Apparent Bribe Tape Used to Smear Russian Liberals

MOSCOW, March 26, 2010 -- In a video that appeared online this week, a skinny young man with brown hair sat on a couch next to a half-naked woman lying down with her face blurred out. He leaned over a stool, snorted a few lines of white powder and sat back up. The video then cut to the same man getting dressed, presumably after sex with the woman with the blurred-out face.

The hidden-camera clip has been making waves in Russia, where the man, Mikhail Fishman, is well-known as the editor of Newsweek magazine's Russian edition.

A few days prior, Fishman appeared in another Internet video along with two other men, opposition activist Ilya Yashin and liberal political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin.

In that hidden-camera clip, the three were shown separately getting pulled over by the police. One by one, the same scenario played out: With careful editing, the men appeared to offer the police a bribe to extricate themselves. Each time, the police reprimanded the men for trying to buy their way out of trouble. Two of the men said the exchanges were doctored.

It is unknown who produced the videos. But the three men are part of Russia's liberal establishment with plenty of opponents in the country's ruling power structure, and that's who they suspect.

"It's absolutely clear that it cannot be done without special knowledge and special responsibilities," Fishman told ABC News, refusing to name which branch of government he believes is behind the tapes. "I know that they wear a uniform."

Yashin agreed that the authorities were behind it, writing on his blog that the attempted slander is "an ordinary provocation by the security forces."

Moscow's traffic police denied any involvement with the videos. The Federal Security Services refused to comment.