ATHENS, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Former Russian media baron Vladimir Gusinsky, arrested at Athens airport last week on an international warrant, remains in custody and will appear before a prosecutor on Monday, Greek police said on Sunday.
Gusinsky, 51, was one of a small group of Russian businessmen -- known as the "oligarchs" -- who made vast fortunes overnight in the privatisations of the 1990s, but he lost his business in 2000 after falling foul of the Kremlin.
His arrest came in the midst of a row between the Kremlin and another "oligarch," Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which has fuelled talk that President Vladimir Putin is reining in the super-rich elite ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections.
Gusinsky arrived on a flight from Tel Aviv last Thursday, carrying Russian and Israeli passports.
Police said he was subject to an Interpol warrant from Russia on suspicion of a $250 million fraud.
"He will not be set free. He will appear before an appeals court prosecutor, in charge of international warrants, on Monday," Greek police sources told Reuters.
They said Greek authorities had been in touch with Russian police and were told the warrant was still effective.
Gusinsky's lawyer says he was detained illegally as the Russian Interpol warrant was not valid, police sources said.
Russia is also trying to extradite another former media baron, Boris Berezovsky, who fell out with Putin and moved to Britain after graft charges were brought against him.
And last month, police arrested a key shareholder of the oil giant YUKOS (YUKO.RTS) in a move widely seen as an attack on the company's boss, Khodorkovsky, who is Russia's richest man.
EXTRADITION POSSIBLE
Gusinsky owned Russia's biggest independent television station NTV, which won international acclaim for its coverage of Moscow's war in separatist Chechnya, before the state wrested control from him using the company's massive debt as leverage.
Gusinsky fled Russia after prosecutors opened a fraud case against him. He was arrested in Spain in 2000 but a Spanish court threw out all charges against him which Russia submitted to back up an extradition request.
"Gusinsky refuses to talk and claims he is legal," police sources told Reuters.
Asked about the chances of an extradition, police sources said the prosecutor could refer the matter to a council of appeals court judges for a ruling. If so, Gusinsky could be extradited within 40 days.
"It all depends on what the prosecutor decides tomorrow," police sources said.
Gusinsky had championed liberal, pro-Western ideas through his Media-Most holding company.
His media strongly backed Boris Yeltsin as president, notably in the 1996 election, but thereafter became increasingly critical of the Kremlin, especially over Chechnya.
Gusinsky has said that Russian authorities were using the threat of prison to force him to turn over control of NTV to the state-dominated natural gas monopoly Gazprom, which had guaranteed nearly $500 million of Gusinsky's debt.
The settlement finally reached with Gazprom in 2000 stripped Gusinsky of his controlling stake in NTV, by far the most influential source of information outside the Kremlin's control.
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Page in Moscow)
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