Yuri Shchekochikhin - Investigative Journalism and Political Career

Investigative Journalism and Political Career

Shchekochikhin graduated from the Journalism Department of Moscow State University in 1975. He worked as an investigative journalist at Komsomolskaya Pravda (1972–1980) and Literaturnaya Gazeta (1980–1996), and then as a deputy editor of the liberal newspaper Novaya Gazeta (from 1996). Beginning in the 1990s, he published many articles critical of the First and Second Chechen Wars, human rights abuses in the Russian army, state corruption, and other social issues.

In Summer 1988 Shchekochikhin has published interview with a lieutenant colonel of militia Aleksander Gurov, in which existence of organized crime in Soviet Union was first publicly stated. That brought fame to both Gurov (who became the head of 6-th Agency of MVD of USSR which struggled against organized crime) and Shchekochikhin.

Yuri Shchekochikhin began his political career in 1990, when he was elected as a representative to the Congress of People's Deputies. He was elected to the Russian State Duma from the liberal Yabloko party in 1995. He was a member of a Duma committee on the problems of corruption, and was a UN expert on the problems of organized crime. He was a vocal opponent of the First and Second Chechen Wars.

Since early 1995 he was an author and host of an investigative journalism program called "Special Team" on ORT, Russian television's first channel (that time owned by Boris Berezovsky). In October 1995 heads of the channel closed the program. According to Shchekochikhin, the reason was an episode called "For Motherland! For mafia!", which was devoted to the Chechen War unleashed in his opinion by "leading banks of Russia".

In 2000 he accused Russia's Deputy PM Ilya Klebanov of covering up the fact that Russia did not have the resources to attempt a rescue of the Kursk submarine crew.

From 2002, Shchekochikhin was a member of the Sergei Kovalev Commission, which investigated allegations that the 1999 Moscow apartment bombings had been orchestrated by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) to generate support for the war .

One of Shchekochikhin's last articles before his death was "Are we Russia or KGB of Soviet Union?" It described such issues as the refusal of the FSB to explain to the Russian Parliament what poison gas was applied during the Moscow theater hostage crisis, and work of secret services from Turkmenistan, which operated with impunity in Moscow against Russian citizens of Turkoman origin.

He also tried to investigate the Three Whales Corruption Scandal and criminal activities of FSB officers related to money laundering through the Bank of New York and illegal actions of Yevgeny Adamov, a former Russian Minister of Nuclear Energy . The case of Three Whales was under the personal control of President Vladimir Putin . In June 2003, Shchekochikhin contacted the FBI and got an American visa to discuss the case with US authorities . However, he never made it to the USA because of his sudden death. Some Russian media claimed that Putin has issued an order to discharge 19 high-ranking FSB officers involved in this case in September 2006 as part of a Kremlin power struggle, but all these officers still continue to work in their FSB positions .