RUSSIA:Forbes magazine flip-flopped yesterday on whether or not to pulp its December Russian edition featuring a controversial cover story about Russia's only female billionaire, Elena Baturina.
After first announcing the magazine would be withdrawn from sale yesterday morning under legal pressure from Ms Baturina, the publisher changed its mind and opted to release it for general circulation, by late afternoon.
Better known in Moscow as the wife of the city's mayor, Yury Luzhkov, Ms Baturina has seen her fortunes ascend very quickly through her construction-based businesses. She's one of the wealthiest people in Russia, with a net worth of $1.1 billion (€826 million), and stands out as the only woman in the elite dollar billionaire club.
The story caught the attention of Russia's media yesterday after the magazine's editor, Maxim Kashulinsky, announced his resignation in protest at the initial decision. It became the lead story in the Kommersant newspaper, pushing a report on the health of former Russian prime minister, Yegor Gaidar, into a corner. The German publishing house, Axel Springer, publishes the Russian edition under licence from the famous American magazine.
Ms Baturina sent in her legal team earlier this week over the strap headline promoting the seven-page article about her empire. She complained that a quote across her picture on the cover had been edited out of context so that instead of stating "protection secured for me as an investor" it stated "protection secured for me".
The editor did agree to change the quote, arguing it was a small price to pay so that the main article could be printed, but for a few hours this did not seem enough to save the magazine from the shredders.
Moscow is one of the fastest-growing cities in Europe and the population has shot up by a third to at least 12 million people in the 15 years since the fall of communism.
This has made the position of mayor one of the most powerful in Russia and the construction industry a lucrative sector, with the tallest building in Europe currently under construction.
The article claimed Ms Baturina had carefully shuffled her property interests so they would become less vulnerable to changing political winds after her husband steps down in a year's time.
Forbes has a readership of more than 360,000 in Russia, mainly concentrated in the most affluent area, Moscow. It is believed that the publishers revoked their initial order to dump the entire print run after the editor contacted Forbes in the US. But in Moscow, the publishers claimed that after checking that the facts of the article stood up, they felt legally safe putting the magazine on sale.