thank Alfred Zolotoreinovich. He turned one of the tools of the struggle for power into the last, desperate fortress of Russian freedom. And hopelessly compromised the Kremlin.

Yulia Latynina, columnist for Novaya Gazeta