Yahoo Finance Oligarch Alexander Lebedev cuts ties with Independent after sanctions hit
Alexander Lebedev has cut ties with the Independent after the former KGB agent was sanctioned in Canada.
The billionaire was hit with an asset freeze and visa ban last Friday over his links to the Kremlin, while Vladimir Putin continues to wage war on Ukraine.
Mr Lebedev, who bought the Independent and Evening Standard newspapers in 2010 before shifting ownership to Lord Evgeny Lebedev, his son, resigned from his position as a director of Independent Print Limited on Sunday, according to company filings.
The Telegraph called attention to Alexander Lebedev's links to Independent Print Ltd on Saturday.
The company previously provided digital publishing services to the Independent and Evening Standard, according to statements filed in September 2020 with Companies House.
His resignation will intensify pressure on Boris Johnson to release more information around why he handed a peerage to Lord Lebedev, a friend of the prime minister who has been the subject of claims that the security services had raised concerns about him with Downing Street.
Lord Lebedev, who has dual Russian and British nationality, has denied posing a security risk to the nation and pointed to his philanthropic work as the reason for his appointment to the House of Lords.
The peer published an open letter to Putin in the Evening Standard at the start of the Ukraine war, calling on him to bring a stop to the conflict.
Lord Lebedev said earlier this year: "I have nothing to hide. I have no links to the Kremlin. Never even been inside apart from the museum."
His father, Alexander, served at the Soviet Embassy in London in the 1980s and has built a fortune in Russia in banking and airline companies.
He was also the co-owner of Novaya Gazeta, Russia’s sole independent newspaper which had to shut down last month due to a wartime censorship law.
It is understood that Independent Print has continued to operate as a company to handle the winding down of the Independent and Independent on Sunday newspapers, which ceased publication in March 2016.
A spokesman for the Independent said: "Alexander Lebedev has no role, commercial or otherwise, in the running of either the Independent or the Evening Standard.”
