MOSCOW: The billionaire and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev is due to buy London's Evening Standard in a move that will make him the first Russian oligarch to own a major British newspaper.
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Mr Lebedev was poised yesterday to buy a controlling stake in the ailing title, following a year of secret negotiations with Lord Rothermere, its owner and the chairman of the Daily Mail and General Trust.
Mr Lebedev will purchase 76 per cent of the newspaper, with the Associated Newspapers group retaining 24 per cent. His son Evgeny, who lives in London, was due to sign the deal with Daily Mail and General Trust last night.
The purchase will be the first time a former member of a foreign intelligence service has owned a British title.
Mr Lebedev said he had read the Evening Standard and other British newspapers when he was a young spy at the Soviet embassy in London in the late 1980s.
"I had to read every newspaper. I was there for that," he said. "I had to read the FT , the Guardian , Standard and the Daily Mail ." The Standard was "a very good newspaper" with some "brilliant journalists", Mr Lebedev said.
The Evening Standard's sale to a former Russian spy is likely to have been discussed at the highest levels of government. It follows two years of fraught relations between London and Moscow over the November 2006 murder in London of the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko.
Mr Lebedev said he had no intention of interfering in British politics if he became the Evening Standard's new owner. "My influence would be next to zero."
