The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page A3

The Sun Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2004: Page 3a THE NATION Explicit Fla. radio show draws a record FCC fine San Francisco broadcast also called indecent as TV station is fined $27,500 sistent standards that are in tune with local community values," said Mark Mays, president of the company. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was the only member of the five-member commission to oppose the fine. He said the penalty was not severe enough and suggested the FCC consider revoking the stations' licenses.

"The message to licensees is clear. Even egregious repeated violations will not result in revocation of license," Copps said. The FCC also announced a $27,500 fine against Young Broadcasting of San Francisco Inc. for indecent material aired on its KRON 4 Morning News. During the program on Oct.

4, 2002, one of the performers from a show titled Puppetry of the Penis briefly exposed himself. The FCC said the station should have expected such a display and taken steps to prevent it. "I hope this step today represents the beginning of a commitment to consider each indecency complaint seriously, and to recognize that indecency on our airwaves is not limited to the radio," FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin said. The largest cumulative fine ever for indecency was $1.7 million paid by Infinity Broadcasting in 1995 for various violations by radio host Howard Stern. AL SEIB ASSOCIATED PRESS Los Angeles cave-in Department of Water and Power workers examine a sinkhole that was created in downtown Los Angeles when a water main ruptured under a street yesterday.

Twenty businesses lost water service, and the street was closed for repairs. Immigration panel backs off effort to deport Russian banker Appeals board raises questions about fairness of Russian justice system ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON The government proposed a $755,000 fine against Clear Channel Communications yesterday for a sexually explicit radio show on Florida stations, the highest levy ever imposed at one time for indecency violations. The Federal Communications Commission also proposed only the second fine in its history for a TV broadcast $27,500 against the owner of a San Francisco station that aired a segment in which a man exposed himself. The FCC, whose chairman recently urged that penalties be substantially increased for indecent programming, proposed the radio fines against Clear Channel for objectionable segments of a show titled Bubba the Love Sponge. The segments included graphic discussions about sex and drugs that were "designed to pander to, titillate and shock listeners," the FCC said.

The segments ran 26 times and the commission proposed fining Clear Channel the maximum $27,500 for each airing, or $715,000. Clear Channel, the nation's largest radio chain, also was fined $40,000 because of recordkeeping violations at the stations. The company has 30 days to pay the fine or appeal. In response, Clear Channel called for an industry task force to develop clear indecency standards for radio, television, cable and satellite networks. "We believe the time has come for every sector of the media to join together and develop con By Scott Shane SUN STAFF In 1994, a Russian prosecutor accused Konanykhin of stealing $8 million from his old bank, charges he said were trumped up by former colleagues.

In 1996, Konanykhin was arrested by U.S. immigration officers on grounds that he had committed immigration fraud. The charge was thrown out. Documents indicate the fraud charge was devised by U.S. officials to satisfy their Russian counterparts, who had sent several alleged mobsters to face criminal charges in the United States and were demanding Konanykhin in return.

After a legal battle, Konanykhin won asylum in 1999 and built a Web advertising business based in New York City. But after the November decision ordering his deportation, Department of Homeland Security officials took unusual steps to try to send him to Russia. Last month, U.S. immigration agents swooped down on Konanykhin and his wife as they tried to cross from Buffalo, N.Y., into Canada for an appointment to apply for political asylum. The next day, Homeland Security officials ordered the couple put on a plane to Moscow as Ellis was hearing an emergency appeal from Konanykhin's lawyers.

At the last minute, he halted the deportation. In a later hearing, Ellis wondered aloud why Homeland Security officials wouldn't permit Konanykhin to go to Canada instead of Russia, where he says he would be killed. "Why is there such an intense interest in the U.S. government to send this man to Russia?" Ellis asked department attorneys. He called the government's rush to deport Konanykhin "redolent," adding, "You know what redolent means? It stinks." In yesterday's surprise ruling, the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals said recent developments raise enough questions about the fairness of the Russian justice system to return the case to the immigration judge who granted Konanykhin political asylum in 1999.

The same board overturned the asylum grant in November, finding "no evidence to suggest that the Russian government employs corruption in its criminal justice system as a tool of political persecution." That baffled experts on Russia, particularly because it followed the arrest of Russian billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was charged with fraud and tax evasion. The arrest sparked an international outcry and was criticized by the U.S. government as a move by Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to punish the billionaire for financ ing the political opposition. In its new decision, the immigration appeals board appeared to take into account the concerns raised by the Khodorkovsky case.

It also agreed that Konanykhin's lawyers could argue that the businessman would face torture in Russian prisons. The new decision does not rule out deportation for Konanykhin and his wife, Elena Gratcheva, but makes that prospect unlikely, said Konanykhin lawyer J.P Szymkowicz. Konanykhin, 37, made a fortune building a bank and other businesses as Russia emerged from communist rule in the early 1990s. After fleeing ex-KGB agents who, he said, had muscled him out of the bank, he resettled in Washington and worked for a time for Khodorkovsky, trying to drum up international business for Khodor-kovsky's Menatep Bank. An immigration appeals panel reversed yesterday its decision to send former Russian banker Alex Konanykhin back to Russia, ending a deportation effort that was sharply criticized by a federal judge this week.

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had expressed dismay with the Department of Homeland Security for its insistence that Konanykhin be sent back to Russia. One of the first post-Soviet Russian millionaires, he fled to the United States in 1992, saying his life was in danger from ex-KGB officers and Russian mobsters. FURTHER REDUCTIONS! Reg.0rig.

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