Investigation of murder of Russian Forbes chief Khlebnikov is over

The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has completed the investigation of the murder of Paul Khlebnikov, an American journalist and chief editor of the Russian Forbes edition, the Office said.

"The defendants in the case of Khlebnikov's murder are reading the case materials," the Office said.

Paul (Pavel) Khlebnikov, the chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, was murdered in Moscow on July 9, 2004. He was a United States national, lived in New York, and worked for Forbes since 1989.

Chechens Musa Vakhayev and Kazbek Dukuzov were detained as suspects.

The investigation established that in July 2004 Vakhayev and Dukuzov drove up to the office, where Khlebnikov worked, in a Zhiguli car with a false plate number and, when the latter went out, shot him at least ten times from a Makarov gun.

Both suspects were arrested by Belarus police in Minsk on November 17 last year at the request of the Russian security services and extradited to Russia.