Russian central banker shot dead

[Mr Hooky]

Russian central banker shot dead

MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- The top deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank died Thursday morning after being gunned down by two assailants the night before near a Moscow football stadium, a medical source told Russia's state-run Interfax news agency.


Andrei Kozlov was deputy chairman of Russia's Central Bank.

Andrei Kozlov, 41, was attacked near the capital's Spartak football arena around 9 p.m., Interfax reported. His driver was also killed.

A medical source told Interfax that Kozlov suffered severe wounds to the head, but was also hit in the chest and stomach.

The source said Kozlov arrived at the hospital unconscious and underwent surgery, but never regained consciousness.

CNN's Ryan Chilcote, reporting from Moscow, said authorities were looking at the possibility criminals involved in money laundering may have been behind the killing.

While on a lesser scale than in the turbulent 1990s, contract killings of businessmen and bankers still regularly occur in Russia, where business conflicts often turn violent, The Associated Press reported.

'Linked to duties'

Vice Premier Alexander Zhukov said the assassination was likely linked to Kozlov's duties, and suggested the possibility of a connection with the Central Bank's revocation of licenses of unreliable commercial banks, the Interfax news agency reported, according to AP.

Kozlov had been responsible for banking supervision,and had overseen an ambitious scheme to reduce criminality and money laundering in the banking system.

His most conspicuous achievement had been the introduction of a deposit insurance scheme designed to restore the population's faith in the banking system after widespread defaults in 1998, in which many Russians lost their savings, AP reported.

According to a biography on the bank's Web-site, Kozlov was born in Moscow in January 1965 and graduated in international economic relations from the Moscow Institute of Finance.

He joined the central bank's predecessor, Gosbank of the USSR, as a senior economist in 1989.

In 1991, Gosbank was renamed the Central Bank of the Russian Federation.

Kozlov became Deputy Chairman in 1996 and was appointed First Deputy Chairman the following year.

He left the bank in 1999 for three years, during which time he served as board chairman of the Russian Standard Bank (1999-2000), as a private adviser on banking business re-engineering, as general director of Mir Aeroflota travel company, and as managing director of Financial Services Volunteer Corps (2001-2002).

He rejoined the Central Bank in April 2002.

CNN