This is so sad. Klebnikov was one of the only people writing on Russia in English worth reading.
Jul 10 2004 12:00PM Editor of Russian Forbes killed in Moscow MOSCOW. July 10 (Interfax) - Editor-in-chief of the Russian version of Forbes magazine Paul (Pavel) Klebnikov was killed in Moscow on Friday evening.
Klebnikov was walking out of the Forbes editorial office in northeast Moscow at about 8:00 p.m. when unidentified attackers opened fire at him from a car. Klebnikov received four gunshot wounds and died in an ambulance.
More than ten cartridge cases of two different calibers were later found at the scene.
Before he died, Klebnikov said he was absolutely unaware of any possible reasons for the attack.
"I asked Paul several times why he thought this could have happened. Paul told me he did not know. He told me several times that nothing suspicious had happened lately. He did not say anything more about it and was just asking for help," the editor- in-chief of the Russian version of Newsweek magazine, Alexander Gordeyev, who talked with Klebnikov immediately after the attack, told Interfax.
Deputy editor of Russian Forbes Kirill Vishnepolsky told Interfax that the staff "cannot imagine what could have caused this crime."
Klebnikov was responsible for the entire editorial policy of the publication, Vishnepolsky said.
Leonid Bershidsky, the publisher of the Russian versions of Forbes and Newsweek, told Interfax that Klebnikov had not been engaged in any journalistic investigations since February and "had not been raking up anything sensitive."
"This could possibly be a preventative measure," Bershidsky said. "It could be that some tough guy just doesn't like the very project of the Russian Forbes," he said.
Sources with the Moscow city police told Interfax that Klebnikov's assassination is most likely tied to his professional activities.
Klebnikov was born in the U.S. in 1963. He worked for Forbes since 1989. He is known in Russia as the author of a controversial book entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia."
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