Police and justice officials probing the separate killings of two arms industry executives in Moscow said on Monday they were looking at the possibility the crimes may be linked.
| "Duh, Holmes! D'ya think they might 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.
| "Watson, I believe there may be certain subtle similarities in these cases!" |
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."
| "It could also be space aliens, or perhaps mutants..." |
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 took over Almaz-Antei only in February, apparently tried to seize his briefcase and shot him after he resisted.
Other reports says that they left the briefcase and didn't take several thousand dollars he had on him. Interesting. |