(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has voiced concern over a 27 December 2004 appeals court ruling that an arbitration tribunal was right to have convicted the independent daily “Kommersant”, on 20 October, of “harming the reputation” of the country’s second largest bank, Alpha Bank. The appeals court reduced the damages award from 320.5 million rubles (approx. US$11.6 […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has voiced concern over a 27 December 2004 appeals court ruling that an arbitration tribunal was right to have convicted the independent daily “Kommersant”, on 20 October, of “harming the reputation” of the country’s second largest bank, Alpha Bank. The appeals court reduced the damages award from 320.5 million rubles (approx. US$11.6 million; 8.5 million euros) to 10 million rubles (approx. US$361,000; 271,000 euros).
“The amount of the damages the daily has been ordered to pay is still exorbitant,” the organisation said. “This conviction could foster a climate of intimidation for the Russian media and thereby set a dangerous precedent for press freedom.”
The arbitration tribunal’s verdict, in response to a series of “Kommersant” articles beginning 7 July during a liquidity crisis in the Russian banking sector, was unprecedented in the history of the Russian news media.
“Alpha Bank accuses us of lying, but does not produce any evidence of this, so there has been a moral wrong to ‘Kommersant’,” the newspaper’s business editor said. “We have taken out a loan to pay this exorbitant fine, but we will fight to the end in the legal battle: Court of Cassation, Supreme Court and, if necessary, the European Court of Human Rights. In the latter instance, we are sure of winning and Alpha Bank would not go that far.”
The banking crisis began on 6 July when Gouta Bank closed its teller windows because of a “lack of liquidity”, causing a panic among its clients. The next day “Kommersant” ran a story headlined, “Banking Crisis Reaches the Street”, in which it said Alpha Bank’s clients were also mobbing its teller windows out of fear of a banking crisis like the one that hit Russia in 1998. Alpha Bank said that, because of the report, it had to impose a temporary 10 percent levy on withdrawals in order to cope with the resulting panic.
