Third in action

Another participant in the attempt on Galina Starovoitova has been named

The St. Petersburg City Court yesterday announced the verdict of two more alleged participants in the attempt on the life of Russian State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova, who died on November 20, 1998 from the bullets of now-famous killers on the threshold of her own apartment in the entrance of a house on the Griboyedov Canal. In the dock were Vyacheslav Lelyavin and Pavel Stekhnovsky.

The first, according to investigators, carried out surveillance and wiretapping of the deputy’s telephone conversations, and also drove one of the killers to her house in a car and took away one of the killers, and the second bought the weapon from which she was killed. In principle, the court agreed with the prosecution's version, but interpreted the role of the accused in the whole story somewhat differently. As a result, only Lelyavin received the real punishment - 11 years in a maximum security colony. The court released Stekhnovsky altogether. He was found guilty only of acquiring and storing weapons, but, according to the verdict of the jury who considered this case, he did not know that it would be used specifically for the assassination attempt on Ms. Starovoitova.

This is already the second verdict in the “Starovoitova case”, and by and large it can be considered “technical”, since we are talking only about the perpetrators of the assassination attempt. Its result was not a particular sensation - the conviction of only one of the two accused, since the previous trial ended in a similar way. Earlier, six more people were brought before the court, arrested by the FSB officers for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region who were in charge of this case - former GRU officer Yuri Kolchin and employees of the private security company controlled by him "Blessed Prince Alexander Nevsky" Vitaly Akishin, Alexey Voronin, Igor Lelyavin (brother of Vyacheslav Lelyavin), Yuri Ionov and Igor Krasnov. The prosecution alleged that Kolchin was the technical organizer of the attack on Galina Starovoitova, Akishin directly shot at her, and others were part of the “support group” of the killers - they monitored the deputy and acted as drivers. However, for the first time, the court released most of the accused, ruling that they did not know about the impending murder, but were only carrying out instructions from the leadership of the private security company. As a result, according to Art. 277 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, only Kolchin (to 20 years in prison) and Akishin (to 23.5 years) were sentenced.

Under the same Article 277, the prosecution demanded that Lelyavin and Stekhnovsky be convicted. But in relation to Lelyavin, the jury considered the political motive unproven, agreeing only that he contributed to the commission of an “ordinary” murder (Article 105-2). Therefore, the court had to reject the idea that Lelyavin was guided by the desire to stop the political and social activities of the deputy. Due to the fact that the accused had a small child, and also because the jury considered him deserving of leniency, the court sentenced Lelyavin not to 13 years and four months in prison, as the prosecutor demanded, but to 11 years.

According to Stekhnovsky, the jury found that he had no direct connection with the murder at all and was guilty only under Art. 222 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation for mediation in the acquisition of the weapon with which Starovoitova was killed - the Agram-2000 assault rifle. The court was forced to release him because the statute of limitations under this article expired two years ago. It is worth noting that Stekhnovsky, who almost immediately fled to Belgium and then extradited to Russia, admitted during interrogations that he bought weapons on instructions from the management of the private security company, but insisted that he did not know how or who was going to use it.

Three more alleged participants in the attempt on Starovoitova remain wanted - Evgeny Bogdanov, Sergei Musin, who were also part of the “support group,” and Oleg Fedosov, who, as investigators believe, shot at the deputy together with Akishin. However, investigators have never named the masterminds of this crime, and the investigation in this part continues. Although the press has repeatedly cited evidence that two leaders of the “Tambov” criminal group, who were once elected to the State Duma and had close contact with Kolchin, could be behind the murder of Galina Starovoitova. At the same time, a version was given that the Tambovites considered Ms. Starovoitova a competitor both in terms of business (since she was associated with a number of companies) and in terms of politics (since she supported a number of candidates in the elections to the local legislative assembly, where they planned their people carry out “Tambov” as well).

Dmitry ANDREEV, St. Petersburg, Alexey GRISHIN