Paul Klebnikov - Reporting On Russia

Reporting On Russia

Klebnikov joined the US magazine Forbes in 1989 and gained a reputation for investigating murky post-Soviet business dealings and corruption. In 1996, he wrote a cover story for Forbes titled "Godfather of the Kremlin?", comparing Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky to the Sicilian mafia. The article was published without a byline, but was widely known to be Klebnikov's work. Klebnikov soon received death threats, and took a break from reporting in Russia to live with his family in Paris.

Berezovsky subsequently sued Forbes for libel in a British court. Because the story had been published in an American magazine about a Russian citizen, the choice of venue was described by several authorities as libel tourism. Berezovsky won a partial retraction of the story in 2003.

Meanwhile, Klebnikov expanded the article into the 2000 book Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. Believed to be based heavily on interviews with Aleksandr Korzhakov, the head of security for President Boris Yeltsin, the book described the privatization process Yeltsin as "the robbery of the century" and detailed the alleged corruption of various Russian businesspeople, particularly focusing on Berezovsky. The book met with mixed reviews in journalistic circles. A New York Times reviewer praised it as "richly detailed" and "effectively angry", while Russian journalists criticized the book's reliance on ex-KGB officials for its information; one Russian critic described it as "a collection of gossip".

Klebnikov released a second book, Conversation with a Barbarian: Interviews with a Chechen Field Commander on Banditry and Islam, in 2003. The book is a transcript of a lengthy interview with Chechen rebel leader Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev, conducted in Baku, Azerbaijan. In the course of the interview, Noukhayev gives his views on Islam and Chechen society.

In the same year, Klebnikov was chosen to be the first editor of Forbes' Russian edition. Because his wife and children did not wish to move to Russia, Klebnikov agreed with them that he would take the post for only one year. The magazine only put out four issues before his death, including an article covering Russia's 100 wealthiest individuals, which some commentators speculate may have been the reason for his death.