All news

Investigative Committee asks Spain and Switzerland to help find a suspected killer

The Russian Investigative Committee asks Spain and Switzerland to help establish the whereabouts of a suspect

MOSCOW, February 7 (Itar-Tass) — The Russian Investigative Committee asked Spain and Switzerland to help establish the whereabouts of a person suspected of involvement in the assassination attempt  of Samar region court’s judge Lyubov Drozdova in autumn of 2008, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Itar-Tass on Tuesday.

"The Investigative Committee's department for the Samara region requested Swiss and Spanish police to help find Vladimir Kirillov, one of the defendants in the case over the assassination attempt  of the chairwoman of the Samara regional   court," Markin said.

The Russian investigators ascertained that Kirillov had bank accounts and real estate in Spain and bank accounts in Switzerland.

Earlier, Markin said "investigators think that Drozdova was attacked following the ruling by the Samara regional court on the illegitimacy of Kirillov's transactions to alienate land plots in a Samara district.

"The investigators ascertained that Kirillov promised Sergei Afrikyan to pay at least 100,000 dollars for this crime. To carry out the contact hit, the latter purchased a Margolin 5.6-mm pistol and rounds of ammunition. He was tailing Drozdova from the place where she lived to her office for a week, in order to study her route," the spokesman said.

"At 09:22, on November 25, 2008, seeing that the chairwoman left the entrance of her apartment building and began walking toward her service car, Afrikyan fired his pistol, wounding the judge in the stomach.

"In early December 2008, Kirillov passed him at least 1.5 million roubles for the commission of the crime," Markin said.

Drozdova convalesced. She was discharged from hospital on February 6, 2009 and returned to work.