ESTONIAN NEWSPAPERS OFFER DIFFERENT REASONS FOR BUSINESSMAN’S MURDER

Baltic News Service
May 26, 2004

TALLINN, May 26 — Citing unnamed sources, major dailies in Estonia
on Wednesday held out different versions of the reason behind the
assassination of the well-known Russian-speaking businessman Gennadi
Ever in Russia the day before.

According to the Postimees daily, the killing may be the revenge
of the Estonian underworld for Ever’s unfulfilled promises to local
crime lords.

Sources speaking to the newspaper on condition of anonymity suggested
that Ever’s talkativeness, especially among people considered to be
leaders of the Estonian underworld, may have sealed his fate.

“Ever enjoyed their attention, he wanted to look influential and
authoritative,” a police source said.

Police sources say one of the promises that Ever, a member of the
previous lineup of the Tallinn city council, gave but never fulfilled
was a promise to alleged underworld boss Harun Dikayev several years
ago to obtain all necessary permits to build a mosque in Tallinn.
There is no mosque in the Estonian capital to this day.

The other possible reason may be linked to Ever’s businesses in Russia,
Postimees reported.

As the newspaper was told, Ever’s partner in restaurant business
in Pskov was an ethnic Armenian businessman known as Rubik. Rubik
was active in Estonia in the early 1990s, unofficially handling the
bookkeeping for local underworld figure Vartan Sarkisyan, who was
murdered in 1994.

Rubik, who moved to Russia after the murder of Sarkisyan, was
assassinated in Pskov two months ago.

“It cannot be ruled out that Ever got into the way of the local
underworld,” a police source said.

Eesti Paevaleht meanwhile is linking Ever’s murder to the gunning
down of Estonian media businessman Vitali Haitov in front of his
Tallinn home in 2001. Sources told the newspaper that Ever may have
been killed by the underworld for being too open-mouthed and telling
his acquaintances how he ordered the murder of Haitov from Dikayev,
and ethnic Chechen. Having heard about this, Dikayev allegedly pledged
to have Ever killed, Eesti Paevaleht said.

The report said it was namely for this reason that Ever last fall
sold most of his business interests and real estate in Estonia and
headed for Russia.

“Since the trial of the murder of Vitali Haitov is still going on,
the topic remains on the agenda,” a police source who investigated
the murder of Haitov said.

Ever was killed with shots from a Kalashnikov assault rifle in the
courtyard of a house in the Russian regional capital Pskov Tuesday
morning.

The killer left the rifle equipped with a silencer on the scene of
crime and fled in a car which was later abandoned and set on fire.