- Date
- 09/06/2004
- First
- Paul
- Surname
- KLEBNIKOV
- Sex/Age
- M, 41
- Incident
- homicide
- Motive
- J
- Place
- office/street
- Job
- chief editor
- Medium
- Federal District Plus
- Moscow
- Street, Town, Region
- Dokukin St, Moscow
- Freelance
- no
- Local/National
- foreign, Forbes-Russia
- Other Ties
- US citizen
- Cause of Death
- shot, contract killing
- Legal Qualification
- 105 (murder)
- Impunity
- trial, acquittal, 01 May 2006
[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 Paul Klebnikov.
(See agency and Russian media reports on CPJ press conference)
MAIN ENTRY
Paul Klebnikov (NB, Russian transcription, Khlebnikov), the editor-in-chief of Forbes-Russia, the Russian version of the US Forbes magazine, was gunned down in Moscow on 9 July 2004. Several shots were fired at Khlebnikov when he was leaving his office at 9.50 pm. Khlebnikov was rushed to hospital and died there at around midnight.
On 10 July Chairman of the Duma security committee Vladimir Vasilyev said that investigators did not have records that Khlebnikov had been receiving threats. The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating two scenarios, one of them linked to Khlebnikov’s professional activities as a journalist and editor, Vasilyev said.
At the crime scene, nine shells and one bullet of 9 mm calibre were found. Several other items that may be connected to the crime were also removed. Questioning of witnesses is underway. Medical, biological and ballistic tests have been scheduled.
CJES, 27 (2004)
“THE GOLDEN HUNDRED - RUSSIA’S RICHEST PEOPLE OF 2004”
By Paul Klebnikov and Kirill Vishnepolsky
(Originally published in Forbes Russia on May 13, 2004;
translated and republished by Forbes.com on July 22, 2004)
[…]
While Russian capitalism may be highly dynamic, it can hardly be called well developed— one symptom of that is the extraordinary concentration of capital. The combined net worth of Forbes Russia’s “Golden Hundred” is $136.9 billion. In the autumn of 1996, [tycoon Boris] Berezovsky declared to the Financial Times that he and six other individuals controlled 50 percent of Russia’s economy. Berezovsky was exaggerating, but there was more than a grain of truth in his words. Today, much of that concentration of capital remains. According to the World Bank, Russia’s 23 largest business companies (almost all of them are present on our list) account for 57 percent of the country’s industrial production.
Russia has more billionaires in proportion to gross domestic product than any other major economy—36 individuals in relation to a GDP of $458 billion. Though it would be wrong to correlate net worth to GDP (the former is a question of capital, the second of revenue), comparing the two gives an indirect indication of the degree of concentration of wealth in a country. The fact that the combined net worth of Russia’s 36 billionaires ($110 billion) is equivalent to 24 percent of GDP speaks volumes.
When Forbes published its most recent list of the world’s billionaires, in February of this year, the U.S. was the undisputed leader in the number of Excerpts from the work of journalists slain in Russia since 2000. billionaires. The combined net worth of America’s 277 billionaires was $651 billion—equivalent to 6 percent of America’s GDP of $11 trillion. The second- highest number of billionaires could be found in Germany—52 billionaires in a country with a GDP of $2.1 trillion. And Japan, with the world’s second-largest economy and a GDP of $3.7 trillion, counted fewer billionaires than Russia—only 22 people.
Russia’s capital is not only concentrated in the hands of a relatively small group of individuals, it is also highly concentrated in one part of the country—the city of Moscow. According to Forbes estimates, all but three of Russia’s 36 billionaires either live in Moscow or have made their fortunes in companies based in the city. No other city in the world can boast such a number of home-grown billionaires—even New York could boast only 31 billionaires, according to the latest Forbes list of the world’s billionaires.
INHERITED WEALTH
When we calculate the fortunes of the wealthiest Americans—those included on the “Forbes 400” list—we consider whether the bulk of an individual’s fortune is inherited or not. The fact that inherited fortunes account for just 20 percent of the “Forbes 400” speaks of the ability of the U.S. economy to reinvent itself rather than to rely simply on the achievements of past generations. Naturally, since Russia emerged from communism just 13 years ago, one cannot speak of inherited family fortunes. But most of the members of Forbes Russia’s “Golden Hundred” list have inherited natural resources and enterprises of an entire country—the Soviet Union. This kind of inheritance forms the basis of the net worth of 66 members of our list. Only 34 individuals made their fortunes by starting some fundamentally new business—mostly in the telecommunications sector, construction, and food and beverage production, or by the creation of retail chains. The scarcity of new sources of wealth in Russia indicates to what extent the Russian economy still relies on the achievements of the past. Finally, the members of Forbes Russia’s “Golden Hundred” list are remarkably similar in terms of biography and personal characteristics.
The average member of our list is a 47-year-old male who was born outside Moscow but received his higher education in the Soviet capital. With the legalization of private trading in 1988, the typical member of the “Golden Hundred” made a small fortune importing personal computers. Several years later, he branched out into banking and raw material exports. Today, he typically owns a majority stake in an oil or metal company. He is married and spends a good part of the year in Western Europe or North America, where he settled with his wife and children in the late 1990s.
[…]
(Reprinted with permission of “Forbes Russia” and “Forbes”.)