MOSCOW – The body of a Russian lawmaker was found cemented in a barrel, and a former government official has been accused of ordering the killing over an $80 million debt, officials said Monday.
Mikhail Pakhomov, 37, went missing last week. He was a member of the local legislature in Lipetsk, a city some 350 km south of Moscow. Pakhomov was last seen last Tuesday when three unidentified men pushed him into a car outside a restaurant in Lipetsk and drove away.
Police said they suspected murder after they found Pakhomov’s jeans, one of his boots and his cellphone.
Russia’s Investigative Committee said that several suspects were detained, and that authorities found Pakhomov’s badly beaten body in a barrel of cement in a garage.
Russian television stations aired footage provided by police that showed a fragment of a barrel, pieces of concrete and officers carrying what appeared to be Pakhomov’s body on a stretcher and loading it into a vehicle.
The Investigative Committee said that Yevgeny Kharitonov is being held on suspicion of ordering the killing of Pakhomov, allegedly over the $80 million debt. Kharitonov is a former deputy minister for communal services in the Moscow region’s provincial government.
“We can say it is a money-related motive, namely Pakhomov’s debts to the mastermind. We can’t give you more detailed information at the moment,” Sergei Selishchev, deputy head of the Lipetsk region investigative department, said in a recorded briefing posted on the website of the Lipetsk police.
The committee’s spokesman, Vladimir Markin, said that one of the detained suspects told investigators that Kharitonov had told them that he had to recover the debt to advance his career.
“For Kharitonov, career was the main priority,” Markin said in a statement.
The suspects are also believed to have stolen belongings from Pakhomov worth about 400,000 rubles ($13,300).