Venediktov’s company filed a lawsuit against the managers of Gazprom Media for 1.1 billion rubles

Emkhk LLC, whose founder and majority shareholder is journalist Alexey Venediktov (recognized by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation as a foreign agent), filed a lawsuit against five top managers of Gazprom (MOEX: GAZP)-media” and members of the board of directors of ZAO Ekho Moskvy for 1.1 billion rubles, follows from data in the file of arbitration cases.

The case file states that all defendants in the lawsuit filed on December 12 are members of the board of directors of ZAO Ekho Moskvy. Among them are Deputy General Director of Gazprom Media Yulia Golubeva, President of Gazprom Radio Yuri Kostin, General Director of Gazprom Radio Vadim Tereshchuk and General Director of Ekho Moskvy CJSC Ekaterina Pavlova.

IN (.pdf) in the determination to accept the claim for proceedings, Leonid Savkov is also listed among the defendants. Mr. Venediktov, commenting on the lawsuit, said “Vedomosti”that Mr. Savko was a member of the board of directors of Echo of Moscow in 2022, but has currently left its membership.

The journalist explained to the newspaper that the shareholders of the company Emkhk LLC decided to file claims for damages from members of the board of directors and the general director of Ekho Moskvy CJSC. According to Mr. Venediktov, the losses were due to the cessation of the activities of the media owned by the joint-stock company and the waiver of rights to the trademarks “Echo of Moscow” and “Radio Echo of Moscow”.

The radio station “Echo of Moscow” operated for more than 20 years. On March 1, 2022, a few days after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, the radio station was taken off the air and the website was blocked. The team challenged the actions of the supervisory authorities in court, but were unsuccessful. At the time of closure, Gazprom-Media owned 66% of the shares in Ekho Moskvy CJSC, 34% belonged to private individuals, including 14% to Mr. Venediktov.

On August 8, it became known that the MIA Rossiya Segodnya media group filed applications for registration of the Echo of Moscow brand: the first application is for registration of the name, the second is for registration of the logo. Mr. Venediktov then said that according to the law, registration is impossible, since the Ekho Moskvy brand belongs to Ekho Moskvy CJSC, where minority shareholders control a third of the stake.

Erdni Kagaltynov