Alexander Lebedev, the Russian oligarch and former KGB agent, is close to taking control of a British newspaper by buying 75 per cent of the London Evening Standard.

A bid has been lodged with Viscount Rothermere, the newspaper’s owner, and his company Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT). An announcement could come as early as today.

“This is not my way to make money, but I’d like to explain to the public that newspapers are something they should love and cherish,” Mr Lebedev said yesterday, promising that he would not interfere in editorial matters but would only “be in charge of the financial side” of the title.

If the sale goes through it would mark a seismic shift in the newspaper business, and would test whether ministers are willing to see an historic title fall into the hands of a Russian who once spied against Britain.

Mr Lebedev was rebuffed last month by Viscount Rothermere, the controlling shareholder of DMGT, but he has come under pressure to sell a newspaper that has been struggling financially. It is expected to lose about £10 million this year.

The Evening Standard dates back to 1827, and is the sole surviving paid-for evening newspaper in a city that once had 14.

It has suffered in recent years and was hit hard by the emergence of giveaway evening papers in 2006, when News International, parent company of The Times, introduced thelondonpaper.

That prompted DMGT to start the competing London Lite.

Viscount Rothermere, who has owned the title outright since 1987, is understood to have been given in-principle permission by the DMGT board to reach agreement to sell. But sources close to the negotiations describe the situation as “complicated”.

Mr Lebedev, 49, worked for the KGB in London in the 1980s. He was at the Russian Embassy until 1992, under the cover of economics attaché.

After the break-up of the Soviet Union, Mr Lebedev became a banker and financier, owning the National Reserve Bank and a 30 per cent stake in Aeroflot.

He has a fortune estimated by Forbes at £2 billion, and friends said this week that he is keen to buy into “European media”.

He is described as “urbane and cultured”, is perhaps as near as Russia can get to an independent, free-speaking oligarch and is close to the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Mr Lebedev and Mr Gorbachev own the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose reporter Anna Politkovskaya was killed in 2006.

Mr Lebedev has cautiously criticised the Putin-Medvedev regime through his newspapers. Another of his papers, the Moscow Korrespondent, was suspended last year after it suggested that the married Mr Putin had been having an affair with a gymnast.

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