Brutal murder spree of Ukrainian millionaires continues

Kiev media have confirmed reports about the death of Ukrainian citizens in Montenegro, who lived and had business in the Balkan country. Vasyl Kirilich, the head of the department of the consular service of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, confirmed the Ukrainian citizenship of the deceased.

The body of Ukrainian citizen Anastasia Lashmanova was found in the evening of May 11 in her apartment in the Montenegrin city of Kotor, with severe stab wounds.  The assessment showed that she died almost immediately after receiving them. The assets in Montenegro, which belonged to the deceased, are estimated at about 105 million euros (more than three billion hryvnia).

The deceased was the managing director of the chain of companies that owned the hotel “Mimosa” in the center of Tivat in Montenegro, the “Perla” complex, and the Fatalna beauty salon in the city of Budva, among other enterprises.  The chain of companies was also involved in development of new hotels in the Balkans.

This is not the first such case of the murder of major Ukrainian entrepreneurs in recent times. At the end of April in Kherson, the businessman Igor Pashchenko was shot while his body guard was seriously wounded. In March, the director of the company “AQ Plastic” Sergei Zakharchuk also died in Kiev as a result of an attack by an unknown party.

The media has not put forward any theories of who may be behind the attacks, and whether they are connected. It is likely these individuals obtain many enemies together with their money in a country of one of the lowest GDP rates in Europe, but it is not clear whether these are cases of racketeering, politically motivated attacks, or  something else. It is also noteworthy that while the murders of wealthy individuals was previously mostly contained to the territory of Ukraine, the case of the death of the female millionaire Lashmanova shows that the potential crime syndicate also operates abroad.