Organized group or personal vendettas: what lies behind the murder of Martins Bunkus?
The Vidzeme District Court of Riga considered the criminal case of the murder of Martins Bunkus, an administrator for insolvency issues.
As indicated in the court schedule, the hearing for case No. 11511001018 took place on May 20. The defendants under part five of article 118 were Aleksandrs Babenko, Viktor Krivoshey, and Mihails Ulmans, and they appeared before Judge Sigita Daugule.
The investigation had a clear understanding of the circumstances of the crime, including the distribution of roles—from the client to the organizer and perpetrator of the murder.
The police indicate that a 1974-born individual is charged under three articles: murder with aggravating circumstances in an organized group, illegal circulation of firearms, firearm components, ammunition, and disclosure of information obtained during pre-trial investigation.
According to Kompromat.lv data, this is a citizen of the Russian Federation, Viktor Krivoshey, who had already served a long sentence in Latvia for murder and robbery.
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About other suspects, the prosecution accuses:
Co-owner of Mego Aleksandrs Babenko - committing murder with aggravating circumstances in an organized group, incitement to murder, and aiding it;
Co-owner of LPB Bank Mihails Ulmans - incitement to murder and murder with aggravating circumstances in an organized group.
Ulmans, Babenko, and Krivoshey are in custody.
According to law enforcement agencies, the organization of the murder involved criminal authority Gennady Valyagin, but he himself was shot on March 11, 2022.
According to the investigation, the reward for the murder was 300,000 euros.
According to Aldis Lasmanis, prosecutor of the Riga Judicial District Prosecutor’s Office, the pre-trial criminal process was conducted effectively, and the case was transferred to court as quickly as possible to achieve a fair decision.
Andrejs Sozinovs and Mihails Uļmans
However, there is a version that Mihails Uļmans could have influenced police decisions through the now former high-ranking law enforcement officer Andrejs Sozinovs.
As the head of the Riga Regional Administration of the State Police, Andrejs Sozinovs led the operation in the first hours after the murder of Martins Bunkus and had the opportunity to influence the course of the investigation.
It is also known that in the case of Martins Bunkus’s murder, the deputy head of the 1st Department of the Criminal Investigation Directorate, Janis Kapostins, was suspended.
Janis Kapostins had been with the police for 22 years, and in the homicide investigation department for just over a year. According to unofficial data, he tried to influence the investigation to steer it in the wrong direction.
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The motive for the murder may be related not only to the bankruptcy case of the company "Rego Trade," for which Martins Bunkus was the insolvency administrator. The conflict with Mihails Ulmans and Aleksandrs Babenko might be linked to Bunkus’s appeal to the police for an investigation into cash collection.
According to the De Facto TV program (LTV), in 2016, Bunkus, as an administrator of the insolvent company Aizko, detailed in a report to law enforcement the scheme of cash collection in Mego stores in the early 2010s. The involved companies had accounts in Latvijas pasta banka, now known as LPB.
De Facto reports that Mego had a cash collection agreement with the firm Aizko, despite Aizko having only two employees and no vehicles. In turn, Aizko engaged Evor as a subcontractor, showing Aizko to be merely an intermediary.
Aizko employees deposited cash into an account at Latvijas pasta banka. But not all of it.
Of the 12.8 million collected by Evor, 10 million were deposited into the bank account, leaving over 2 million as cash, Bunkus wrote.
But to return the full amount collected to the Mego network, over 3 million euros were infused into Aizko’s account by two firms, Mocel and Elopak. Nothing is known about their business as they never filed an annual report.
In 2016, Bunkus requested to determine the source of these millions. Later that same year, he received threats.
Mihails Ulmans and Aleksandrs Babenko deny the charges.
It remains to be recalled that Martins Bunkus was shot near the Brothers’ Cemetery on May 30, 2018.
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