American journalist murdered

last updated 8 January 2015

Moscow

Paul Klebnikov, the American editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, was gunned down this week in a gangland-style killing outside his office. Klebnikov, 41, was a highly respected journalist who had been unsparing in his coverage of Russian tycoons’ links to organized crime. Four years ago, he made an enemy of billionaire exile Boris Berezovsky after writing the book Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia. Just two months ago, he revealed the dubiously gained wealth of many other Russians when Forbes published a list of the country’s 100 richest people. “It was clearly an assassination,” Russian political analyst Yevgeny Vittenberg told the Los Angeles Times. “Most likely, his death is related to the billionaires list. Someone did not want to be exposed in such a way.”