On the border with Crimea, a dealer was “overwhelmed” with weapons from the ATO
Yesterday evening, Igor Pashchenko, described by local media as a businessman, was shot dead in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, near the Crimean border. He was shot four times, and another wounded a security guard who was lucky enough to survive. According to Gennady Sivak, a Ukrainian activist, the victim was not so much a businessman as a criminal – he and his brother were involved in kidnappings, banditry, and arms trafficking from the so-called "ATO zone," reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
According to Sivak, in 2016, the scandal with the kidnapping of the former mayor of Kherson, Vladimir Saldo, who is considered a competitor of Pashchenko, in the Dominican Republic, received public attention. The ex-official was tortured for several hours, and then he transferred part of his property to the businessman, but then took it back through the courts.
“The Pashchenko brothers were engaged in stealing people, squeezing out businesses, transporting weapons from the ATO to Kherson and selling them. These same people kidnapped the former mayor of Kherson Saldo several years ago. Now there is a version that the investigation has gone too far and has already reached the real customers. And the customers could be high-ranking leaders of Ukraine. By the way, after the kidnapping of this mayor, he had to transfer some property to Igor Pashchenko. And now Saldo has taken all this property for himself through the courts,” said Sivak.
The ex-mayor of Kherson himself assures that he is more interested than others in catching Pashchenko’s killer and has announced a reward of 50 thousand hryvnia for information about the criminal. According to him, Pashchenko was a witness in his case, and the liquidation of the businessman may be connected with the “Dominican” mafia.
“Igor Pashchenko was a witness in the case of my abduction, and his murder may affect the course of this investigation. I, more than anyone else, am interested in seeing that his killer is caught and that the motives and the mastermind are established. I hope that the case will not reach a dead end and will be solved as soon as possible,” Saldo said in comments to local media.
A dealer in ATO weapons was caught on the Crimean border.