- Date
- 09/03/2000
- First
- Artyom
- Surname
- BOROVIK
- Sex/Age
- M, 40
- Incident
- not confirmed
- Motive
- ?J
- Place
- airport
- Job
- journalist
- Medium
- TV/print
- Federal District Plus
- Moscow
- Street, Town, Region
- Sheremetyevo 1, Moscow
- Freelance
- no
- Local/National
- national, Sovershenno sekretno
- Other Ties
- Cause of Death
- not confirmed, air crash
- Legal Qualification
- 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 Artyom Borovik.
(See agency and Russian media reports on CPJ press conference)
MAIN ENTRY
On 9 March 2000 Artyom Borovik, president of the Sovershenno sekretno publishing house, and eight others died at Sheremetyevo 1 airport outside Moscow when the plane in which they were flying to Kiev crashed on takeoff.
Also on board the Yak-40, a jet with seats for 20-30 passengers, were Zia Bazhayev, a well known businessman and president of the Alliance oil company, two of his aides and the five-person crew. (There would later be a suggestion that Borovik was discussing a partial sale of his publishing concern to Bazhayev.)
Official investigators treated the disaster as an accident and offered various suggestions as to the cause: ice on the wings, disregard for standard instructions and poor pilot response to the plane's subsequent behaviour. The investigations department at the Versiya weekly, part of the Sovershenno sekretno group, expressed dissatisfaction with the official investigation and undertook their own research. The key simulation tests were finally paid for, in September, not by the government but Group Alliance.
The findings of the official commission were made public on 4 June 2001. Two members of the commission would not sign the conclusions contained there. Journalists from Sovershenno sekretno and Versiya continued their investigation, proposing that the catastrophe resulted from someone's attempts to strike at Borovik, or Bazhayev. While pointing to shortcomings in the official commission's findings their work also left as many questions unanswered.