Former editor responds to accusations of causing financial losses at RBC

Former RBC chief editor Elizaveta Osetinskaya has responded to claims the independent news company produced poor financial results under her leadership. The former chief editor says the job of a top editor is not business, it is running an editorial board.

Communications Ministry head Alexei Volin said Elizaveta Osetinskaya was dismissed because of “1.5 billion ruble financial hole” she created at RBC. In a response to these words, Elizaveta Osetinskaya wrote in post on Facebook, “Of course there was no talk about 1.5 billion or sums even close to that; this is a separate matter.”

“Chief editors do not deal with business affairs, they run an editorial board (the case may be different if these two positions are merged). The editorial board is always part of a company's expenditure, and the chief editor works within the budget, which is provided by the company. One of the [key performance indicators] for a chief editor at a normal company is keeping within the boundaries and also getting the most possible out of a budget.”

On Friday, May 13, RBC dismissed its three top editors, Maxim Soluys, Roman Badanin, and Elizaveta Osetinskaya. Nikolai Molibog, RBC's general director, said the dismissals resulted from “disagreements on several key issues.”

In an interview with The Financial Times, Elizaveta Osetinskaya said the reason for her dismissal was because of RBC's coverage of the Panama Papers, which connected a close friend of Vladimir Putin's to offshore companies carrying out multi million dollar transactions.

Osetinskaya has denied RBC's management was fired because of poor financial performance more than once already. Anastasia Golitsyn, a journalist at Vedomosti, a business newspaper, posted information on her Facebook wall indicating that RBC had, in fact, increased its profits under Osetinskaya's tenure.