Estranged husband of Russia’s richest woman arrested on murder charge after office shootout

MOSCOW – Vladislav Bakalchuk, the estranged husband of Russia’s richest woman, was arrested and charged with murder on Sept 19, his lawyers said, after a deadly shootout at the Moscow office of Russia’s largest online retailer.

Two people were killed in a shooting on Sept 18, just a few blocks away from the Kremlin at the Wildberries office, as a dispute over the company’s future took a violent turn. Seven others were wounded, including police officers.

Bakalchuk and his wife Tatyana, who filed for divorce in July, have been embroiled in a bitter and public tussle since Wildberries announced plans to merge with outdoor advertising firm Russ Group in June.

Mrs Bakalchuk founded Wildberries, Russia’s answer to Amazon, in 2004, growing it from an online clothes reseller into a major marketplace for all kinds of goods.

Both parties blamed each other for the Sept 18 shooting.

Bakalchuk said he had arrived for a pre-arranged meeting and alleged that it was staff at the office who fired the first shots. Mrs Bakalchuk alleged that Bakalchuk and his colleagues had tried to seize the office, and that there was no meeting scheduled.

Bakalchuk’s lawyers said he had been arrested, and charged with murder and the attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, something they said was a “blatant and unprecedented violation” of their client’s rights.

The business dispute is centred around the merger that formed RVB, a new company with Mr Robert Mirzoyan as the chief executive officer, which reduced Mrs Bakalchuk’s overall stake to around 65 per cent in RVB from 99 per cent in Wildberries.

Bakalchuk at the time said his wife was being “manipulated”. Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who stepped in to support Bakalchuk, called the merger an “asset grab”.

Mrs Bakalchuk has dismissed both of those allegations. The Kremlin said the merger had won Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s backing but he would not interfere with its progress.

In a tearful video message posted on Telegram early on Sept 19, Mrs Bakalchuk said: “Vladislav, what are you doing? How will you look into the eyes of your parents and our children? How could you bring the situation to such absurdity?”

The affair harks back to the 1990s, when deadly corporate turf battles were commonplace as huge swathes of property were redistributed after the fall of the Soviet Union. REUTERS