MOSCOW, October 1 (RIA Novosti) – The administrative head of a city in Russia’s Ural Mountains was charged on Tuesday with banditry and being an accomplice to murder after he allegedly ordered a reputed criminal gang to kill two business rivals, the RAPSI legal news agency reported from a Moscow courtroom.
Viktor Ardabievsky, remanded to two months’ pretrial detention, is believed to have ordered the killings since becoming the top administrator in Miass, a Chelyabinsk Region city, in 2005.
Investigators said in a statement that they had “credible information” that the victims, Andrei Paduchin and Pavel Sidorov, were killed by members of the notorious gang Turbazovskiye, implicated in about 30 contract killings between 1999 and 2011.
The gang’s name, which means “travel resort,” is an apparent reference to a local resort opened by Ardabievsky and purported gang leader Sergei Chashchin, news site Chelyabinsk.ru reported.
