At least 20 armed Russian police officers raided a Moscow bank controlled by the billionaire owner of Britain's Independent and Evening Standard newspapers on Tuesday, his aide said. Tycoon and former KGB spy Alexander Lebedev was in the Moscow offices of his National Reserve Bank when police investigators arrived with an armed guard to seize documents, Lebedev aide Artyom Artyomov said.
Lebedev has ruffled feathers in the Kremlin in recent years by funding an opposition newspaper and standing against government candidates in elections, but his spokesman said he did not believe politics was behind the raid. "This is known as a mask show in Russia: there are 20 or 30 people in masks and carrying automatic weapons," he told Reuters by telephone.
A Reuters photographer said two masked men holding semi-automatic weapons could be seen standing by the building. High-profile raids by heavily armed law enforcement agents in masks - known as mask shows - sometimes signal the onset of an attack on the business empires of Russian businessmen who have fallen out of favour with the Kremlin.