Alexander Lebedev, the Russian billionaire businessman who owns The Independent, London Evening Standard and a London weekly tabloid, i, indicated that he would rescue The News of the World, to make it a serious asset to the world of investigative journalism.

Earlier today he suggested to Bloomberg that he would actually buy the notorious tabloid, but later, speaking to The Russian News Service, he admitted to practising his sense of humour in the Bloomberg interview. 'Murdoch is not selling anything, therefore it is only possible to restitute something like this (NOTW - RIC)', he explained. With three British newspapers and the Russian opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, under his belt Lebedev seriously reviews further expenditure and extra responsibilities, and at present he is not prepared to spend extra.

He admitted that he would be very interested to reform The News of the World, or even to turn it into the World News. 'I would be very happy indeed', he said, 'if I could enter the sphere of investigative journalism'. To this end, Lebedev did write to Rupert Merdoch with an offer to establish a joint fund that would support the investigative journalism.

At the same time, Lebedev welcomes the possibility of creating a Russian version of NOTW. Together with the editorial board of Novaya Gazeta and Mikhail Gorbachev he has already written to the Mayor of Moscow, Yury Sobyanin, asking for a permission to distribute a daily news edition of Novaya Gazeta, to give them out on the Moscow Underground. 'We would not break the law or print anything unethical, but we would tell people about what they must know', he added.

Source: Bloomberg.com, The Russian News Service, Polit.ru.