–MEDIA (2):

The city of Moscow has its own television station, TV Center. A backer of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, former Yeltsin spokesman Sergei Yastrzhembsky, took control there last week as chairman of the board of directors. Elected as a member of the board was Sergei Lisovsky, an advertising executive who controlled media buys on Berezovsky’s ORT channel. Lisovsky had been a bagman during the 1996 presidential campaign–he was found carrying $538,000 in cash out of government headquarters in June of that year. Lisovsky, like Berezovsky, was a target of police raids and tax investigations during Primakov’s government, and it may be that Luzhkov sees Lisovsky’s inside knowledge of the group around Yeltsin as protection against efforts by that group to expose Luzhkov’s own seamy side.

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