November 14, 2005, 12:02 Society

“Molotov cocktail” was signed for three

Evgenia Malyar , Irina Petrakova Sakhalin investigators announced that they had solved the murder of Russian Border Troops General Vitaly Gamov. They have detained all the suspects in the arson of his apartment and are soon going to take the case to court. It is assumed that the border guard was “ordered” by one of the Sakhalin crime bosses.

On Monday, the Sakhalin prosecutor's office announced that it had solved a high-profile crime committed more than three years ago. As senior assistant regional prosecutor Tatyana Kutuzova told Gazeta.Ru, the investigation managed to find and arrest all the killers of Border Service General Vitaly Gamov.

Three suspects, whose names had been known to the prosecutor's office for a long time, were detained and then taken into custody during October and November of this year.

The deputy head of the Pacific Regional Directorate of the Federal Border Guard Service of the Russian Federation, Major General Vitaly Gamov, was attacked on May 21, 2002. At about 03.30, criminals broke the window glass in apartment 11 of building 81 on Chekhov Street in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, where Gamov lived with his family. They threw four plastic bottles with a flammable mixture through the window. During the fire, Vitaly Gamov and his wife Larisa received thermal burns of the first or third degree; up to 90% of their body surface was burned. Both were urgently taken to a hospital in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and then transported to Japan for treatment. A week later the general died. His wife underwent seven skin transplant operations and remained alive, but is still being treated in Moscow.

Immediately after the attempt on Gamow's life, the local prosecutor's office began an investigation.

According to Kutuzova, investigators found out that the perpetrators of the crime were Sergei Malyutin, Alexey Britov and Alexey Anikin .

According to the prosecutor's office, the young people (they were 23 years old at the time) planned the murder in advance. On the night of the crime, they came to the general’s house with a ladder and several one and a half liter plastic bottles with a mixture of gasoline and oil and with flares tied to them. Although investigators were able to find out the names of the alleged criminals quite quickly, they were detained only three years after the murder. All this time, young people were hiding in different cities of Russia and abroad.

As Kutuzova reported, “an interdepartmental investigative and operational group was created and constantly operated to catch the criminals.” The suspects were searched not only within the country, but also abroad; they were put on the international wanted list. The search took place in Japan, Korea, Germany, Moldova and Ukraine. As a result, on October 6, at one of the capital’s airports, their colleagues from Transnistria handed over Alexey Anikin to the Organized Crime Control Department at the Sakhalin Regional Internal Affairs Directorate. He was extradited from Moldova, where he was detained with a fake passport in the name of a Ukrainian citizen. On October 7, 2005, Russian operatives transferred him to the Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk pre-trial detention center .

A week later, Sergei Malyutin was detained in Kaliningrad. On October 24, he was charged with murder. And on November 12, a third defendant, Britov, was caught in Moscow. On Sunday, November 13, he was delivered to Sakhalin. They plan to charge him in the near future.

The three alleged perpetrators will not appear in court until next year.

As Gazeta.Ru was told in the regional prosecutor's office, investigators hope to complete the collection of evidence by the end of December, then the accused will begin to familiarize themselves with the materials of the criminal case, numbering several dozen volumes.

All detainees are charged with several articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation: Art. 30 and art. 105 (“Attempted murder”), Art. 105. Part 2 (“Murder committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy”) and Art. 277 (“Encroachment on the life of a statesman or public figure”). As the prosecutor's office told Gazeta.Ru, “the detainees have so far refused to cooperate with the investigation.”

During the investigation, which lasted for three and a half years, various versions of the general’s murder were put forward. The main one, which the prosecutor's office adheres to, states that Gamow was killed by poachers, whom the recently appointed head of the FPS department of the Sakhalin region was actively fighting against. In particular, a version was put forward that the mastermind behind Gamov’s murder could have been crime boss Vasily Naumov (Yakut), who was later killed in the South Korean city of Busan on April 17, 2003. As the leadership of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs assumed , Yakut controlled most of the illegal fishing on Sakhalin, and General Gamow crossed his path.

Another version was related to the fact that General Gamow was allegedly associated with the fishing mafia and died because he defended the interests of one of the competing groups. However, investigators and FPS officers have repeatedly refuted any assumptions about the general’s corruption. In addition, according to some media reports, local border officials are virtually unable to combat illegal fishing, whether they are corrupt or not. But this murder was not very profitable for poachers: it immediately attracted unnecessary attention to the problem.

There was also a version that Gamow could have become a victim of an internal conflict in the department, where the new chief decided to restore order by getting rid of unscrupulous employees who condoned poachers.

Which version turns out to be correct should become clear during the trial. Gazeta.Ru will definitely report if the “customer” of border guard Gamov is found.