The Hindu : International : Crusader who rattled the neo-rich

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Sunday, Jul 11, 2004

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International

Crusader who rattled the neo-rich

By Vladimir Radyuhin

Paul Klebnikov

MOSCOW, JULY 10. A prominent investigative journalist, who compiled a list of Russia's richest people, was gunned down in Moscow on Friday in what police said looked like a contract killing.

Paul Klebnikov, chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, was shot in the chest four times at point-blank range as he was leaving his office in Moscow on Friday night. He died later in an ambulance.

Mr. Klebnikov rattled the Russian business world earlier this year when he published a list of Russia's 100 wealthiest business people, including 36 billionaires, most of whom had made their fortunes during the murky and crime-ridden sell-off of public assets in the 1990s.

According to the magazine, the wealth of Russia's 36 billionaires equals a quarter of the country's gross domestic product, or $110 billions. Mr. Klebnikov had also succeeded in unearthing details of exactly what assets they held and how they had earned their money.

Police said Mr. Klebnikov's "professional activity" was the most likely reason for his murder. This suggests that the journalist was killed either in revenge for casting limelight on some prominent people who would rather stay in the shadows or in a pre-emptive strike to stop him making further revelations. Mr. Klebnikov was planning to compile lists of Russia's super-rich on a regular basis. "A businessman included in such a list may well become a target for law-enforcement agencies," a Russian billionaire, who asked not to reveal his name, commented after the Forbes list was published in May.

The man who headed the Forbes list with $15.2 billions, the oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkosky, is now in jail on charges of fraud and tax evasion.

A descendant of Russian émigrés in the U.S., Mr. Klebnikov was born in New York in 1963 and was a U.S. citizen. He made his name in Russia after publishing a book on Boris Berezovsky, the media and oil magnate who fled to Britain after Vladimir Putin became President. The book, "Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism," was a damning condemnation of Russian capitalism.

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