The modern tabloid newspaper’s current racy mix of celebrity news and scandal may reflect Russia’s radical transformation of recent years, but its role as a voice for the State may be due for a revival.

Gazprom, the state-owned energy giant, has announced that its media arm is negotiating to buy a controlling stake in the country’s biggest-selling daily, which is read by ten million Russians.

A Gazprom spokeswoman insisted, however, that it was acting only on behalf of another investor, Media- Partner. This is owned by ECN Group, an energy company led by Grigory Berezkin, who has close links to Gazprom.

Komsomolskaya Pravda is controlled by Prof-Media, a company belonging to Vladimir Potanin, Russia’s eighth-richest man, with an estimated fortune of $6.4 billion (£3.24 billion). Media-Partner is expected to gain 60 per cent plus one share of the newspaper.

Gazprom declined to say how much the stake would cost, but other Russian newspapers have estimated that their rival could be worth as much as $300 million. A-Pressen, a Norwegian company, owns 25 per cent of Komsomolskaya Pravda.

Gazprom owns Izvestia, the newspaper that it bought from Prof-Media in 2005, as well as the popular NTV television channel and the Ekho Moskvy news radio station. It has been linked repeatedly with efforts to buy Kommersant, another key independent daily paper.

Kommersant described the sale of its tabloid rival as a Kremlin initiative aimed at “creating an additional centre of media consolidation under the control” of the State ahead of the presidential election in March 2008.

Nikolai Senkevich, Gaz-prom-Media’s director, insisted that it had been hired only to advise the purchaser. He said: “We were not planning the final acquisition of Komsomolskaya Pravda because a large-circulation newspaper does not fit the Gazprom-Media structure.

“According to an agreement with the customer, we carried out the financial and legal examination of the media organisation and rated it.”

Mr Berezkin said that the newspaper was the most profitable in Russia and his group planned further investments to improve the paper’s success across the country.

President Putin has tightened the State’s grip on the media in Russia. The leading television stations are under Kremlin control and most of the leading newspapers are owned by groups sympathetic to his regime.

Paper chase

Izvestia

Founded 1917
Circulation: 104,377 (2005)

Moskovsky Komsomolets

Founded 1919
Circulation: 800,000

Kommersant

Founded 1989
Circulation: 74,339 (2006)

Rossiiskaya Gazeta

Founded 1990
Circulation: over 400,000

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