Prosecutor General's Office to take up murder of Russian Forbes Chief

The investigation of the murder of Paul Khlebnikov, chief editor of the Russian Forbes edition, has been handed over to the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, a spokesman for the Prosecutor General's Office has told RIA Novosti.

Russian Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov has given instructions to pass over the criminal case to the department investigating particularly important cases in the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, the spokesman said.

Earlier, Moscow prosecutors had been in charge of the case.

According to the source, Khlebnikov sustained deadly gunshot wounds in the evening of July 9 when he was leaving his office at 16 Dokukina Street. He died later in hospital at 10.10 p.m. Moscow time.

Pail (Pavel) Khlebnikov was a US citizen from New York. He was born in 1963 in New York, graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and the London School of Economics where he got his doctor degree in 1991.

He worked in Forbes from 1989, and specialised in Russian and East European politics and economics. From April 2004, Paul became first editor of the Russian Forbes edition.