Translated material
"Tambov" confessions
Convicted for the murder of Galina Starovoytova remembered the attempt on Vladislav Listyev
Yesterday it became known that ex-GRU officer and member of the Tambov criminal group Yuri Kolchin, who is serving a 20-year sentence for organizing the murder of Russian State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova, was transferred to Moscow. According to some reports, he told investigators about the details of another high-profile crime - the murder in March 1995 of the general director of Public Russian Television (ORT) Vladislav Listyev.According to Kolchin, which was voiced by a number of St. Petersburg media, the main customer of the murder was Boris Berezovsky, and its direct organization was carried out by the famous crime boss of the mid-90s, Konstantin Yakovlev, nicknamed Kostya-Grave. Meanwhile, Berezovsky himself denied involvement in the murder. And former Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov, under whom the investigation into this crime began, said that the names named by Kolchin had never been mentioned in the case before.
38-year-old ORT general director Vladislav Listyev was shot dead on March 1, 1995 at the entrance of his house on Novokuznetskaya Street in Moscow. The crime caused a huge public outcry - on March 2, mourning was declared in Russia, tens of thousands of people came to his funeral, and President Boris Yeltsin promised “to do everything possible so that the killers of Vlad Listyev are found.”
But the investigation could not get off the ground and in April 2006 it was once again suspended. Since then, nothing has been heard about this case, and only in connection with the 15-year anniversary of the death of Mr. Listyev, the SKP reported that “the investigators, together with the criminal investigation department, are continuously and systematically working towards solving the crime.” At various times, several suspects were detained, about ten more people themselves confessed to the murder, but these data were never confirmed. Surely, the investigators were only able to establish that “the murder was committed for hire by a group of people in a preliminary conspiracy.”
Yesterday, the St. Petersburg online publication Fontanka.ru, citing sources in law enforcement agencies, reported that Yuri Kolchin unexpectedly told investigators about the new circumstances of Mr. Listyev’s murder, and therefore a month ago he was transferred to Moscow. In the mid-90s, Kolchin was on good terms with State Duma deputy Mikhail Glushchenko and member of the Tambov organized crime group Vasily Vladykovsky and was present at a number of their meetings. And at one of them, according to this version, Kolchin allegedly witnessed how the then well-known St. Petersburg authority Kostya-Mogila proposed to eliminate the TV journalist to a certain Eduard Kanimoto. The latter, together with two friends, owed Yakovlev a large sum and, with the permission of Mr. Vladykovsky and the leader of the Tambov gang, Vladimir Kumarin, allegedly agreed to organize the murder of Mr. Listyev.
After this, the three killers successfully completed the task; Kolchin himself, according to him, provided them with an apartment in Moscow. A little later, according to this version, a meeting took place in the capital, at which, in addition to Yakovlev, Glushchenko, Kumarin and Kolchin, the famous businessman Boris Berezovsky, allegedly the true mastermind of the murder, was present. According to Kolchin, Yakovlev and Kumarin then intimidated the oligarch, threatening to hand him over to investigators, and began to extort money for silence, and Mr. Berezovsky agreed to their terms.
The publication notes that almost all of the alleged participants in the murder of Mr. Listyev named by Kolchin themselves died in criminal disputes or went missing, and only one is still wanted for fraud. At the same time, Glushchenko, who is in a pre-trial detention center in connection with a triple murder case in Cyprus, according to Fontanka.ru, is allegedly ready to cooperate with the investigation.
Boris Berezovsky, who received political refugee status in England and has been living in London for a long time, yesterday categorically denied the version of his involvement in the murder of Mr. Listyev. The UPC refused to comment on the situation. At the same time, information about Kolchin’s transfer to Moscow was confirmed by sources in law enforcement agencies in St. Petersburg, as well as one of Kolchin’s lawyers, Pavel Zhichkin. “Kolchin was transferred from St. Petersburg on September 24. According to my information, he is being held in Matrosskaya Tishina,” he said, refusing to say anything about the Listyev case.
Meanwhile, Yuri Skuratov, who held the post of Prosecutor General in 1995-1999, said yesterday that his subordinates were able to obtain certain information on both the customer and the perpetrators of this crime, but they were not allowed to advance by certain influential officials. At the same time, Mr. Skuratov noted that none of the names voiced by Kolchin appeared in the case materials and Mr. Berezovsky was not considered the mastermind of the murder.
42-year-old Yuri Kolchin, nicknamed Yura Bryansky, was detained in 2003 on charges of organizing the murder of Russian State Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova. She was shot dead in the entrance of her house in St. Petersburg in November 1998. In June 2005, the St. Petersburg City Court found Kolchin guilty and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.