Translated material
Not a friend, but a foe
Verdict handed down in case of poisoning of banker Ivan Kivelidi
The Zamoskvoretsky court of the capital yesterday handed down a verdict in one of the most high-profile and mysterious cases of the 90s - the murder of the chairman of the Russian Business Roundtable (RBT), head of Rosbusinessbank Ivan Kivelidi, for the solution of which Russian bankers at one time promised a reward of 1 million dollars. Vladimir Khutsishvili, accused of this crime , as well as the death due to negligence of the banker's secretary Zara Ismailova, was found guilty and sentenced to nine years in a general regime colony. The state prosecution insisted that the reason for the murder was a property conflict between Kivelidi and the defendant, who was his deputy and a member of the board of directors of Rosbusinessbank. However, the court found that Khutsishvili acted out of personal hostility. During the investigation and during court hearings, the accused himself called Kivelidi a close friend, insisted on his innocence and openly stated that the poisoning story had greatly undermined his financial viability.The trial of the murder of a 46-year-old banker in the Moscow City Court began in April of this year. At the insistence of the Prosecutor General's Office, court hearings were held behind closed doors. Therefore, all the circumstances of the case are still completely unknown.
On the evening of August 1, 1995, the chairman of the board of the bank, Ivan Kivelidi, was taken from the office of Rosbusinessbank to the Central Clinical Bank in serious condition. Doctors stated that the banker was in a deep coma; moreover, his brain, kidneys and lungs refused to function normally. Three days later, without regaining consciousness, Ivan Kivelidi died. At first, doctors suggested that the businessman had another attack of kidney stones. However, the fact that on August 3, his 30-year-old secretary-assistant Zara Ismailova, who was taken to the hospital the day after Kivelidi’s hospitalization, also died in the First City Hospital, forced investigators to look at the death of Rosbusinessbank employees from a different angle. Forensic experts established that the victims were poisoned with a potent substance, a trace of which was found on the telephone receiver in Kivelidi’s office.
The prosecutor's office classified the death of the banker and his secretary as murder and opened a criminal case for premeditated murder. Two months later, the first suspect appeared - Kivelidi’s business partner, 51-year-old Vladimir Khutsishvili. But he was soon released. Khutsishvili himself constantly maintained that Ivan Kivelidi was his close friend, but nevertheless, he soon hurried to go abroad, where he remained until 2006. During this time, the investigation again suspected Khutsishvili of involvement in Kivelidi’s death and put him on the wanted list.
In June 2006, the fugitive himself returned to his homeland, he was detained and arrested. As it turned out, the testimony of military chemist Professor Igor Rink helped identify the suspect. In 1995, the scientist was sentenced in the Saratov region to a one-year suspended sentence for selling toxic substances classified as chemical warfare agents. According to the prosecutor's office, the buyers of the poison included Chechen militants and an intermediary from Vladimir Khutsishvili.
The name of the main witness was kept secret for a long time. It was because of concerns for his safety that the prosecutor's office insisted on holding a closed trial. During the investigation, Khutsishvili himself repeatedly stated that he wanted a jury trial. However, the prosecutor's office reclassified the case from the article of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR "murder of two or more persons" to less serious ones - "murder" and "murder by negligence", which do not imply the trial of the case with the participation of a jury.
What kind of poison was used to poison the banker and his secretary still remains a mystery. What is known is that it was made from a substance produced at a military chemical plant in the city of Shikhany, Saratov region. The specialists who participated in the analysis of the toxic substance reported only that it had a rare formula, and the poison itself was more toxic than sarin.
At the same time, proving Khutsishvili’s innocence, his lawyer Boris Kuznetsov (he was never able to bring the process to completion, since he left Russia in July, since a criminal case was opened against him on suspicion of divulging state secrets) pointed out that In addition to Kivelidi and his secretary, several other people touched the telephone receiver, but none of them were injured. And the accused himself, according to experts, must have been poisoned when applying the poison.
The motives for the murder also remained unclear. Before the start of the trial, Moscow Deputy Prosecutor Vladimir Yudin said that Ivan Kivelidi was going to carry out an additional issue of shares in Rosbusinessbank, which would lead to a reduction in Khutsishvili’s share in the bank’s authorized capital. Nevertheless, Khutsishvili was found guilty of killing Kivelidi due to personal enmity. The defendant's lawyers intend to appeal the verdict.