Standart News

- According to some Russian media, in Moscow there was an alleged attempt on the life of reporter Andrei Kalitin. He suspects that the cause of the attack was his new project: a book on Michael Cherney. What is your comment to this?

MC: - Unfortunately, it is yet another helping from the bag of tricks that my ex-partner Oleg Deripaska has stooped to. After I filed a suit against him in England in November 2006, he told his multi-leveled security service to launch an international campaign to discredit me. I have reliable reports from the RusAl’s inner circle that he had earmarked $200 million to this purpose. Using intermediaries, he hired Diligence LLC, an investigation company based in Washington, DC, which found itself in the midst of a scandal when its employees tried to pass themselves for CIA and MI-5 officers. In Europe, by placing a lot of ads for his companies in media outlets, he in fact bribed some of the latter to run pieces about me in connection to the so-called Aluminum Wars of 1995-7. Actually, considering that I left Russia in 1993 and Deripaska ruled aluminum industry in those years, he was more likely to be involved in those events.

- Recently there were also some reports about the new campaign against you in Israel.

- Yes, in Israel, where I live, Deripaska's people made offers to all the media outlets to smear my name. While serious reporters rejected the offer, he did find certain "activists" who went on to stick posters with a tired cliche like "Russian mafia" in front of my house. Also, Diligence hired a local counterpart to follow me and my lawyers and then stage an attempted assassination, which was duly reported in the media - all with the purpose to tell me I was vulnerable.

- Your words suggest that you suspect Deripaska of the attempt on Kalitin's life?

- As for Kalitin, it is a question whether there has been an assassination attempt at all. He requested me for an interview, and I sent him and his publisher OLMA, which contracted the book, an official letter. I told them that I knew who had actually commissioned the book and that I was not about to be a party to smearing my own name, and that I would sue OLMA for defamation. After that, someone allegedly shot Kalitin. Independent Moscow media reported that he had simply injured his arm, refused medical aid, and went to police to report that only a day later. No one had ever found the cartridge or the bullet. The whole assassination story was just a publicity trick to draw attention to this cheap publication in OLMA (though someone had spent a lot of money on it).

- This Russian book allegedly investigates your involvement in the forged bank papers in Russia in the early 90s.

- The first wave of the so-called "compromat", or slanderous articles, against me goes back to 1994-96, when competition tried to wrest my aluminum companies away from me. Then for the next 10 years everything was quiet. Now, a few weeks after I filed a suit against Deripaska, another wave started. This indicates someone's urgent need to compromise Cherney - preferably by opening a criminal case against him in Russia. OLMA’s book project started a month after the London suit was filed. Then the Russian state TV aired a "hypothesis": Cherney is involved in the 2006 Moscow murder of Andrei Kozlov, Vice-President of Russia's Centrobank, over forged bank papers - a scandal 15 years old, which is all hot air. Any serious scholar of Russian business in the early 90s or any Russian law enforcement agency can tell you that I had nothing to do with forged bank papers, that I never violated Russian laws or double-crossed a partner. All the ensuing lawsuits with Zhivilo brothers, and Bykov stemmed from the problems created by Deripaska. At that time I was loath to believe he could behave towards his partners in this manner - now I see I was wrong.

- The Moscow reporter claims he found traces of your involvement in the private airplane crash in 2000, where 2 Russian businessmen died.

- The ridiculous Kozlov story went belly-up right away, when police arrested the real culprits. Then the media on Deripaska's payroll decided to link me to the 2000 airplane crash, whose victims were businessman and reporter Artem Borovik and his partner Zia Bazhaev. This is absolute nonsense. I have never harmed anyone. Furthermore, I was a friend of Borovik's and never had any conflicts with him. Furthermore, I don't have a security service like Deripaska does in order to order an operation against anyone. Thus the absurdity of this story is self-evident. Actually, every single one of these nonsensical rumors comes from the Moscow media that has been either bought or threatened by Deripaska. I tried to publish my response to Deripaska in Moscow, but the local editors are too frightened of him.

- What are the prospects of your suit against Deripaska? You lost the first round in court.

- The court has not even started considering the case on its merits. Deripaska merely won a delay on a technical loophole. Any unbiased court in the West would take my side. Yet from the very beginning I offered Deripaska to save his face and stay out of courts. I still offer him: let us come to arbitrage in any third country and resolve our differences as partners should. I want him to come to the table and explain his position, instead of using loopholes to dodge the hearings and wasting money on smear campaigns. He is not smearing me; he is smearing himself and his RusAl partners who silently participate in the theft of my stock. Besides, if I am indeed such a terrible Mafioso who stole bank papers and used the proceeds to build up RusAl - then Deripaska and his BasEl are in fact laundering money. That means that UC RusAl, which is about to have an IPO amid much brouhaha, is nothing but a laundering operation. All these lies merely serve to cast aspersions on the reputation of Russian business and Russia itsel