Ten years and six months

The investigation into the murder of the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Mikhail Manevich has been extended

Yesterday it became known that the Investigation Department of the FSB of the Russian Federation extended for another six months the investigation into the murder of the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Mikhail Manevich, which was committed ten years ago, in 1997. “The investigation period has been extended for six months - from November 18 to May 18,” explained a representative of the department. These terms from the moment the murder was committed are extended from year to year, but so far the investigation cannot boast of any achievements - the accused in the case have not appeared. True, detectives have another five years to find the killers , and then it will become meaningless, since the statute of limitations defined by the Criminal Code will expire when the perpetrators can be held accountable.

Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Mikhail Manevich was killed on August 18, 1997 on his way to work. When the official's official Volvo turned from Rubinstein Street onto Nevsky Prospekt, a sniper located in the attic of one of the neighboring houses opened fire on it. Manevich received three fatal wounds and died on the spot. Manevich’s personal friend Anatoly Chubais, who promised to find everyone involved in the murder at his funeral, offered a prize of 100 thousand dollars for information about the criminals who committed the murder.

The only official statement by the special services on this case was precisely in connection with the detention in 2001 of the leaders of the notorious Tambov group - brothers Andrei and Sergei Chelyshev, Sergei Popov and Sergei Yakovlev. This organized crime group has long been established in St. Petersburg and has largely given the city its reputation as a criminal capital. Initially they talked about the possible involvement of those arrested in almost all the high-profile murders of the mid-90s. At first, the bandits even confessed not only to the shooting of Manevich, but also of the TV journalist, ORT general director Vladislav Listyev, and Otar Kvantrishvili, an authority figure in certain circles. But then the Tambovskys retracted their testimony, and it was never possible to prove their involvement in these high-profile murders.

In 2005, Alexander Bortnikov, who at that time was the head of the FSB Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, again remembered the “Manevich case.” And he announced that “concrete progress has been made.” “The FSB investigators, together with foreign colleagues, are actively working to identify the perpetrators and masterminds of this crime. We have not yet reached specific individuals, but we will definitely reach them,” Bortnikov said then. At the same time, members of the “Shutov gang”, a deputy of the legislative assembly of St. Petersburg and the leader of a gang of killers, were also arrested, which was responsible for at least five murders, two attempted murders, as well as a number of kidnappings, robberies, and assaults. The crimes were committed precisely in the period from 1997 to 1999, and the head of the criminal community, Yuri Shutov, had “friction” with Manevich at one time. The press again started talking about the fact that the killers of the vice-governor had been found. But by November 2006, when the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the life sentences of the gang members, their involvement in the high-profile case was forgotten again. The investigation was unable to obtain evidence of this.

The last time the people who ordered and carried out the murder of Manevich were remembered was at the end of November last year. At the opening ceremony of the second power unit of the North-West Thermal Power Plant, Chubais said that he had fulfilled his promise. “Everything that I promised at Manevich’s grave, I fulfilled word for word: all the organizers of the murder are in prison for life, not one of them will come out,” he said. At the same time, Chubais did not name any names. Although many still believe that he meant Shutov’s gang. It is noteworthy that officially, representatives of the investigation never spoke about the possible motives for the murder of Manevich, or about who could be behind it. Secretly, the murder was always associated with Mr. Manevich’s work as chairman of the St. Petersburg committee for city property management, since in this capacity he was in charge of the privatization of large enterprises and the leasing of buildings.

Eduard LOMOVTSEV