In July 2005, the Russian tax authorities ordered Kommersant to pay the additional sum for 2004, saying that the paper had understated its 2004 profit by excluding payments made to Alfa Bank in a libel suit.
In October 2004, a Russian court satisfied a claim against the leading business newspaper for defaming Alfa Bank, the country's biggest private bank. The bank sued Kommersant over an article about savers queuing to withdraw cash during a run on some banks in the summer of 2004.
The court ordered Kommersant to pay 320 million rubles ($11.4 million) in damages, some 300 million rubles ($10.7 million) of which was to be paid as compensation for damage caused to the bank's reputation.
But in December last year, the Federal Arbitration Court of Moscow reduced the sum to 40.5 million rubles ($1.5 million).
Kommersant is owned by self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a one-time Kremlin insider during former President Boris Yeltsin's administration.
