Orders to Kill

by Amy Knight

  Those who knew Klebnikov were surprised by the Procuracy’s claim that Nukhaev had ordered his killing, because Klebnikov’s book did not portray Nukhaev or Chechens in a bad light. The book’s publisher, Valerii Streletskii, voiced particular skepticism: “I cannot imagine what could have displeased Nukhaev about this book.”39 Journalist Anna Politkovskaya agreed: “the suggestion by the law-enforcement agencies that the perpetrators were Chechens taking revenge for a badly written book about the adventurist Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev is nonsense.”40 Nukhaev was a well-known Chechen businessman and politician, with deep ties to the criminal world. The so-called godfather of the Chechen mafia in Moscow, he was said to be the model for the book Icon (later made into a film) by Frederick Forsythe. Nukhaev, who at one point had been deputy prime minister of Chechnya, had in the nineties established several businesses and organizations promoting ventures, including oil, that would both be profitable for him and at the same time help Chechen militants in their struggle against Russia.41

  By this time, Nukhaev was implicated in numerous crimes—he had been arrested several times, but was always released—and was on the wanted list of Russian law-enforcement agencies. But he nonetheless had visited Moscow freely before he left Chechnya to live in Baku in 1997. This suggested that he had a covert arrangement with the FSB, which was using him for its own purposes. As one source observed: “The FSB pays close attention to Nukhaev’s activities within and outside of Russia.”42 Aside from the lack of an obvious motive, the theory that Nukhaev was the zakazchik in the Klebnikov killing was also thrown into question by reports that Nukhaev had been killed in Chechnya in early 2004, several months before Klebnikov was murdered.43 Whether or not those reports were true, Nukhaev completely disappeared and most probably has been dead for a very long time.

  Trials in the Klebnikov Case

  In May 2006, the three men charged in the Klebnikov murder were acquitted by a jury after a closed trial. Later that year, the Russian Supreme Court overturned the verdict and announced a new trial. But two of the accused Chechens who had earlier been exonerated—Vakhaev and Dukuzov—failed to show up for the retrial and the other defendant, Sadretdinov, was already in prison on other charges, so in 2007 the case was dropped. President Putin had told Klebnikov’s family in September 2005 that he knew who the killers were and that they would be brought to justice. But when the journalist’s wife and brother went to Moscow for a ceremony to honor him five years after his death, they saw nothing to encourage them. Klebnikov’s brother Peter could only say this: “It gets whittled down. They chip away at the resolve of the family and the people who care about it. It’s death by a thousand blows.”44

  The Klebnikov case was revived in 2013, with a new twist. In September of that year, former militia officer Dmitrii Pavliuchenkov, a defendant in court proceedings over the 2006 murder of Anna Politkovskaya, claimed that two of the accused in the latter case, former militia officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov and one Loma-Ali Gaitukaev, had enlisted him to trail not only Politkovskaya, but also Klebnikov in the days before his murder.45 The connection between the murders of Klebnikov and Politkovskaya was the prosecution’s suggestion that Gaitukaev, in both cases, was acting on orders from Berezovsky. A witness had supposedly heard Gaitukaev discussing plans to murder Klebnikov with Nukhaev, but the witness said it was clear that Nukhaev was only the middleman and that the orders came from abroad (i.e., Berezovsky).46

  It Is Easy to Blame the Dead

  By this time, investigators had long been leaking to the Russian media the theory that Berezovsky had ordered the Klebnikov murder from London and had used Nukhaev as a middleman. Given that he died in March 2013, it was all the more convenient to implicate Berezovsky because he could not challenge the accusations. The main thrust of the argument implicating Berezovsky was that Klebnikov had published an article for Forbes in 1996 (“Godfather of the Kremlin”) in which he painted Berezovsky as a crook with ties to the Chechen mafia and even suggested that he was behind the 1994 murder of journalist Vladislav Listev. Berezovsky was beside himself and in 2000 took Forbes to court in London for libel. (Forbes was forced to apologize for misrepresenting Berezovsky but was not subjected to fines.) Klebnikov then went on to expand his material on Berezovsky into a book with the same title as his article, which appeared in 2000.47

  Shortly before his death, Klebnikov was supposedly looking into Berezovsky’s tenure as deputy secretary of the Security Council and the Kremlin’s point man on Chechnya. There were reports that Berezovsky had funneled money designated for the reconstruction of Chechnya into his own pocket, and Klebnikov had expressed to a fellow journalist his interest in the matter. One of Klebnikov’s sources of information was a former vice-premier of Chechnya, Ian Sergun, but Sergun was also murdered, just two weeks before Klebnikov was killed. Berezovsky’s former security guard Sergei Sokolov claimed that after Klebnikov’s 1996 article appeared, Berezovsky told him in no uncertain terms that Klebnikov should be killed. (Sokolov’s statements became part of the evidence in the murder case.) Klebnikov’s brother Peter recalled that Klebnikov felt threatened by Berezovsky, and a business associate of Berezovsky in London told Forbes that Berezovsky had voiced to him the idea of killing Klebnikov.48

  Musa Klebnikov and Paul’s brother Peter told me when I met with them in July 2016 that there should be more investigation into the Sergun case and the relationship between Paul and Berezovsky, who they have not ruled out as the possible mastermind of Paul’s murder.49 But most of those who knew Berezovsky considered the idea that he would order the murder of Klebnikov to be far-fetched. Berezovsky was known to be passionate and often voiced feelings of revenge toward those who offended him; but Klebnikov’s writings, in their view, would hardly have motivated Berezovsky to have him murdered. Klebnikov’s article about Berezovsky came out seven years before his murder. His 2000 book on the same subject had mixed reviews and did not create much of a stir. Critics claimed that his book relied extensively on the disgruntled former chief of Yeltsin’s security guard Aleksandr Korzhakov, who was fired by Yeltsin in 1996. More importantly, Berezovsky had been living abroad since 2000 in France and then London, where he was at the mercy of his British hosts. It was hardly in his interests (or even his ability) to organize political murders in Russia, despite his possible connections to the Chechen mafia. As one observer noted, Berezovsky was “pathologically afraid” of having Britain’s security services focus on his ties with that group.50

  Endings Dragged Out

  In 2015, the chief investigator in the Klebnikov case announced on behalf of the Investigative Committee that their probe had come to an end because the three main suspects—Kazbek Dukuzov, his brother Magomed, and Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev—were out of reach. All were on the authorities’ wanted list. But in early 2016 the Procurator-General’s office overturned this decision and kept the case open, on the grounds that Sergei Khadzhikurbanov, in a penal colony for the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, might provide more information on the Klebnikov murder.51

  In the Klebnikov case, like those of many other political murders in Russia, investigators went through the motions of trying to solve the crime without really doing so. It was if they had been hired as actors in a play, where the scenario was already written. The fact that most trials in Russia are held in secret enables this process. Questions about evidence can be ignored. No one is held responsible for sloppy work, lost documentation, forced confessions, or the fact that key suspects and witnesses disappear. As Peter Klebnikov observed to me about the trial in his brother’s case: “It was a farce. There were many impediments to justice. The jurors were threatened, the judges changed, the shooters were released.”52

  Peter and Musa are still hopeful that there will be a resolution of the murder case, although they told me that they are concerned about the fact that time is running out. They have not been allowed access to important evidence that they think might lead to the mastermind and are frustrated by the communications they receive from Russian i
nvestigators, who they say are deeply divided about the case. As Musa told me, “they are not doing their job because their hands are tied.” She and Peter have not seen evidence of Putin’s involvement in the murder, but they are convinced that the order to assassinate Paul came from the upper echelons of power. They are also certain that the Chechens who were charged did in fact commit the crime. Of course their main goal is to have the mastermind identified and prosecuted. And that, sadly, may not happen, at least as long as the current regime remains in the Kremlin.

  Andrei Kozlov.

  (Photograph courtesy of ITAR-TASS Photo Agency/Alamy Stock Photo)

  Anna Politkovskaya.

  (Photograph courtesy of Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Alamy Stock Photo)

  6

  MAFIA-STYLE KILLINGS IN MOSCOW: KOZLOV AND POLITKOVSKAYA

  Why am I still alive? If I speak seriously about this, I would understand it as a miracle. It really is a miracle.

  Anna Politkovskaya, 2005

  Prelude

  Relations between Russia and the United States continued to flourish after their mutually declared partnership in the war on terror. In May 2002, President Bush traveled to Moscow, where he and Putin signed the Moscow Treaty on Strategic Offensive Reductions, in which the United States and Russia pledged to reduce their mutual nuclear arsenals by nearly two thirds within the next ten years. After the signing, Bush had this to say:

  President Putin and I today ended a long chapter of confrontation, and opened up an entirely new relationship between our countries. Mr. President, I appreciate your leadership. I appreciate your vision. I appreciate the fact that we’ve now laid the foundation for not only our governments, but future governments to work in a spirit of cooperation and a spirit of trust … I understand full well that the people of Russia have suffered at the hands of terrorists. And so have we. And I want to thank President Putin for his understanding of the nature of the new war we face together, and his willingness to be determined and steadfast and patient as we pursue this war together.1

  Apparently forgetting about Chechnya, a part of Russia, Bush added that “America welcomes the dramatic improvement in freedoms in Russia since Soviet days.”

  Bush visited Russia again at the end of May 2003, this time St. Petersburg, for the formal ratification of the Moscow Treaty on June 1. Again, he was effusive in his praise for Putin: “I’m honored to be here, Mr. President, and I’m honored to be with my good friend, Vladimir Putin.… President Putin and I have agreed to expand and strengthen high-level contacts and communications between our two governments.… In a recent address to the Russian Duma, President Putin committed to working for a sustainable democracy in Russia where human, political, and civil rights will be fully ensured. That is the vision of a strong leader.2

  The cordial relationship between Moscow and Washington would start to sour, however, when the Kremlin’s commitment to democracy was thrown into question by the high-profile arrest in October 2003 of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky, CEO of the Russian oil giant Yukos, was charged with fraud and tax evasion, but it was widely assumed that the charges were spurious and that the real reason for his arrest was his involvement in politics, which Putin considered a threat to his rule. (The arrest, orchestrated behind the scenes by Igor Sechin, head of Rosneft, also enabled Rosneft to take over many of Yukos’s assets.) Congress was quick to respond to the Khodorkovsky affair, with the Senate passing a resolution in December 2003, noting that his arrest raised questions about the selective application of law in Russia.3

  Then, of course, came the killing of Paul Klebnikov the following July, which drew Washington’s attention, particularly since he was an American. A few days after the murder, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf spoke ominously about Russia’s “dark side” and said the U.S. must insist on a thorough and open investigation of the case.4 And in early 2005, Hillary Clinton, then a senator from New York, Klebnikov’s home state, talked at great length about his murder in remarks she gave in the Senate.5 She said she had urged Bush to raise the case directly with Putin, but if Bush had in fact done so, it had little effect. 2006 would witness the most shocking and audacious Russian contract killings yet.

  Kozlov: A Promising Career Cut Short

  Andrei Kozlov was a superstar in the Russian banking world. After graduating at age twenty-four from the prestigious Moscow Institute of Finance in 1989, Kozlov was hired straightaway by the Central Bank of what was then the USSR. In 1991, after the Soviet collapse, he became director of the Securities Department at the Bank of Russia, where he operated at the nexus of relations between the government and private banks. By 1995, at only thirty, he had been elevated to a deputy chairman—an unprecedented feat, given that the Bank of Russia was conservative by nature—and in 1997 Kozlov was promoted to first deputy chairman.6

  Kozlov’s seemingly brilliant career suffered a setback in 1998 as a result of the financial crisis in Russia that year. A decline in oil prices and a general slowdown in the world economy had left the Russian government’s foreign-exchange reserves significantly depleted and caused a huge fiscal deficit. In August 1998, the government devalued the ruble, defaulted on domestic debt, and declared a moratorium on paying foreign debt. When the Central Bank allowed a floating exchange rate for the ruble in September, its value fell sharply. Kozlov had publicly urged individual investors in commercial banks to transfer their money to short-term government bonds in the state savings bank (Sberbank) in order to protect their investments. But in fact their investments lost more than half their value after the ruble was devalued and the government defaulted on its bonds.7

  By January 1999, the government admitted that it had made a mistake. There were reports in the media (unsubstantiated) that Kozlov and his colleagues in the securities department had siphoned off money from a $22.6 billion IMF bailout and put it in secret accounts. Kozlov resigned from the Central Bank, along with its chairman, Sergei Dubinin. When Kozlov left the bank, he reportedly called his subordinates together and said with a smile, “now you will see something you have never seen.” Much to their surprise, given that Kozlov never drank, he downed a glass of champagne.8

  Kozlov, who was by all accounts forceful and self-confident, bounced back quickly, going into the private sector as chairman of the board of the newly established Russkii Standart Bank. He then moved to Aeroflot’s new travel company, Mir Aeroflota, and later worked for the Washington-based Financial Services Volunteer Corps, which provided consulting services to banks. In April 2002, Sergei Ignatiev, the newly appointed chairman of the Russian Central Bank, invited Kozlov back as first deputy chairman. He soon achieved new prominence as an advocate of vigorous banking reform. But he also made a lot of enemies.

  Going After Illegal Money

  Kozlov’s responsibility at the Central Bank was supervision and enforcement of banking regulations, particularly those designed to curb money laundering. During the Yeltsin years, organized crime had completely infiltrated the banking sector, thus enabling vast sums of illegal money to flow out of the country readily. According to one report, twenty-five of Russia’s largest banks had links with organized crime by 1995. Although Putin presented himself as a law-and-order president who wanted to fight corruption, after he took office the Kremlin continued to use organized crime for its own purposes, which included using a number of smaller, low-profile banks to “wash” illegal financial gains in order to make them appear legitimate.9

  As first deputy of the Central Bank, Kozlov initiated a deposit-insurance system that filtered out banks that were unreliable with investors’ money, and he also revoked licenses of banks suspected of money laundering and other illicit practices. In the first six months of 2006, more than seventy private banks lost their licenses. Kozlov also became the “talking head” of the bank, instead of Ignatiev, who avoided publicity. In the words of one Russian journalist: “On the one hand, this suited the qualities and ambitions of Kozlov, who always took pleasure in giving interviews and ‘sho
ne’ in public. On the other hand, this arrangement suited Ignatiev and other leaders of the Central Bank. After all, the loudest and most public official always gets the bad things hung on him and in such cases is sacrificed for the sake of peace and quiet.”10

  In early September 2006, Kozlov and his colleagues announced new initiatives at a Russian Banking Association conference in Sochi. One was that auditing companies would share responsibilities for financial malfeasance on the part of banks and thus would be obliged to report to the Central Bank when they came across illegalities. Second, bankers who were found guilty of financial crimes would be banned from the banking profession for life. These new, harsh measures can hardly have endeared Kozlov to the banking community.11

  The Hit

  Just days later, on the evening of September 13, 2006, Kozlov left work to play in a soccer match among Central Bank employees at the Spartak Sports Complex in Moscow. The game ended at 8:30 and, shortly before 9 P.M., Kozlov exited the indoor arena and walked to his parked Mercedes with his driver, Aleksandr Semenov. Despite his high position in the Central Bank, Kozlov did not have his own bodyguard, so Semenov was the only one who accompanied him. Immediately after Kozlov got in the car, two men approached. One went straight to the window and shot Kozlov twice in the head. The other shot Semenov in the chest as he was still putting Kozlov’s belongings in the trunk. Semenov started to run back to the sports center, but the killer shot him in the back. He died almost immediately. Kozlov was rushed to the hospital, where doctors operated on him, but they could not save his life. He died in the early hours of the morning, leaving behind a pregnant wife and three children.12

  The killers, meanwhile, had escaped on foot through the heavily forested park that surrounded the complex, after discarding their weapons. Putin made no public statements on the murder for two days. On September 15, he called Sergei Ignatiev to his office and they talked for over an hour. Then came Aleksandr Bortnikov, at the time head of the FSB’s Department for Economic Security, and MVD chief Rashid Nurgaliev. Following another talk with Ignatiev, Putin finally spoke out and called the assassination “a sign of the exacerbation of economic crime.”13