Russian prosecutors on Wednesday charged a Chechen with the murder of United States journalist Paul Klebnikov, shot dead outside his Moscow offices in July last year.
Klebnikov (41) was the high-profile editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, which revealed the obscure, extravagant and sometimes criminal world of the country’s most wealthy businessmen. Shot nine times by at least one gunman in a passing car as he left his office, he died of his wounds in hospital.
Interfax reported a spokesperson for the prosecutor saying: ”One of the two residents of Chechnya … Muslim Ibragimov [also known as Kazbek Dukuzov], has been charged with the premeditated murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov.”
Ibragimov was arrested in Minsk on November 17, together with another Chechen, Valid Agayev, and extradited to Moscow by Belarussian authorities on Tuesday night. Prosecutors said Agayev’s role was still being investigated.
Klebnikov was the author of a book in Russian about the Chechen separatist movement, Conversations with a Barbarian, based on a series of conversations with Khozh-Akhmed Nukhayev, a former deputy prime minister in a Chechen separatist government. It argued that elements of the Chechen resistance were using Islamist ideology as a loose justification for their criminality.
His authorship of the book has fuelled speculation that the murder may have been some form of revenge attack, although there has been no evidence as yet to establish a motive for the murder, the first contract killing of a foreign journalist in Russia.
Some critics have dismissed the Chechen link as politically motivated and convenient.
Klebnikov reportedly told a friend just after he was shot that he could not think why he had been targeted.
Klebnikov’s magazine uncovered many of the more awkward truths about Russia’s wealthiest people.
Forbes published a”rich list” naming Moscow’s 33 billionaires at a time when the wealthy were increasingly in the sights of the Kremlin and prosecutors.
He also wrote a book about billionaire Boris Berezovksy, The Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism, published in 2001. – Guardian Unlimited Â