Moscow city court satisfied the claim by RF Prosecutor-General against NTV

The Moscow City Court has satisfied the claim filed by Russian Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov against NTV TV company and Itogi anchorman Yevgeny Kiselyov, thereby altering the decision made by the Tverskoi Inter-municipal Court on October 31, 2000. Simultaneously, the court dismissed the defendants' writ of appeal against the Tverskoi court's decision, which they claimed was incompetent. On October 31, the Tverskoi court bound the defendants to disprove reports aired by Itogi on July 9 and September 17, 2000, which doubted the lawfulness of Ustinov's acquisition of a flat in Moscow. In accordance with the court's decision, the defendants were to disprove their reports about Pavel Borodin, the former administrative manager of the Russian president, who was said to have "played an essential part in the subsequent appointment of Vladimir Ustinov to the post of Prosecutor-General." The same went for a piece of information that said quite a few of the employees at the Prosecutor-General's Office were "in debt to Borodin." The next report which was to be disproved concerned Ustinov's alleged evasion of property taxes, RIA Novosti reports. The same report said the president's administrative office in the person of Pavel Borodin had "no right to hand out flats." Ustinov, on his part, claimed to have been exempted from taxes in accordance with the Law of Natural Persons Income Tax and to have been furnished with a flat just like any specialist who got a post outside his native town. The writ of appeal cited Tverskoi Court Judge Lyudmila Bykova as saying that the aforementioned information was unlawful and that Ustinov's acquisition of the flat had been lawful. The hearing left Yevgeny Kiselyov resolved to appeal against the Moscow Court's decision to every possible instance, up to the European Human Rights Court.