I learned today that in 1997 the president of the Russian Hockey Federation was killed, presumably over the proceeds from duty- free vodka and cigarettes.
Valentin Sych was gunned down near his dacha outside Moscow on an April evening, The Moscow Times reported. www.themoscowtimes.com. The mastermind of the hit, a court found two years later, was disgruntled referee Alexander Artemyev. After sveral failed schemes, Artemyev hired teh brrther-in-law of one of his childhood friends who had grown up to be a hit man. The brother in law overslept, but still managed to get there in time for the killing, according to testimony.
This being Russia, of course, many insiders contested the official version of events. Somewhere there must have been a bigger fish above Artemyev who wriggled away. What is clear is that Russian President Boris Yeltsin had granted the Hockey Federation, like many other “charities” exicse tax exemptions on booze and smokes that were brining in more than $10 million a year, far more than enough to be worth killing for in the currency of the time.
This sort of bears thinking about as our press and politicians here in American heap opprobrium on bad old Vladimir Putin (Hillary: “He has no soul.”) The 1990s were not the good old days in Russia to anyone but a few consultants from Harvard. These days folks get the police to put their business rivals in jail, but the survival rate is far higher.
