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Saturday 20th of April 2024, 10:33 CET |
| Head of leading Ukrainian fishing company murdered |
December 23, 2002
Associated Press
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Posted by HW on April 20, 2024
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Arktika director killed
The director of a top Ukrainian fishing company was killed by an unidentified gunman, the Interior Ministry said Monday.
Valery Kravchenko, the 47-year old director of the Arktika company that owns 14 fishing trawlers along with the Black Sea port of Illichivsk, died of gunshot wounds to the stomach and head, said Interior Ministry spokesman Henady Hrebnev.
Contract killing
Kravchenko's body was found late Sunday in his garage in the southern city of Odessa. Officials have launched an investigation and no further details were immediately available, Hrebnev said. He refused to speculate on possible motives for the crime.
The killer waited for Kravchenko's car to approach his garage. He fired a pistol at him when Kravchenko got out of the car, killing him with three shots in what police officials described as a contract hit, the Interfax news agency reported.
Kravchenko has headed Arktika, which employs more than 1,500 people, since 1993. Along with the trawler fleet, Arktika owns two cruise ships, the Taras Shevchenko and the Odessa, the Interfax news agency reported.
Head of fisheries
Ukrainian parliament member Yuri Karmazin said Kravchenko's killing could be linked to his expected appointment to the post of the head of the fisheries department of the Ukrainian government.
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"Certain forces were very much afraid that he would be put in charge of the industry," Karmazin told reporters, according to the Interfax news agency.
Business dispute
Kravchenko's killing could also be linked to a business dispute between Arktika and the Khimoil company, Karmazin said. He said Kravchenko told him he had received threats from the Khimoil owner, Interfax reported.
Another Ukrainian businessman, Mykola Glushko, the head of a grain elevator in the southern Mykolaiv region, was also killed Sunday in his house along with his wife by an unidentified assailant, said Elena Danilchenko, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office of the Mykolaiv region.
Danilchenko said the investigation was started but wouldn't give any further details.
Contract killings have become a regular practice of settling disputes in Ukraine and other ex-Soviet republics as criminal clans vie for control over profitable businesses. |
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