In our Feb. 2 issue we published a story about Lukoil and its president titled “Russia’s King of Crude,”” the apology will read, a copy of which was obtained by The Observer. “We have since discovered that several passages were lifted from “The Triumph of the Quiet Tycoon,” written by Peter Maass and published in the New York Times Sunday Magazine on Aug. 1, 2004. Fortune apologizes to Mr. Maass and the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

The Observer also reports that Fortune conducted a review of Gimbel’s previous work and didn’t discover any other examples of plagiarism. From the story:

When the author of the Fortune story, a young, rising star at the magazine named Barney Gimbel, was presented with the two stories and the lifted passages during an internal investigation, he offered his resignation …
When we asked a Fortune spokesperson about his departure, she said: “We do not comment on personnel issues.”
Gerry Marzorati, the editor of The New York Times Magazine, said that a few weeks ago the author of the plagiarized story, Peter Maass, contacted Fortune editors about several passages that looked nearly identical to his own. Fortune editors contacted Mr. Marzorati immediately and said they were looking into it …
“As far as I’m concerned, things were resolved amicably and fairly,” said Mr. Marzorati. “They did the right thing. They alerted us, they said they were going to do an internal investigation, and they didn’t stonewall in anyway. They acted courteously and professionally the entire process.”
The question is now what happens to Mr. Gimbel.
According to a Fortune staffer, during the investigation they found no other examples of plagiarism in his work.

UPDATE March 6: Portfolio’s Jeff Bercovici reports that Gimbel’s previous work for Newsweek has also been checked for plagiarism:

Although Gimbel quickly resigned, an in-house review of his work for Fortune turned up no other instances of plagiarism. And now I’m told that Newsweek, where Gimbel worked previously, has concluded its own review of Gimbel’s articles and found nothing amiss, suggesting the lifting in his Lukoil story was a one-off.