ITAR-TASS photo of Anatoly Voronin
Today Bloomberg Financial News is reporting the murder of ITAR-TASS news agency business chief Anatoly Vornonin. Mr. Voronin was a well-respected reporter and had been with ITAR-TASS for 23 years. The headline over the link to this story from the Drudge Report at this hour asks “Another One?” - referring to the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politovskaya on October 7th - but the circumstances of this case are very different. Gazeta.ru quotes Russian prosecutors and police sources indicating that Voronin was stabbed to death by an assailant he knew, perhaps a friend. Voronin’s body was found in his apartment early this morning by his driver.
Bloomberg has more in the extended post, including a tally of prominent Russian businessmen killed in the last month.
Gazeta.ru photo from the crime scene
[Voronin’s] death is the latest in a spate of high-profile killings in Russia in little over a month.Deputy Central Bank governor Andrei Kozlov was shot dead with his driver on Sept. 13 as he left a football match in Moscow. Russian officials arrested an unspecified number of people involved in the killing, the Prosecutor General's office said today.
Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a critic of President Vladimir Putin, was shot at the entrance to her apartment block on Oct. 7. Leaders from around the world including U.S. President George W. Bush called on the Russian government to carry out a thorough investigation to find her killers. No arrests have yet been made.
Another banker, Alexander Plokhin, was killed by a gunshot wound to the head on Oct. 10. He was a branch head at VTB-24, the retail unit of Russia's second largest bank, Vneshtorgbank.
A day later Furtanbek Akhidov, from the Chechen capital Grozny, was shot dead in the courtyard of the Moscow building where he lived, Interfax reported. Outside Moscow, Enver Ziganshin, chief engineer of BP Plc's Russian gas unit, OAO Rusia Petroleum, was gunned down in Irkutsk in Siberia on Sept. 30.
This list is a grim reminder that Russian hit men will target almost anyone for money, whether they are successful businessmen, high level Putin appointees, or outspoken journalists critical of the government. Even so, the number of business-related murders has sharply declined since the Yeltsin years. Today Moscow is a much safer city than it was during the mid-1990s.
Comments
hi all,
jiminey crickets...
another murderer who will be charged..and go to jail
.........
generally out here we dont murder people regularly
and if it does happen... they get charged and life in jail
hows the DNA labs in russia ?
they would be pretty good I would guess...
......................
reason for post
ok out here generally if you dont agree with something somone has written and such you can SUE them for libel, better make sure its honest though otherwise you end up paying the COURT COSTS
also one can write, companies, tv stations, and
so on..... which australians do regularly, if they agree and or disagree with situations or statements.....
and or have complaints...
this works really well, it means that if someone writes
a media article, then anyone and everyone can write in and or reply
basically this is a much better way to go.... and it does work.....
JHH australia
Posted by: JHH_ | October 16, 2006 7:34 PM
hi all, forgot,
we also have our politicians, on the talk shows, and separate talks, by both, or REPLY ones, this on TV
does russia have TALK shows with their politicians ?
on the whole this works well.. and our politicians,
also do TV for the big situations around the place
maybe its time there was a POLITICAL TALK show.....
they work fairly well... on the whole....
JHH
Posted by: JHH_ | October 16, 2006 7:41 PM
I would like to add one reason for the decline of number of business-related murders. Much fewer people dare to start a profitable buisness in Russia. If you want to start one you need to have connections in Moscow, and some serious connections. Or you need to pay large sums of money to whoever comes and asks for it. Imagine you start a small business and after a couple of years it becomes profitable. Instantly you will have to accomodate undesired guests who will come and threaten you, if you don't give up your business to them. You'll have 2 choices:
1) Surrender your business.
2) Be killed in an unfortunate accident (or by a killer, if your business is worth it).
Posted by: Phil | October 17, 2006 5:11 PM
hi all, hi Phil,
from my research, what you are saying has some truth to it.....if you understand the russian people/country, could you figure some ideas as to how this could be fixed,
and or improved with time ?
what would help ? do you think...
JHH
PS I would assume that starting with charging all MURDERS would be a good start
PS perhaps also PAYING and providing for the young army men of 18 etc. too
and stopping them from being murdered, when at army school
Posted by: JHH_ | October 18, 2006 5:12 AM
hi all,
busy keeping up with our politics out here..grin
okay re russia and billionaires etc.
and business
if russian billionaires went legitimate and poured their money into the arts..grin tourisim, guaranteed safety,
good tourist docos etc. and so on, guaranteed safety again
and businesses, that were legal.... the more that did it, the better russian people would benefit, and of course the businesses would too, and they could sleep at night too..grin and would save tons of money on not having to pay body guards... who it seems from what I read, are really no use in any case ?
JHH
Posted by: JHH_ | October 25, 2006 3:02 AM