Russian media tycoons expanding

Kremlin family gains access to scoops with Putin loyalty

MOSCOW — The skinny man in a baggy, wrinkled shirt carting groceries back to his car could have been any Silicon Valley programmer, were it not for the Russian license plate on the car.

The grainy photograph is the first to show National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden in his new life in Russia after leaving the Moscow airport.

The force behind the scoop? A father-and-son team who like to see themselves as Russia’s Murdochs.

With a well-oiled system of paying for scoops, the Gabrelyanovs have been able to crawl into every crevice of Russian life from show business to the security services. Their website Lifenews, which published the photo confirmed authentic by Snowden’s lawyer, is part of an expanding empire that has come to dominate Russia’s media landscape in the decades since the elder Gabrelyanov started off as a provincial tab- Russified superheroes that includes an Orthodox priest.

The Gabrelyanovs pay their staff extravagantly — in some cases, $10,000 a month — with the understanding that a large chunk of that should be spent on payments to “agents,” or the people in law enforcement and hospitals who can feed scoops. Gabrelyanov said he paid between $10,000 and $30,000 for the shots of Snowden leaving the airport, and Life journalists have won some of their biggest breaks by bribing their way into hospitals to film Russian mega-stars on their deathbeds.

Aram Gabrelyanov defends the “agent” system as the key to his empire’s success: “We categorically won’t retreat from this system, it’s our business.”

One former Life editorin-chief even boasted about the tactics.

“Before us nobody had ever done anything as systematic, and paid them for it. We spanned the entire city,” said Timur Marder, who started as an intern in Ulyanovsk in 1995 and worked his way up the publication ladder to lead Life in 2005 before quitting in 2009 over a personal dispute.