Killers Don't Surrender, They Die
// Boris Goldman, Head of the NFQ Advertising Agency, Was Murdered on the Second Attempt
An Explosion
Boris Goldman, general manager of the NFQ group of advertising companies, was blown up yesterday evening in Moscow. Two of his employees and the murderer who placed bomb were also killed in the explosion. Four suspected accomplices of the murderer were quickly arrested.
Boris Goldman founded New Found Quality (NFQ) in 1992 as a full-service advertising agency: the company provided a whole package of advertising services from design and placement of advertising to production of souvenirs and graphic arts. In July 2003, Boris Goldman won the III annual national media prize “Media Manager of Russia 2003” in the “Advertising Industry” category. Until last year, NFQ was among the 30 largest Russian advertising agencies, but it had recently lost many important clients, including Ramstore and Krasny Vostok.
The explosion occurred at 20:00 at the intersection of Vavilova and Dmitriya Ulyanova streets. The Volvo S80 in which Mr. Goldman was riding and the Mercedes jeep with his guards, which were heading towards the city center, stopped at the traffic light at the intersection. At that moment, a motorcyclist wearing a small backpack pulled up to the Volvo. He whipped off the backpack and placed it on the roof of the Volvo. Only one of the guards sitting in the jeep reacted to what was obviously a bomb. However, by the time he opened the door and jumped out, the motorcyclist had managed to either pull the pin or close the circuit of the wires leading to the backpack. The bomb did not explode for several seconds. However, this did not save the killer; he had literally driven only a couple of meters away from the mined car, when he was caught in the blast and killed. His mutilated body was thrown across the street onto the sidewalk. According to experts from the Main Administration of Internal Affairs (GUVD) working at the scene of crime, the bomb was not very powerful but had a directional cumulative action. “The bomb was probably homemade and consisted of plastit enclosed in a metal casing,” one of the experts told Kommersant. “The blast pierced the limousine's armored roof and burned everything inside. All three people in the Volvo were killed. Besides Boris Goldman, the unknown murderer's victims included his driver and his personal bodyguard. The guard who had reacted to the bomb's placement was slightly injured. A passerby was also injured.
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| Photo: Valery Levitin |
| After the first murder attempt, Boris Goldman told Kommersant that the Prosecutor’s Office suspected him of staging it. |
Mr. Goldman changed to the armored Volvo after an attempt on his life on October 20, 2003, also on Dmitriya Ulyanova Street. As he told Kommersant, that time he did not suffer when his Toyota Land Cruiser exploded, but his driver was injured. In an interview with Kommersant at the time, Mr. Goldman said that the murder attempt was probably connected with a conflict between NFQ's founders. Several of the company's senior managers had left the company, taking major clients with them. Mr. Goldman also noted that instead of carrying out a thorough investigation, the Prosecutor's Office was advancing the theory that he had staged the attempt himself. “High-ranking officials of the district Prosecutor's Office told this to my second guard in my presence. And then they repeated it more than once, although they only hinted about it to me.”
Obviously not expecting protection from the authorities, Boris Goldman arranged it himself by leasing an armored limousine from OOO Armortech for $800 a day. Armortech employees told Kommersant that the Volvo had so-called capsular armor; i.e., even the roof was protected. However, it was much thinner on top than on the sides. “The killers obvious knew this,” they said at Armortech.
Unlike the past attempt, the police worked swiftly this time. The Moscow office of the GUVD told Kommersant that four suspects had been arrested while the trail was still hot. The detectives located them thanks to a walkie-talkie found intact on the killer's body. In the suspects' car they found a walkie-talkie tuned to the same frequency as the killer's. The investigators also believe that the killer was working blind. The people who hired him promised that all he had to do was put the bomb at full cock and he would have time to get away before the blast. In actual fact, the bomb was an instantaneous device. In this case the organizers of the crime probably learned from the experience of the murder of deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Viktor Novoselov in October 1999. He was also blown up by a bomb placed on the roof of a Volvo, but that bomb contained a delay mechanism. The killer had time to escape, but was caught and betrayed his accomplices. This time, the explosion killed both the victim and the criminal. However, it obviously didn't cut off the trail to the organizers of the crime.
Sergei Dyupin and Aleksandr Zheglov
All the Article in Russian as of Apr. 13, 2004
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