Dzhabrailov Takes Snap Trip to Italy

Saying he feared for his life in the aftermath of an alleged assassination attempt on a top Moscow city official, hotel and retail mogul Umar Dzhabrailov left Russia for Italy on Saturday -- only to return on Monday.

Dzhabrailov has accused Iosif Ordzhonikidze -- who is in charge of the city's lucrative hotel, gambling and construction businesses -- of orchestrating Thursday's attack in an attempt to frame him.

The body of Dzhabrailov's first cousin Salavat Dzhabrailov, 30, was found near the burned-out getaway car.

Ordzhonikidze denied the allegations Monday, Interfax reported. Both Ordzhonikidze's office and the city's press service refused to comment further.

Dzhabrailov, who gave an interview to Kommersant on Thursday to explain his version of events, called the newspaper Saturday night to say he was not safe while his cousin remained under suspicion in the attack and he was going to Italy, Kommersant reported Monday.

On Monday he sounded a different note. "I'm in Petrovsky Passazh," Dzhabrailov, who has offices in the central Moscow shopping arcade, told Interfax. "If Petrovsky Passazh is in Italy, that means I'm in Italy."

"He really left, and he really returned," his aide Alyona Runikova confirmed by telephone.

Dzhabrailov said there was no way his cousin could have attempted to kill Ordzhonikidze, insisting instead that he was kidnapped and killed.

"It was necessary for someone for my name to be associated with this incident and that after the pseudo assassination attempt ... for the body of my cousin to be found," he said at a news conference Monday, Interfax reported. He added that he did not plan to leave Russia.

Two masked men opened fire on Ordzhonikidze's armored Volvo as he was being driven to work Thursday. In an ensuing shootout with the official's bodyguard, one of the gunmen was hit and then pulled into the attackers' BMW before it sped away.

Police found Salavat Dzhabrailov's body, but said the bullet that killed him had passed through his body, making it difficult to establish whether he was the gunman shot by the bodyguard.

Umar Dzhabrailov said Monday that his relatives in Chechnya, where his cousin's body was sent for burial, were not given the results of an autopsy.

The Moscow city prosecutor's office, which is investigating the incident, did not return repeated calls Monday.

Dzhabrailov, who told Kommersant last week that Ordzhonikidze had been trying to stop the city government from cooperating with him, said Monday that he is not currently involved in any city projects.

Dzhabrailov is president and founder of the Plaza Group, which owns or manages more than a dozen companies in Moscow dealing with real estate, hotels, banking, advertising and security.

The Plaza Group, which provided managing services to the Radisson Slavjanskaya hotel, was notified Friday that its services were no longer needed.

Dzhabrailov said Monday the decision was made by the hotel's new director, whose appointment was pushed forward by Ordzhonikidze. He added that lawyers were looking into the issue.

In the mid-1990s, Dzhabrailov was deputy general director of Intourist-RadAmer Hotel and Business Center, a joint venture with the city, which at that time ran the hotel together with American businessman Paul Tatum's Americom.

Tatum was killed in 1996, and suspicion fell on Dzhabrailov, who was locked in a business struggle with Tatum at the time. The killing was never solved.