Police investigate "murder" of top Russia banker

By Simon Shuster

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Investigators have opened a murder probe into the death of a top manager at Russia's second largest bank VTB, who was found with his arms and legs bound in a swimming pool, police officials said on Friday.

Oleg Zhukovsky, who headed state-run VTB's lending operations in Russia's $19 billion a year logging industry, was found dead near his luxury home on Thursday, duty police officer Oleg Krasnoshchyokov said.

"It looks like he was drowned," Krasnoshchyokov said by telephone from Odyntsovo, a town near Moscow where Zhukovsky owned a house in a gated community.

The Investigative Committee, part of the general prosecutor's office, said authorities have launched an investigation under the criminal code's article covering murder.

"We have conducted a search of the crime scene, forensic and other examinations, and have called for other necessary investigative actions and procedures," it said in a statement.

News of Zhukovsky's death evoked the ruthless business climate of the 1990s, when disputes were periodically resolved by assassinations and car bombs, tactics that have tapered off under President Vladimir Putin.

VTB board member Vasily Titov said it was too early to speculate on what lay behind Zhukovsky's death. "Police officials are doing their work. We have no evidence of murder."

Police had initially viewed Zhukovsky's death as a possible suicide. The daily Kommersant said a note was found in his home that said: "I am very tired of life. It is nobody's fault."

Handwriting experts were examining the note, the state-run RIA agency said.

Analysts said Russia's logging industry was going through a tumultuous period that has made it a magnet for criminals.

All of Russia's forest leasing contracts must be annulled and rewritten by the end of next year in accordance with regulations that came into effect at the start of 2007.

"The regulations themselves are very murky and all this is being done at least partially outside the law," said Alexei Yaroshchenko, forestry analyst at Greenpeace Russia.

"This has indeed helped to make it a very criminalized business as groups compete over these leases."

Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov told an industry conference this week that the logging business was passing through a difficult time and needed to be "renewed from the roots".

In 2006, the deputy head of the central bank in charge of money-laundering probes was shot dead in a Moscow car park. Prominent banker Alexei Frenkel, whose bank had its license revoked on Kozlov's orders, has been charged with hiring gypsy cab drivers to gun down Andrei Kozlov.

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Sergeev; editing by Sami Aboudi)