The director of the Rossiya Hotel beside Red Square, the largest hotel in Europe, was gunned down at his home Friday in what appears to be Moscow's first big contract killing of the New Year.
Yevgeny Tsimbalistov, 49, was shot dead with at least two bullets to the head and chest as he left his high-rise apartment block on Ulitsa Bolshiye Kamenshchiki in southeastern Moscow, a police spokesman said. Tsimbalistov's body was discovered at the foot of a staircase by his driver at about 10 a.m. Friday.
NTV television reported that police found shell casings from a Makarov pistol at the rear entrance to the building. There were no witnesses, and no arrests have been made, police said.
Tsimbalistov is the second leading hotelier to be murdered in less than two months and the third executive in Moscow's rough-and-tumble hotel business to die within two years.
The 3,071-room Rossiya hotel is in a prime location overlooking the Kremlin and St. Basil's Cathedral. But it has been dogged by controversy. Tsimbalistov was appointed director after his predecessor was wounded by an attacker wielding an ax.
Many of the residents at the dead man's apartment block were unaware of the killing as they arrived home from work. "No one seems to have heard anything, but then it's not so hard to fit a pistol with a silencer," said one resident.
Both lifts were out of order Thursday, possibly explaining why Tsimbalistov had taken the roundabout route via the stairwell from his apartment on the fourth floor, instead of using the elevator.
RTR television reported that Tsimbalistov's bodyguard, who would normally accompany the businessman from his home every morning, was missing Thursday.
The 12-story concrete and glass hotel complex was opened in 1967 to accommodate delegates to Communist Party congresses and at the time was the world's largest hotel. It remains the biggest in Europe.
Despite its prestigious location, the hotel is not up to Western standards and has in recent times gained a reputation as being infested with rats and cockroaches. In 1994 the Moscow sanitary authorities threatened to close it down for fumigation.
Moscow City Hall, which owns the hotel, announced plans a year ago to let New York property tycoon Donald Trump modernize the complex. The project's cost was put at $800 million, but so far nothing has come of the plan.Knight Frank, an international property consulting firm based in Great Britain, has been consulting City Hall on how best to reorganize the Rossiya hotel, the consulting company said.
On Friday, hotel staff were hesitant to talk about the killing. One Rossiya employee hinted the murder could be connected to a struggle for control over the hotel. "There is a fight going on there because it is a prime spot," said the employee, who did not want to be identified.
Other employees at the hotel said Friday that there was no obvious conflict over the management of the hotel, which they said Tsimbalistov ran smoothly.
"I often came into contact with him," said the supervisor of the store in the hotel foyer. "You could raise any matter with him, and it would always get dealt with."
"I have heard only good things about him from the staff since the news came out," said another hotel employee. "That's usually a pretty good indicator of how someone did their job."
The general director of another big Soviet-era hotel complex, Sovincenter, was shot dead with his driver and bodyguard in November. And in 1996 U.S. citizen Paul Tatum, a co-owner of the Radisson Slavjanskaya hotel and business center, was shot dead as he entered the metro station near the hotel. No one has been charged with either murder.
According to official police figures, there were 1,332 murders
in Moscow in 1997, 15 of which were confirmed as contract killings,
but police admit the real number of contract killings was
probably higher.