Izvestia Retaliates in Dispute Over Libel

The official Soviet government newspaper, Izvestia, decided Tuesday to fight fire with fire in its ongoing battle with a Northern California businessman who won a $413,000 libel judgment in Los Angeles after the paper branded him as a spy for U.S. intelligence agencies.

Several wire services reported from Moscow that the newspaper’s editorial board filed suit in the Soviet capital against businessman Raphael Gregorian of Palo Alto, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in the Soviet Union. The suit was confirmed by Gregorian’s attorney.

No details about the legal action were immediately disclosed. But Izvestia’s editors were quoted as saying that the newspaper’s views will be aired in open court in Moscow early next year by Soviet attorney Genrikh Padva.

Escalating Battle

The Soviet action was the latest round in an escalating battle in which Gerald Kroll, Gregorian’s Los Angeles lawyer, accompanied two U.S. marshals and confiscated a Russian-language typewriter from Izvestia’s Washington correspondent recently to help satisfy the libel judgment.

The battle began in July when U.S. District Judge David V. Kenyon, acting on a $320-million libel suit filed by Gregorian in Los Angeles federal court, awarded the businessman a default judgment of $413,000.

Soviet officials never appeared in court to argue their side. They continued to ignore the case even though Kroll, who said Gregorian’s medical supply import business in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was ruined by the accusations in 1984, had approached Soviet consular officials in San Francisco.

Typewriter Seized

But that changed when the typewriter of Izvestia correspondent Leonid Koryaviner was seized last month.

Lawyers representing Izvestia went to Kenyon to try to overturn the judgment and a hearing on the status of Russian assets deposited with the Bank of America--eyed by Gregorian--is set for next month. They also sued in New York federal court to stop Gregorian.

Tuesday’s lawsuit was “blatant retaliation,” Kroll said. “Instead of coming to courts to utilize our system of justice, the Soviets have chosen to retaliate, which we see as bad faith.”

Gregorian has assets, mostly medical equipment, remaining in the Soviet Union if the officials there choose to confiscate them.

“But he didn’t leave a typewriter there,” Kroll said.