- Date
- 01/07/2004
- First
- Maxim
- Surname
- MAXIMOV
- Sex/Age
- M, 41
- Incident
- homicide
- Motive
- J
- Place
- town
- Job
- journalist
- Medium
- Federal District Plus
- St Petersburg
- Street, Town, Region
- St Petersburg
- Freelance
- no
- Local/National
- local, Gorod magazine
- Other Ties
- Cause of Death
- murder
- Legal Qualification
- 105.1 (murder)
- Impunity
- investigation
[Updated 16 October 2010]
The Investigative Committee, which now answers directly to the President (until recently it answered to the Prosecutor General), has given assurances to a visiting delegation from the CPJ that it will give serious consideration to 19 deaths that the CPJ believes to have been murders linked to the professional activities of the deceased journalist. One name on this list is that of Maxim Maximov.
(See agency and Russian media reports on CPJ press conference)
MAIN ENTRY [missing]
“THEY BEAT THEIR OWN AND FEAR NO ONE”
(Originally published in "Gorod" on April 5, 2004;
translated for CPJ by Ekaterina Lysova)
In the period of one week, the apartment of an investigator with the Main Department of Investigations [in the St. Petersburg Interior Ministry] was broken into twice, in both cases by police officers. Strange that this may be, in both cases, the Central Federal District’s prosecutor’s office found no criminality in the police actions, and refused to open a criminal case into the matter. However, the investigator (we will call her N for safety concerns) did not agree with the prosecutor. Last week, the Smolninsky Federal Court of the Central Federal District held a hearing to review N’s appeal, and ruled that the prosecutor’s decision was illegal and unfounded.
COLLEAGUES AND BANDITS
Here is N’s account of the events. On February 19, 2004, about half an hour after midnight, unknown men smashed the front door and broke into her apartment. One of them, in response to her question, “What’s going on?” aimed a pistol at her stomach and ordered her to “shut up.” This event reminded her of an armed assault. Only after a uniformed police officer came through her door did investigator N realize that the men were not criminals, but her colleagues.
N showed her police identification, introduced herself, and asked her uninvited guests to do the same; she also asked them to explain the reason why they broke into her home. But, in response, all she received was a torrent of vulgarities. No one showed her any documents. One of the men said that “the deputy of the Regional Department of Internal Affairs Solovykh is working here,” and if she kept complaining, she would be taken to police station No. 76. The investigator once again asked that the men leave her apartment. When they were leaving, one of them kicked her in the stomach.
N then saw the police officers break into a neighboring apartment, which was rented by a Chechen-Azerbaijani family, take the people out on the street—without allowing them to even put their jackets on—and drive them away. The investigator dialed 02 [the emergency phone number] right away. The police team that arrived refused to take down her account of the break-in and only
filled out some form.
The same day, N filed an appeal with the city prosecutor, asking him to open a criminal investigation against the police team headed by Solovykh on the charge of illegally breaking into her apartment. But while she was waiting for the appeal’s result, the story unfolded in an unexpected way. Six days later, on February 25, after coming back home from work at 9:30 p.m., the investigator noticed that the lock of her apartment door was broken, the door itself was open, and the lights were on. N found out from a neighbor that this time around, it was a drunken local police officer by the name of Shapovalov who had broken into her home, just an hour before. According to N’s neighbors, the officer was looking for something in her apartment, and when he found a file full of documents, he left with them. For some reason, he also took the neighbor’s sister and niece away with him.
The investigator dialed 02 again, where she was told that a team from police station No. 76 would soon be dispatched. When N objected, explaining that the officers who first broke into her home worked at none other than police station No.76, the 02 operator on duty rejected her request to send a different police team. Had N not been an investigator, she would have had to make many more calls and explain her story time and again. But since she was one, she first reported what happened directly to the head of her department, and then contacted other appropriate officials in the [Interior Ministry’s] Main Department of Investigations.
[…]
-------------------------------
В Петербурге пропал специальный корреспондент журнала “Город“ Максим Максимов. Последний раз его видели в конце июня - начале июля, однако с тех пор журналист не появлялся ни у себя дома, ни на работе. Коллеги пропавшего и забили тревогу, когда М. Максимов не сдал очередной материал в номер журнала. Выдвинутая первоначально версия о том, что журналист внезапно мог уехать в отпуск, оказалась несостоятельной. Ему пытались дозвониться, однако ни мобильный, ни домашний телефоны не отвечали. Поисками пропавшего журналиста занялись его коллеги из журнала “Город“ и правоохранительные органы. Прокуратура Центрального района Санкт-Петербурга возбудила уголовное дело по факту исчезновения М. Максимова. Уголовное дело возбуждено по признакам преступления, предусмотренного частью 1 статьи 105 УК (“Убийство“). Заявление об исчезновении Максимова поступило в 78-й отдел милиции Центрального РУВД 9 июля. Материалы проверки по розыску были направлены в прокуратуру Центрального района, и сотрудники прокуратуры нашли достаточно оснований полагать, что журналист был убит. В своих публикациях журналист затрагивал конфликтные темы - например, передел сфер влияния в криминальном мире, деятельность “черных маклеров“. Последние публикации Максимова связаны с делом об убийстве Галины Старовойтовой. 28 июля на парковке одной из гостиниц во второй половине дня был найден автомобиль Ford-Escort, принадлежащий Максимову. По данным ГУВД Санкт-Петербурга и Ленинградской области, машину опознал бывший сотрудник милиции, который запомнил ее номер из сообщений СМИ. В ГУВД отметили, что автомобиль был подготовлен к продаже. Коллеги Максимова нашли его сотовый телефон.