A Federal Security Service officer has been charged with hiring an assassin to murder a businessman in 2011, a news report said Monday.
The victim, Idris Fayzullin, worked in the aerospace industry and was killed as part of a scheme to defraud him of a manufacturing facility in the Moscow region, Kommersant reported.
Investigators believe FSB Colonel Ivan Ugarov met with Fayzullin's assistant in 2010 and discovered he was deeply in debt and a suspect in a case involving the embezzlement of funds earmarked to find the cause of two crashes involving MiG-29 aircraft in 2008.
Ugarov orchestrated a plan, involving FSB colleague Andrei Leletko and a local realtor, to steal a building that Fayzullin was planning on selling to pay off his debts.
The conspirators modified a contract obtained by Fayzullin's assistant as a counterfeit bill of sale of the building.
Ugarov tried to have Fayzullin thrown in jail in connection with the MiG-29 crashes, but facing a lack of evidence he paid a drug addict to throw acid in Fayzullin's face in order to sell the building while Fayzullin was in the hospital.
Fayzullin suffered only minor injuries and was soon discharged. The plotters hired another addict for $9,000 who shot and killed Fayzullin with a hunting rifle.
The FSB officers then killed the assassin to cover their tracks after learning he had been implicated in the murder by authorities.
Ugarov now faces a charge of organizing a contract killing and faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Leletko was charged with murder in the case last year.
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