Is Journalism Worth Dying For__ Final Dispatches - Anna Politkovskaya [10]
It is almost noon but the enforcers of law and order are in no hurry to get on with their work, and are plainly not on Komarov’s side. We rush around Ryazan, putting together a criminal case: from the October District Prosecutor’s Office to the Ryazan Provincial Prosecutor’s Office, from there to the October District Militia on Yesenin Street and finally, forcing our way into the office of the indignant Colonel Naidyonov, encounter a very amiable Georgian who will subsequently tell us, “I am a Georgian, and accordingly the man has not yet been born who can bribe me.”
This is the Head of the Provincial Criminal Investigation Department, Militia Colonel Dzhansug Mzhavanadze, and he informs us with some ceremony that a criminal investigation was opened on November 5 at 11:30 a.m.
“What work is being done on the main line of inquiry, involving Kuznetsov? Are Komarov’s articles being attached to the file, and his statement to the FSB two weeks ago that he was being threatened?”
“I am not at liberty to tell you about the means and methods we are employing to solve the crime.”
We fully understand, and carry on crisscrossing Ryazan to try to ensure that these do not turn into means and methods of covering up a crime. Oligarch Kuznetsov is everybody’s daddy.
The oligarch is unflustered, and very democratic in his ways, as you would expect of a major financial supporter of the Governor of Ryazan.
“What sort of an oligarch am I?” Sergey Kuznetsov asks coyly. In an earlier life he was the Secretary of the District Committee of the Young Communist League. He radiates civilised behaviour, bonhomie and modesty. “I borrowed $5,000 from my mother-in-law yesterday. I have invested my last copeck in my business. I don’t have a home of my own. I should have emigrated to Israel long ago. My mother, Galina Abramovna, is there and here I am struggling for a better life. I am a builder. By nature I am a creator. On the old rat-infested city rubbish tip I built a retail center with 600 shops. I opened the best beauty parlour in Ryazan, which has an excellent surgeon. He gave my wife’s breasts a lift, and removed my moles. Everybody without exception is pleased. Only Misha Komarov is dissatisfied. He writes endlessly that the plastic surgery operations are performed without a licence. He’s just trying to settle personal scores with me. I am getting tired of his articles. I decided to teach him a lesson.”
“To teach him a lesson? Do you know that on November 3 someone tried to kill him? Just after he had left another court hearing against you?”
“You won’t believe me but I’ve only just heard about it, immediately before our meeting.” The oligarch calls in the head of his security service, a large fellow in a black leather jacket. “Have you been to the hospital?” he asks him.
The bodyguard relays in detail what the doctor told him about Komarov’s state of health.
“Isn’t it strange that the doctor has passed all this information – confidential medical details – to your Viking?”
Kuznetsov is pleased with the effect he is having and smiles masterfully.
“What confidential details are you talking about? I was treated in that very same neurosurgery department after somebody lobbed a grenade at me. But Misha never seems to learn.”
“What right do you think you have to ‘educate’ Komarov as if you were his father?”
“In Ryazan I am everybody’s father, and it seems to me I am having some success. Komarov thinks more carefully about what he writes, he weighs his words now. Personally I think Novaya gazeta is great. And don’t be afraid for Misha; he has been hit on the head many