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Double Murder Shocks Arms Industry |
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(Source: Gazeta.ru; issued June 9, 2003)
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MOSCOW --- The murders of two top executives within one day have sent shock waves through Russia’s arms industry. Police and justice officials probing the separate killings of two industry employees in Moscow said on Monday they were looking at the possibility the crimes may be linked.
Igor Klimov, acting director general of Russia's largest anti-aircraft missile maker Almaz-Antei, was gunned down by men in camouflage uniforms outside his central Moscow home on Friday as he left for work.
Then just after midnight on Friday Sergei Shchitko, commercial director of an Almaz-Antei subsidiary, was shot in the head by a lone gunman after stopping his car in Serpukhov, outside Moscow, on his way home. Both men were killed with silenced pistols. Asked if investigators were looking at the possibility of a link between the two crimes, Prosecutor Sergei Abrosimov of the prosecutors' office in Serpukhov replied: ''Yes, among other theories.''
Almaz-Antei, a key player in Russia's huge arms industry, was formed by a presidential decree merging more than 40 of the country's air defence system producers. The firm was aiming for annual export sales of over $1 billion this year.
Shareholders were due to appoint a permanent CEO later this month and Klimov, aged 41 and a former foreign intelligence officer, was among the candidates. Shchitko, 51, was commercial director of the open-joint-stock company RATEP that produces electronic communications devices for the arms industry and other sectors, and is part of the Almaz-Antei holding.
Interfax learnt from a source in Moscow Region's law-enforcement agencies that the murder was committed at 2355 Moscow time on Friday. Local residents, who heard what sounded like gunshots, alerted the police. They discovered Sergei Shchitko's body, with three bullet wounds to his head in his own car, near a cafe.
The murders of Igor Klimov and Sergei Shchitko are ''more likely than not links in the same chain'', the source in the law-enforcement agencies told Interfax. ''So should the situation warrant it, the two cases will be looked at as one,'' the source added.
Contract killings of businessmen, and sometimes political figures, have become commonplace in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 sparked cut-throat competition for control of its massive resources and industry.
But murders of top managers in state-owned weapons producers, which generate billions of dollars in exports every year, are extremely rare.
Interfax news agency quoted police as saying the gunmen who attacked Klimov, who only took over Almaz-Antei in February, apparently tried to seize his briefcase and shot him after he resisted and nearly got hold of the pistol.
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