Liana Askerova is among seven suspects in custody for their alleged involvement in the murder of Andrei Kozlov, a Central Bank money-laundering regulator who was gunned down in September 2006 in an apparent contract killing.
Askerova, a restaurant owner, is believed to be a link between the paymaster in the September 13 shooting of Kozlov, who led a crusade against money laundering and other criminal practices in the banking sector, and the contract killers. She was arrested in mid-January.
Askerova is said to have identified a commercial banker, Alexei Frenkel, as the mastermind of Kozlov's assassination.
In a letter he wrote a month before his arrest January 11, Frenkel claimed that he planned to expose a scheme that helped the Central Bank launder money through banks whose licenses it was going to revoke, the business daily Kommersant said earlier.
In two letters that followed his arrest, Frenkel accused the CBR of accepting bribes for entering banks into the deposit insurance system. He said the bank had differentiated between banks automatically eligible for the insurance system and others that had to pay huge kickbacks to be enrolled. The bribes, he wrote, varied from $150,000 to $5 million, according to the size of the bank.
In his letters, Frenkel did not name officials involved in the illegal transactions and kickbacks but cited details on illegal schemes allowing them to be tracked down.
On Thursday, the Basmanny Court of Moscow also extended the custody for Frenkel until November 13.
Kozlov and his driver, who died instantly, were gunned down as they left a sports stadium in northeast Moscow. The banker underwent emergency surgery but died several hours later.
