Evening Standard owner Alexander Lebedev 'would be murdered in jail' He urged the Russian authorities to protect his father. "I really hope the government in Russia would pay attention to this because if something happens to him of course they would be the ones to blame even if they don't have anything to do with it," he said. The Lebedevs own Britain's The Independent and Evening Standard dailies and part-own Russia's most critical opposition newspaper, Novaya Gazeta. Alexander Lebedev, a 52-year-old former KGB agent, punched Sergei Polonsky, an outspoken real estate tycoon, during an argument on a Russian talk show on September 16, 2011. He faces charges of hooliganism, which carries a maximum five-year jail term, and assault, which carries two years. Evgeny Lebedev The full charge of hooliganism and assault motivated by political, ideological, racial, national or religious hatred, or hatred of a particular social group, earned three members of punk rock group Pussy Riot two years in jail earlier this year. A month before the charges were announced, Alexander Lebedev said he intended to wind down his Moscow holdings because of unrelenting pressure from the Kremlin-run security services after repeated raids on his main bank. Ahead of the publication of the Leveson Report into press standards this week, Mr Lebedev, who has overseen the Evening Standard's return to profitability, said his experience of the Russian regime made him hostile to "any form of government regulation." If we are to stay with some sort of self-regulation it has to be extremely different from what it was before. He said the "biggest scandal" was not phone hacking but the failure of the police to properly investigate it.