Sergei Sokolov, a veteran editor of the Moscow daily newspaper Novaya Gazeta, has fled the country following a highly public dispute with the Head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, who is alleged to have personally confronted Mr. Sokolov with a death threat in response to critical newspaper articles.

According to an open letter to Bastrykin published by Dmitry Muratov, the editor in chief of Novaya Gazeta, “Sokolov was placed in a car by your guards and driven without explanation to some woods outside Moscow. There you asked your guards to leave and stayed by yourself with Sokolov (…) There in the heat of the moment you rudely threatened the life of my deputy, and even joked that you would be put in charge of investigating the matter.”

Representatives of the Investigative Committee, one of the most powerful law enforcement institutions in the country, have declined to comment on the allegations.

Over the past 10 years, four Novaya Gazeta employees have been murdered or died under suspicious circumstances, including the well known case of Anna Politkovskaya. The newspaper is owned by Russian oligarch Alexander Lebedev.

Read the full article in The Financial Times.