Lukoil Does Not Intend To Give Up Struggle For Tv-6

The vice president of the LUKOIL company, Leonid Fedun, has said the team of the general director of the TV-6 Channel, Yevgeny Kiselyov, has become a hostage of the game played with the TV channel by its actual owner Boris Berezovsky, who owns 75 percent of shares in it. Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, Fedun emphasised that by aggravating the atmosphere around TV-6, Berezovsky seeks to raise his own rating as a "member of the opposition and an advocate of the freedom of speech.' Fedun said it is not LUKOIL proper that is engaged in media projects but the LUKOIL-Garant non-state pension fund which only seeks to earn profits on investments, which include pensioners' money too. However, the vice president noted, in March 2001 LUKOIL-Garant, as a minority shareholder in TV-6 (15 percent of shares), was "thrown out of the game" by the new TV-6 management's decision to increase the charter capital by 2,000 times. If the Court of Arbitration's decision to liquidate TV-6 is implemented, LUKOIL will take part in the bidding for the vacant frequency and it hopes to win the bidding, the company's vice president said.