The deleted interview with Maxim Freidzon, who accused Vladimir Putin of corruption, was not fully agreed upon with him, they said on Svoboda. The Kremlin links Western media inquiries about Freidzon with an information attack

Photo: TASS

An interview with former businessman Maxim Freidzon was removed from the Radio Liberty website due to the fact that the text was not agreed upon with the interlocutor, editor-in-chief of the Moscow bureau of Liberty, Leonid Velekhov, told RBC.

“Let’s not talk about someone’s fault. There were preliminary approvals. But the text was not finally agreed upon, so we made this decision, guided by the rules of ethics,” he said.

Velekhov doubts that the text can now appear on the radio station’s website again. “I don’t know, but the job has already been done - the text has been removed, it’s unlikely that Freidzon will either ask to take it down or approve it,” says the editor-in-chief of the Moscow bureau of the radio station.

appeared on the Svoboda website Earlier, a message that “the publication was deleted at the request of Radio Liberty’s interlocutor, who feared for his safety.” The corresponding statement appeared on the page where the interview was previously posted. It is cached at web.archive.org.

In a remote interview, Freidzon said that in the 1990s he met with Vladimir Putin several times in connection with the start of a special program to create police weapons. At the same time, he accused Putin of taking a bribe. As Freidzon claimed, it was about $10 thousand, and the money was received by “Vladimir Vladimirovich’s assistant Lesha Miller” (we are talking about Alexey Miller, the current head of Gazprom). According to Freidzon, Putin allegedly “simply wrote the amount during the conversation.” The businessman notes that he “did not personally give money to Putin.”

Freidzon also cited the words of his late partner Dmitry Skigin, who claimed that Putin received 4% in the joint company of Freidzon and Skigin “Sovex” (the transport and refueling complex of the St. Petersburg Pulkovo Airport).

The text of the conversation with Freidzon was published on May 23. A day earlier, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Western media were launching an information attack on Putin. According to Peskov, the Kremlin received two information requests from a “respected London newspaper” and from an American publication, which he did not name. According to him, both requests partially “absolutely coincide” with the wording of the questions. These appeals, the spokesman said, are quite eloquent confirmation of how uncomfortable Putin continues to be for many.

From Peskov’s words it follows that the requests that irritated the Kremlin concerned Freidzon’s accusations. “This concerns one episode related to a trial in the Southern District of New York. There, St. Petersburg businessman Maxim Freidzon makes various accusations, and Dmitry Skigin also appears there. And the wording (in the London and American editions - RBC) is absolutely identical,” the president’s press secretary told reporters.

Velekhov confirmed to RBC that the radio station journalist who interviewed sent Peskov a request. However, he found it difficult to answer whether the press secretary was referring to the radio station’s request.

In the summer of 2014, Freidzon, who is a citizen of Israel, filed a lawsuit in the court of the Southern District of New York against the companies LUKOIL, Lukoil North America, Gazprom, Gazprom Neft and Gazpromneft-Aero. According to Freidzon, since 1994 he, in partnership with the late businessman Dmitry Skigin, owned 29% of the Sigma company, which controlled 66% of the shares of Sovex CJSC. As Freidzon claimed then, in 1997, the leader of the Tambov organized crime group Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin) transferred Sovex under his control. In 2007–2008, 98% of Sovex shares came under the control of the Severo-Zapad refueling complex, which belonged to LLC LUKOIL-Aero, and then 50% of the Severo-Zapad refueling complex was acquired by Gazpromneft-Aero CJSC. Freidzon notes that the head of Gazprom Alexey Miller and the head of Gazprom Neft Alexander Dyukov, who worked in the structures of Dmitry Skigin, should have known about the real owners of Sovex.

In March 2015, an American court refused to consider Freidzon’s claim, redirecting it to Russian justice. The reason was the petition of the American subsidiary of LUKOIL to move the place of consideration of the case. In an interview with Svoboda, Freidzon says that he wants to sue in the United States and wants to convince the court that “in Russia now it is dangerous to try Putin’s team and there is no hope for a fair decision.” The businessman also noted that the “criminal group” of which he allegedly became a victim included “Vladimir Kumarin, Alexey Miller, Alexander Dyukov (CEO of Gazprom Neft), Ilya Traber (co-founder of the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal),” and Putin in court documents he did not mention so as not to “inject politics into an already complex matter.”

“Svoboda” explained the deletion of the interview about Putin due to inconsistency of the text