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Gazprom Media board of directors appoints new head of company

Former head of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games organizing committee, Dmitry Chernyshenko, will take up his new position on January 13, 2015 for the period of three years
Dmitry Chernyshenko Mikhail Metsel/TASS
Dmitry Chernyshenko
© Mikhail Metsel/TASS

MOSCOW, December 25. /TASS/. Board of directors of the OAO Gazprom Media Holding Company on Thursday appointed Dmitry Chernyshenko for the position of the Chief Executive Officer.

His duties begin on January 13, 2015, and will continue for the next three years.

The previous CEO, Mikhail Lesin, has resigned “due to family commitments”, Gazprom Media said in a report on Thursday morning.

Mikhail Lesin declined to make any comments on the situation and a TASS reporter failed to contact Dmitry Chernyshenko.

Sources in the government staff told Kommersant daily earlier officials in the government and the Presidential Administration discussed a possibility of Chernyshenko’s appointment back in the summer.

On December 19, Lesin filed a request with the board of directors asking to relieve him of duties owing to family commitments. His powers will be terminated on January 12, 2015.

Dmitry Chernyshenko has gained acclaim as the head of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games organizing committee. His later job placement was supervised by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak but the appointment to Gazprom Media failed to take place during the summer and Chernyshenko an executive position at Volga Group led by businessman Gennady Timchenko in October.

Gazprom Media

Gazprom Media Holding Company is the largest media company in Russia that consolidates and develops the assets in various fields.

It incorporates television channels (NTV, TNT, NTV Plus satellite channel, TV3, 2x2, Pyatnitsa), radio stations including the top popular Moscow Echo, CITY-FM, Avtoradio and Yumor-FM, printed media (Sem Dnei publishing house and a number of popular magazines), the filming company NTV-KINO, promotion sales houses Gazprom-Media and GPM-Digital, a film distribution service (Oktyabr and Kristall Palace movie houses), video portals Rutube and Now.ru, and the Central Partnership production and distribution company.