A British director who heads the company behind the UK branch of RT – accused of spreading Kremlin propaganda – has earned more than £2million from it in just three years, The Independent can reveal.

Russian news channel RT, formerly known as Russia Today, has had its UK broadcasting license revoked by regulator Ofcom as it faces 29 investigations into its coverage of the invasion Ukraine by Vladimir Putin.

The Independent can reveal that 57-year-old Christopher Wood – who moved to Moscow in the early 90s – has earned millions from a company that took over RT’s UK operations.

Britain’s Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries told MPs earlier this month that she hoped the broadcaster’s license would be removed so that it would “never again be able to have the platform to spread its propaganda in the UK”. Meanwhile, Labor leader Keir Starmer last month called Russia Today Putin a “personal propaganda tool”. Former Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond suspended his talk show on RT last month after coming under pressure.

RT claims it is “an autonomous non-profit organization publicly funded from the budget of the Russian Federation”. In the UK, although RT’s broadcast licensee is Russian company ANO TV Novosti, Russia Today TV UK Ltd was the company behind its operations.

In an article dated 2017, the RT website called Russia Today TV UK Ltd “the sole provider of all RT operations in the UK”. Elsewhere in the same post, he referred to the venture as “RT’s UK operation”.

Wood is the sole director and shareholder of Russia Today TV UK Ltd, records show. He received £1,663,000 in dividends and £425,621 in directors’ fees over three years, according to an analysis of Companies House filings.

Little is publicly known about Wood but The Independent collected details of his life. Before becoming director of the company in 2005 when it was incorporated, he lived in Russia with his wife Elvira, a ballerina of Estonian origin. They had two children born in Moscow; a daughter in 1995 and a son in 2002.

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On Friday, Wood’s brother Nicholas, an architect based in Hertfordshire, said The Independent“My brother is here right now wrapping it all up and he had to fire about 45 journalists… I think he’s kind of sad about the way things have gone, it’s certainly not a problem of his doing or his will. ”

He added: “My brother is a businessman, he was working in Moscow and then had the opportunity to come here and help them create something here, which he did as a business and he ran it as a business…I don’t think he has any political interests in this, it’s just running it as a business.

He defended RT’s coverage saying ‘if you look at the track record of this one it meets Ofcom’s requirements’. When it was pointed out that he had been sanctioned by the regulator in the past, he added: “Yes, as all stations have done, as you know, but he has largely tried to provide a service… which conforms to this.”

The EU has already decided to ban RT. Revoking RT’s license to broadcast in the UK with immediate effect on Friday, Ofcom said ANO TV Novosti was not “fit and proper”. Ofcom said: “Today’s decision comes amid 29 ongoing investigations by Ofcom into the due impartiality of RT’s news and current affairs coverage of the invasion. of Ukraine by Russia. We consider the volume and potentially serious nature of the issues raised in such short notice to be very concerning, particularly given RT’s compliance history, which has seen the channel fined £200,000 for prior breaches of impartiality.

He added: “This investigation took into account a number of factors, including RT’s relationship with the Russian Federation. He acknowledged that RT is funded by the Russian state, which recently invaded a neighboring sovereign country. We also note new laws in Russia that effectively criminalize any independent journalism that deviates from the reporting of Russian state news, particularly in relation to the invasion of Ukraine. We consider that given these constraints, it seems impossible for RT to respect the rules of impartiality of our Audiovisual Code in the circumstances.

Wood’s company, Russia Today TV UK Ltd, made a pre-tax profit of more than £1million and paid £800,000 in interim dividends, according to its latest accounts for the year to July 31, 2020. The remuneration of its director amounted to 144,443 pounds sterling.

In 2018-19, when the company recorded a pre-tax profit of £3.5 million, £250,000 in interim dividends was paid, with its director’s remuneration being £147,459. In 2017-18, when the company made a pre-tax profit of £99,806, £613,000 in interim dividends was paid and £133,719 in directors’ fees.

The company’s latest financial statements, for the year ended July 31, 2020, pointed out that “the operations and assets of the business are not very well diversified”, adding: “therefore, there is always a risk of reduction of activity due to economic or political factors”. The company employed an average of 81 full-time employees during the year, according to the accounts.

Accounts also showed the company paid Professional Television Services (PTS) Ltd £125,000 for ‘bought services’ in the year to July 31, 2020. It paid a further £166,667 to PTS in in the year ended July 31, 2019 and £125,000 in the year ended July 31, 2018, records show. Christopher Wood’s brother, Nicholas Wood, was a director of PTS Ltd until March 1, 2022 and secretary until March 17, 2022, according to Companies House records.

Christopher Wood was previously the majority shareholder of PTS, with Elvira Wood also holding shares, according to Companies House records. However, as of Feb. 1, 2022, Elvira Wood owned 75% or more of the company’s stock, according to a filing released Tuesday. Meanwhile, in an update also released on Tuesday, effective February 1, 2022, Christopher Wood would have “the right to exercise … significant influence or control over the business.”

Nicholas Wood, who said he had nothing to do with RT, said The Independent: “He [Christopher] ran the business there, PTS Moscow, and while he was doing that I was kind of helping him very incidentally in the UK because I was based here, I had my own business to run here, and it just allowed me to support him. And I think that’s why I was made secretary so that I could sign documents when he was looking for visas and things like that.

“If you look at the background of PTS Moscow, you will find that it was a British company and was basically independent there, providing services for ITV, BBC PanoramaBBC Newsnightfilm crews to support journalists who traveled there or were based there.

Asked when his brother moved to Moscow, he replied: “I don’t remember the exact date, but it was in the early 1990s.”

Wood said “it looks like this [PTS Moscow] has been migrated to PTS Ltd”. When asked what prompted his brother to move to Russia, he replied: “He went there with a journalist from TV-am.” Explaining that his brother was a cameraman, he added: ‘When they closed TV-am he was left there with nothing else to do, so he did some freelance work. [based in Moscow].”

RT has been contacted for comment. An Ofcom spokesperson said: “Ofcom does not regulate Russia Today TV UK Ltd. The license for the RT service was held by ANO TV Novosti, which had editorial control of the service.

In response to Ofcom’s revocation of RT’s license, RT Deputy Editor Anna Belkina said: “By ignoring RT’s utterly pristine record of four years in a row and stating purely political reasons directly linked to the situation in Ukraine and yet wholly independent of RT’s operations, structure, management or editorial production, Ofcom falsely deemed RT not to be “fit and proper” and in doing so deprived the British public of access to information. »