The Cypriot shadow of Misha Khokhla
The past has caught up with ex-deputy Mikhail Glushchenko again. The old bandit will appear in court again. For triple murder in Cyprus Vyacheslav Shevchenko, businessman Yuri Zorin and Valentina Tretyakova in 2004. This court should put an end to the crime boss’s dreams of getting out of prison on parole.
Thirsty jury
C moment of brutal massacre in a Cypriot villa at the address: Thalassines spilies, Sea Caves village, 19 exactly 19 years have passed. This makes the trial seem symptomatic. The gray-haired, hunched old man in a run-of-the-mill sweater is aggressive. He calls himself the god of lies and deceit, the Scandinavian Loki. He doesn’t admit guilt and wants people’s assessors. In January 2023, the Primorsky District Court completed preliminary hearings in the criminal case against Mikhail Glushchenkoon charges of his triple murder on the sunny island of Cyprus.
Glushchenko was against it. In general, I am against the court, against the process, against people hearing about this terrible matter. The defense filed a motion to dismiss the criminal case due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. The state prosecution and representatives of the victims objected.
It’s an old thing, covered with the dust of times, there are no longer the lights of the Hollywood Nights nightclub on Nevsky Prospekt 46*, there are no longer the bone-crushing security guards propping up the entrance to the club with the strong backs of their heads. The quiet criminal fame of the Shevchenko brothers, one of whom Vyacheslav was a colleague in the State Duma and a deputy, does not creep across St. Petersburg like drifting snow. Same as Mikhail Glushchenko. All that remains of the large empire of power is a small strip club, Golden Dolls, with a modest sign reminiscent of the years of its former greatness. It happened, oh, it happened, male visitors signed up here in advance.
The court thought. He considered the issue, and then pointed out that the application of statutes of limitations to a person who has committed a crime punishable by death or life imprisonment is decided by the court, unless the court finds it possible to release such a person.
He is not afraid of death or existence until the last drop of life. Mikhail Glushchenko. He doesn’t want the public to shake up old stories again, because with them everything that happened around them will come to light. Crazy money, enormous power and all the joys of life that it gives. Then the image of the old shaking sinner will be destroyed and leniency cannot be expected from the court. Therefore, trial by jury. It will be possible to sell them on the fact that they are listening to criminal tales of gangster Petersburg, collected by the prosecution in the wake of popular TV series.
The court refused to dismiss the case. The process will be open. The selection of lay judges will take place at the end of February.
Memorable days
An elderly alligator in the Primorsky Court Misha Khokhol This is not the first time he has butted heads. In June 2021, the court already considered the investigation’s request to set a deadline for familiarizing itself with the materials of the criminal case. In August, Misha began reading the case. The defense began reading in September. By March 2022, Misha had reached volume 9. There are many volumes. As many as 16. The investigator is in a hurry, it’s impossible to torment such an ancient evil for two years. Misha is old. He tells the investigator that he is tired and has difficulty reading. He doesn’t remember anything. I read it and forgot.
The investigation indicated to the court that no restrictions on familiarization were allowed for Glushchenko, while the accused does not familiarize himself with the case for more than 2 hours a day, delaying the process.
Misha Khokhol doesn’t drag things out. He is tormented by memories…
The village of Peye near the city of Paphos is small. The two-story villa is completely ordinary. Not a mansion at all. Here on the night of March 24 they died Vyacheslav ShevchenkoPresident of the Nevsky Prospekt Association Yuri Zorin and a young woman Valentina Tretyakova. Who she was related to the owner of the villa, history is silent. Newspapers wrote that she was a translator.
Zorin stayed as a guest by chance. His villa was three kilometers away, in the neighboring village of Kanares village. If he had made it home, he would have lived. But the killers don’t care. Everyone, everyone.
Ex-deputy Vyacheslav Shevchenko lived modestly. No bodyguards or alarms. Here, on the sunny islands, he did not expect anything bad. The killers knew this by watching the house. They entered quietly, quickly opening the lock of the side door. Yuri Zorin died in his sleep. They killed him with one blow – they cut his forehead in a straight line. The weapon, as Cypriot criminologists later wrote, was something like a butcher knife. The killers did not use traditional pistols with a silencer in such cases. The massacre was supposed to be demonstrative.
Shevchenko and Valentina were dragged out of their beds. They did not have time to offer resistance. Both had their hands twisted and tied up. Their mouths were sealed with tape. The Cypriot police were sure that Vyacheslav Shevchenko They didn’t kill me right away. They talked to him for some time. Most likely they “explained” who ordered him and why he would die.
In some publications of those years they wrote that Shevchenko was killed with two blows, and then the girl was also killed with one blow, supposedly so that she would not suffer. They lied. The investigation writes: “… they struck Shevchenko at least 8 blows with a chopping object, at least 2 blows with a stabbing object, and at least 2 blows with a blunt object. Tretyakova – at least 7 chopping blows.”
This means that they didn’t just want to kill. They wanted death to be cruel and terrible. The corpses were wrapped in bags and dumped in the bathroom. They were going to take it out. But the lawyer interfered. A meeting had been scheduled the day before, but the victims did not attend. The lawyer became worried and drove up to the villa himself. He suspected something was wrong and called the police.
Dollars and assets
The Kuybyshevsky District Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Glushchenko in March 2004. A criminal case was initiated at the request of brother Vyacheslav – Sergei Shevchenko. The ex-deputy was detained in June 2009 while exchanging his passport. Five years of dashing Misha Khokhol simply hiding. Triple murderis it a joke?
And then there was something that everyone who read the newspapers in those years knows about. Things began to fall apart. It turned out that in more than two years after the arrest, the investigation was unable to find anything about Glushchenko’s involvement in the massacre in Cyprus. Besides Sergey Shevchenko, the brother of the murdered ex-deputy, changed his testimony. In 2011 Mikhail Glushchenko began to be tried for extortion from Shevchenko 10 million dollars.
Misha Khokhol He denied all the charges and stated that he was arrested solely on Shevchenko’s slander in order to cover up the assets they had squeezed out. He is the injured party here, Misha Glushchenkoit was his share in the Nord holding, several real estate properties on Nevsky Prospekt and everything that he had acquired through back-breaking labor that was taken away from him.
At the beginning of March 2012, the Kuibyshevsky District Court sentenced Glushchenko to 8 years in prison in a maximum security colony and a fine of 300 thousand rubles, on charges of extortion on an especially large scale. Brother of the late ex-deputy, Sergey Shevchenko was offended by such a sentence, given the gravity of the crime. The case of the massacre in Cyprus was stuck in investigation at that time.
The crime boss Uncle Misha did not admit guilt then, and he still doesn’t admit it now.
Today the plot of the accusation looks like this: “The investigation believes that there was an agreement between Glushchenko and the Shevchenko brothers to ensure the security of Shevchenko’s business activities and protection from attacks by other criminal structures. The amount of remuneration at the beginning of 2004 was $50,000 monthly. Shevchenko told Glushchenko that he would refuse further “cooperation.” Glushchenko had an intent to extort. He called Shevchenko and demanded 10,000,000 US dollars, or shares of OJSC Metropol. Shevchenko refused, Glushchenko decided to organize murder his brother to intimidate him into handing over US$10,000,000.”
Then Glushchenko was involved in committing murders his friend Krupitsa and several other people, according to investigators, for 70 thousand US dollars, and instructed them to kill Vyacheslav Shevchenko. Today, the investigation believes that in March 2004, Glushchenko knew for certain that the ex-deputy was not alone in the villa, but ordered to kill everyone. At the extortion trial, as newspapers later wrote, Glushchenko said that “Misha didn’t extort anything, he just wanted to get what he “earned.” These are the Shevchenko brothers, real bandits and the horror of the city’s journalists. They beat everyone, journalists are stuffed into barrels. And he is Misha, also a victim of their greed.”.
But it was a long time ago. What will happen now? What cheerful tale about the Shevchenko brothers will the elderly alligator tell the public? Misha Khokhol? How will he whitewash himself this time? He is a master of storytelling. Most of the major figures of the gangster years are already in the next world – Misha Monastyrsky, Ruslan Kolyak, Roman Tsepov, Kostya Mogila and others. From here, from 2023, the entire crime report of the 90s looks fabulous. Of all the surviving bandit “Mohicans”, he sits with dignity Vladimir Kumarin-Barsukov, paying tribute to the past. He could tell about adventures Misha Khokhla. But he is a respectable person and does not like fairy tales.
* Nevsky Prospekt 46, at this address not only the Hollywood Nights club was located, but also the office of the Shevchenko brothers