Vladimir Gusinsky

Gusinsky was born into a Jewish family in Moscow on 6 October 1952. In 1969, Gusinsky enrolled in Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas, however, he did not finish his education there. He joined the USSR Army in 1973 as a Junior Sergeant in the Chemical Intelligence Troops. In 1975, after being demobilized, Gusinsky enrolled in the State Institute for the Study of Theatrical Arts (Russian: ГИТИС English: GITIS). He graduated in 1979 with his graduating diploma work on the staging of "Tartuffe" by Molière, in the Tula State Dramatic Theater.

Early career

1986

Stage Director for the Ted Turner Goodwill Games in the Kremlin Palace.

Founded one of the first cooperatives following Perestroika - Cooperative "Metal" - which started to produce metal garages and later copper bracelets and other fashion jewelry in mass quantities.

1988

Founded the cooperative "INFEKS" under the auspices of the Ministry of Foreign Trade of the USSR, which engaged in consulting of foreign companies entering into the Russian market.

1989

Created the joint venture "Most", together with APCO (a consulting company owned by the Arnold & Porter Law Firm in Washington DC).

Gusinsky established "Most Bank", one of the first and one of the largest private retail banks in Russia. The first ATM allowing cash withdrawals in Russia was installed by Most Bank in Russia in 1994.

1992

Founded a holding company "Most Group". All of Gusinsky's business assets, totaling 42 companies, including Most Bank (Russian: Мост-банк) and a number of construction companies, were integrated into this holding structure.

Legal confrontation with Kremlin, and later life

2001

In January, Gusinsky filed a case against Russia in the European Court of Human Rights for violations of his rights and freedoms.

In April, the National Court of Spain rejected the Russian Federation's request for Gusinsky's extradition. The Spanish court noted that the charges against Gusinsky were politically motivated and in fact did not even constitute a crime – the National Court specifically stated "It is possible to observe in the documents furnished by [the applicant]... "certain noteworthy and peculiar circumstances which are unusual in the sphere of judicial claims for fraud and which, although they do not in themselves lead to the conclusion that we are dealing with an irregular claim filed for a political purpose, compel the Court to consider [the applicant's] argument as not completely without foundation as far as the facts and interferences are concerned and as not inconceivable or discountable on the basis of logical criteria and experience." Gusinsky was released.

In mid April, the Russian Federation conducted raids on the offices of Media Most and NTV.

Only days after the National Court of Spain decided that charges against Gusinsky were politically motivated and not a crime, the Russian Federation commenced new criminal proceedings against Gusinsky and issued a new arrest warrant, alleging money laundering of money owed to Gazprom. Again the Russian Federation submitted the request to arrest Gusinsky in his home in Spain, but Gusinsky was not present – he left for Israel. Several months later the National Court of Spain dismissed the Russian Federation's new request as baseless.

In July, the supervisory board of Interpol recommended to stop any further actions against Gusinsky based on Russian Federation requests. Interpol's secretary general, Ronald Noble, described the case against Gusinsky as having "predominantly political character". In August, Israel refused to extradite Gusinsky to Russia.

2002

In May, Gusinsky started a new television project – RTV International or RTVi, that continued what NTV International started – providing unbiased Russian language news for Russian speakers worldwide.

In October, Gusinsky's internet news project Newsru.com, started operating on its new domain name. Prior to this, the project was operating as NTV.ru, but that domain name was given to Gazprom Media, the new owners of NTV. The design for the website was created by an internationally recognized designer: Semyon Levin. Newsru.com included a highly acclaimed internet resource – Inopressa.ru – that provided summaries of daily news from foreign print media translated into the Russian language. Currently, the Newsru.com website has more than 65 million page views and 7.5 million unique visitors monthly.

2003

In August, Gusinsky was arrested in Greece on another request for extradition from the Russian Federation. Several days later he was released on bail and awaited the decision while under pledge not to depart Athens.

In September, while awaiting the Greek court's decision about his extradition, Gusinsky's hotel room was burglarized while he was out to dinner. It was claimed to be a professional job, but police declined to comment on the extent of the items that were taken.

In October, after the Athens Court of Appeals examined the charges brought against Gusinsky by the Russian Federation, it refused the extradition request. The Court of Appeals held that the charges alleged against Gusinsky were not unlawful under Greek law.

2004

In May 2004, the European Court of Human Rights held that the arrest and criminal charges against Gusinsky were in violation of Article 5 and Article 18 of the Convention on Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms, stating that the facts of the case established that the prosecution of Gusinsky in Russia was politically motivated and used to intimidate him. The Russian Federation appealed. In November, the European Court of Human Rights declined Russian Federation's request to review its decision, thereby upholding its ruling.

2005

Gusinsky consolidated his television production operations into a new holding company named New Media Distribution Company. The company became one of the largest producers of original scripted television dramas for broadcast in prime time in the Russian language, selling its productions to a number of Russian television broadcasting networks, including NTV and RTR, as well as to other broadcasters in other Russian speaking areas of the world (or where Russian is widely spoken). In the last 10 years the NMDC has produced over 3,000 original episodes, many of which have won awards and garnered high viewership shares. NMDC also owns a number of pay television thematic channels, including Detskii Mir (Children's World), TeleKlub, Nashe Kino (Our Movies) and Mir Seriala (World of Series). NMDC is headquartered in George Town, the Cayman Islands, and has operating subsidiaries in Russia and a number of other European countries.

In March, the Israeli police initiated a money laundering probe into the employees and clients of Bank Hapoalim, Branch 535. Bank Hapoalim is one of the largest and oldest banks in Israel. Gusinsky was among a number of people who were investigated. A year later, the Israeli Prosecutor's Office dropped all charges against Gusinsky without any additional conditions or negotiations and with prejudice. Several years later, in 2010, the Israeli courts have determined that the actions of the Prosecutor's Office in this money laundering investigation were excessive and unreasonable and sanctioned the prosecutors involved in the investigation.

In December, Gusinsky created a sister site to Newsru.com, called Newsru.co.il. While it had an independent editorial board, it retained a similar design as the Russian counterpart. The Israeli site provided Russian language news about Israel's domestic and international affairs as well as world news. Currently, Newsru.co.il is among the most popular Russian language news sites in Israel. It has an average of 20 million page views and 1.5 million unique visitors monthly.

2007

In first quarter of 2007, Gusinsky decided to create a general entertainment television channel in Ukraine. Gusinsky started to work with an acquaintance, Konstantin Kagalovsky, to jointly bring the Ukrainian TV project to life.

In April, Gusinsky opened a new sister internet project, this time in Ukraine – Newsru.ua, similar to the Russian and Israeli sites, it had an independent editorial board but retained the design, and provided news about Ukrainian's domestic and international affairs and world news. This site was featured both in the Russian and Ukrainian languages.

2008

In March, Gusinsky and Kagalovsky jointly put the general entertainment channel in Ukraine on air, naming it TVi. TVi was quickly and steadily rising in both coverage and popularity.

2009

In the spring, Gusinsky and Kagalovsky began to have disputes about the direction TVi was taking. In September, Kagalovsky surreptitiously and, according to him, in a "Russian-Ukrainian way", diluted Gusinsky's share in TVi from 50% to less than 1%. In December, Gusinsky sued Kagalovsky for theft of TVi, in the Supreme Court of New York Commercial Division.

2012

In March, Gusinsky sold RTVi to Ruslan Sokolov, a Russian media executive and businessman.

In August, Gusinky won a judgement against Kagalovsky and his companies for theft of TVi in an amount of over US$30 million. Kagalovsky appealed.

2014

In April, the New York Court of Appeals upheld the judgment against Kagalovsky for theft of TVi.