Posted on 02/07/2008 5:59:12 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Prominent businessman killed in Moscow - 2
10:01 | 07/ 02/ 2008
(Expands quote in para 3, adds details in paras 6-7)
MOSCOW, February 7 (RIA Novosti) - A prominent businessman was killed in Moscow last night in what investigators believe was a contract killing, a police officer said on Thursday.
Yevgeny Chivilikhin, 57, head of the Moscow Guild of Markets and Fairs and a co-founder of the Timiryazevsky trade center, was gunned down near his house in the north of the Russian capital at about 9 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday.
"An unknown man fired several pistol shots at Chivilikhin, made an execution-style shot to the head, and fled the scene," the police source said. "Investigators are positive it was a contract killing linked to the victim's business activities."
He said police have seized a tape from a surveillance camera installed near the house in the hope it will help identify the killer.
In 2006, Chivilikhin escaped an attempt on his life, when a bomb with a yield equivalent to 400 grams of TNT exploded near his house.
Investigators said the killing could be linked to an ongoing turf war between several crime groups for control over the trade center, which is visited by up to 500,000 people a day, Kommersant daily said on Thursday. The center has also been plagued by internal disputes among shareholders and lease holders, the paper said.
Two other senior members of the association that owns the trade center suffered attempts on their lives in 1997 and 2006, Kommersant said.
Ping!
Don “They’ll sleep with the sturgeons” Putini at work again.
I recall back after the Soviet Union collapsed, Yeltsin was in charge -- doing the best he could, I suppose -- and it seemed like organized crime was running the country. I believe they were called Oligarchs. Lots of killings. Certain people making enormous sums of money. Economic chaos.
I wonder if Russia is sliding back into that? The supermodel/bodyguard who was killed last week in a "car jacking" and this guy (and I think there was one other case recently, but I forget the details). I'm thinking that criminals are reasserting their power in Russia. Not that this is so unusual, of course, but it seems like an upsurge.
Yes, I agree with your take on this to some degree, however Russia is always the same the same, they’ve always been corrupt and always will be corrupt.
It’s just evil. It is contagious and it infects everything.
Sliding back in? They never left. Back in Soviet times the same type of criminals ran the black markets and controlled the government then that run the black markets and control the government now. Corrupt officials, KGB, or ex KGB, military or ex military, and mafia gangs.
The only difference is now they also prey on private businessmen, a class that did not exist then, when the only player in the economy was the government. They have added extortion and blackmail to their tool kits. I do not add terror, torture, and murder because they always practiced that.
This is what 70 years of Communism does to a society. It produces a vast under class of victims preyed upon by sophisticated and brutal professional criminals, both inside and outside government. The victims in turn learn that to survive, they must also act like criminals. The result is a criminal society where no one trusts anyone and everyone is out for number one. There is no ordinary human compassion, and certainly no civic pride, or sense of responsibility. It is a cold bleak place, and I am not talking about the weather. Russia has a long way to go before it can be considered a first world nation.
That’s my experience with the Russians, the Ukrainians are a little better in their outlook on life.They will still screw you over, of course, but they will sing a happy song and have a nice family dinner latter.
The same thing is also happening in China.
I agree. It was the same in czarist russia. "Deal Souls" by Gogol is a great nineteenth century novel that shows how corrupt and disfunctional Russia was back then. Of course the Soviet era didn't fix anything, and probably made the national character even worse. Now, under Putin it's just more of the same.
But I do think it's an oscillating wave. The corruption is always there, and always higher than what we would consider acceptable, but I think some years it's above the average and some years it seems to get better. Right now I think Russia is seeing an increase in criminal activity. Maybe it's tied to the oil money. But something seems to be making criminals more active in 2008 then they were in -- say -- 2004.
Russians are almost alien in the way of their soul.I have always supported the idea that the Russians only traded Czars and the nobility for Dictators and Commissars.
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