RUSSIA: Fears of a bloody mafia turf war sent a chill through St Petersburg's 300th anniversary celebrations yesterday, after one of the city's alleged mafia godfathers was shot dead in central Moscow.
Russian television showed the blood-spattered body of Mr Konstantin Yakovlev sprawled on the street next to his car, which motorcycle-riding hitmen strafed with automatic fire on Sunday night.
Mr Yakovlev (49) was better know as Kostya the Grave, after he made a fortune running many of St Petersburg's cemeteries.
Mr Yakovlev ran small-time rackets while working at a St Petersburg graveyard in the late 1980s, but made influential friends while serving a sentence for extortion and swiftly gained power after his release from jail, Russian media reported.
By the late 1990s, Kostya the Grave was said to be running one of the most powerful mafia groups in St Petersburg, at a time when the almost daily murder of businessmen and politicians earned the city a lingering reputation as Russia's capital of organised crime.
He was linked to many of the most audacious killings, including that of Viktor Novoselov, the deputy speaker of St Petersburg's parliament. A bomb was placed on the roof of his car as it waited at traffic lights in the city and the influential politician was decapitated when it exploded.
Kostya the Grave went on the run soon afterwards, reportedly spending a year moving between Orthodox monasteries trying to atone for his sins. When he resurfaced, he attempted to enter less murky business waters, mainly in advertising and television.
"About 1996 he said he just wanted to do business, to make everything beautiful and free of any conflicts," leading crime journalist Andrei Konstantinov said yesterday, recalling how Mr Yakovlev went to the theatre, read the classics and quoted from the Bible.
But despite his apparently cultured tastes and religious conversion, Kostya the Grave retained the powerful friends and enemies made in the ruthless 1990s.
He was considered close St Petersburg governor, but no relation of, Mr Vladimir Yakovlev, and his wife, and Russian media speculated that the murder could be linked to forthcoming gubernatorial elections. Another theory makes him the victim of a revenge attack by St Petersburg's most feared crime ring, the Tambov Group; his own men could have also arranged the hit, after a bitter recent row between him and one of his lieutenants.
The worst scenario for St Petersburgers is that the murder of Kostya the Grave will spark a round of killing as rivals carve up his old patch, just as the eyes of the world turn to watch the city mark 300 years since its creation.
"It's not just one or two people who could have wanted this to happen," Mr Konstantinov said. "We're talking about dozens."
President Putin, a St Petersburg native, will hope for calm as he welcomes 45 world leaders to the city for celebrations and summits this week.