MOSCOW, October 2 (RIA Novosti) - The wife of Moscow's mayor, the richest woman in Russia, is suing a former Russian deputy prime minister for defamation, her construction company said on Friday.
Yelena Baturina, the wife of Yury Luzhkov, is the president of the construction conglomerate Inteko. Her personal wealth was estimated by Forbes Magazine last year at $4.2 billion, but she is believed to have lost large sums in the financial crisis, which has severely hit the real estate market in Russia, and her current worth is estimated at some $900 million.
Baturina is suing former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov over the publication of a report that the company said made "a conscious attempt to show that Inteko's effective activity is possible only in Moscow," which Baturina said is "absurd."
The suit also seeks damages for defamation of honor and moral damage.
There is no information on the amount of damages Baturina is seeking.
Nemtsov's report, titled An Independent Expert Report - Luzhkov: Conclusions, criticizes Inteko for only being efficient in the Russian capital.
According to the company's press release, Nemtsov's report "contains explicit lies that distort Inteko's actual activities."
"The company has successfully accomplished and accomplishes large-scale investment construction projects in other regions of the country and abroad," the press release reads.
Inteko said it reconstructs existing and constructs new residential and industrial buildings, as well as prospecting for raw materials deposits throughout Russia and abroad.
It pointed to the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don as Russian regions where the company worked successfully and Kazakhstan, the Czech Republic and Austria as foreign markets.
Nemtsov, who served as deputy premier from 1997 to 1998, is a leading member of Russia's political opposition and in April lost a race for mayor in Russia's Black Sea resort city of Sochi, which is to host the Winter Olympics in 2014.
RIA Novost has been unable to contact Nemtsov.
Inteko was founded in the mid-1990s and deals in reconstruction material for facades of buildings, as well as producing cement, panel and monolith housing construction, and operates in the developer and realty industry.
