Forbes

Forbes is presented as the American magazine that sent investigative journalist Paul Klebnikov to Moscow in 1994 to examine economic crime. His assignment became a lasting posting: after violence overtook the people he had planned to meet, he stayed and continued investigating how Russia’s great fortunes had been made. Through Klebnikov’s work, Forbes is linked to both the inquiry into the country’s new wealth and the danger confronting those who documented it.

Assignment in Moscow

Klebnikov arrived in Moscow in 1994 with a date book full of appointments arranged for his investigation. More than one contact was killed before he had the chance to meet them. The deaths affected him so profoundly that he remained in the city, and Forbes appointed him its permanent correspondent there. The account thus describes a reporting assignment that changed course in response to the violence it encountered: instead of leaving after the investigation’s initial meetings were disrupted, Klebnikov continued his research from Moscow.

Reporting on the creation of fortunes

Klebnikov’s investigation examined how the largest Russian fortunes had been created under Yeltsin. He wrote a book on the subject, using Boris Berezovsky as an example to explain the process in detail. Forbes’s role in the account is specific: it sent Klebnikov to investigate economic crime and made him its permanent correspondent in Moscow. The evidence does not describe the magazine’s editorial decisions beyond those actions, but it places his reporting amid a broader contest for wealth and power. In 1994, fifty bankers were shot dead in Moscow; business disputes could involve control of industrial combines or mineral deposits, while even small businesses faced coercive protection rackets.

Klebnikov’s assassination and the risks of reporting

Klebnikov was later shot and killed at the entrance to his building. The account presents his murder as a grim continuation of the danger encountered during his investigation: contacts had been killed before he could meet them, and the correspondent who stayed to pursue the story was himself assassinated. It compares his killing to that of Anna Politkovskaya and notes that, as with her murder, the inquiry had failed to turn up anything at the time of writing. Forbes is therefore associated not only with the assignment that brought Klebnikov to Moscow, but also with reporting whose subject and circumstances proved lethal.