Thursday, Mar. 19, 2009

Alexander Lebedev

AGE: 49
OCCUPATION: Billionaire
PREVIOUS APPEARANCES ON THE TIME 100: 0

PRO: The Russian oligarch co-owns, with Mikhail Gorbachev, Novaya Gazeta, one of the few papers that still dares to skewer the Kremlin. And earlier this year, he purchased London's struggling Evening Standard, giving him a foothold in the British media world.

CON: When one of his papers published an erroneous report that Putin was having an affair with a famed gymnast, an embarrassed Lebedev was forced to shut it down.