| The jury named the killers of Igor Klimov The jury of the Moscow City Court on Friday issued a guilty verdict in the case of murder of the acting. General Director of the defense holding Concern Air Defense Almaz-Antey Igor Klimov, who was shot in the summer of 2003 in Moscow. Six defendants were found guilty not only of eliminating the head of the largest domestic enterprise, but also of banditry, creating an organized criminal group, and illegal storage and transportation of weapons. In addition, the jury considered that none of the defendants in the case deserved leniency.
The jury needed to spend about four hours in the deliberation room to reach a verdict. That's how long the assessors decided the fate of the six defendants - Evgeny Mankov, Irek Nabiullin, Alexander Burukin, Yuri Murashko, Alexander Nikitin and senior detective of the St. Petersburg Central Internal Affairs Directorate Vladimir Stepanov. According to the state prosecution, they were members of a criminal group that was engaged in contract killings. According to investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office, in addition to the attempt on Mr. Klimov's life, members of this group were associated with a whole series of murders of people who collaborated with Mr. Klimov - the general director of Prommashinstrument OJSC Elena Neshcheret in St. Petersburg in October 2003, the head the company "Rusma" Ruben Narimanov, the general director of JSC "Plant named after Shaumyan" Mikhail Ivanov.
Igor Klimov was shot dead on June 6, 2003 near his home on Krymsky Val. The killer fired from a revolver with a silencer. Later, ballistic examination established that Narimanov and Ivanov were killed with the same weapon in July 2002. And investigators found out that the murder of Igor Klimov was committed two weeks before the shareholders’ meeting, at which it was supposed to elect the general director of the concern, which is the main developer and manufacturer of Russian air defense systems, and suggested that the crime was connected with the redistribution of spheres of influence at a number of large Russian enterprises.
The operatives managed to get on the trail of the perpetrators of the murder thanks to chance. At the end of 2003, in St. Petersburg, Gennady Kapustin, a resident of the village of Lychkovo, Novgorod Region, was detained for drug possession. During interrogations, he unexpectedly admitted to involvement in contract killings, which were allegedly carried out by his fellow villager Alexander Nikitin and people from the Kazan organized crime group Irek Nabiullin and Evgeny Mankov. The latter, according to the prosecutor’s office, assembled a gang that began to work “on orders.”
In the summer of 2004, arrests of suspects began, and at the end of June of this year, the Prosecutor General's Office sent the case of the murder of the head of Almaz-Antey to court. During the hearings, only one of the defendants, Alexander Burukin, confessed to involvement in the murder of Klimov. However, only the technical organizer and the perpetrators of the crime were in the dock. The investigation is still silent about who ordered the assassination attempt.
On Wednesday, the Moscow City Court will continue the hearing on the case, the parties will discuss the qualifications of guilt of the defendants, after which the court will retire to make a final verdict and assign sentences to the six defendants. Tatiana GRITSENKO |
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