The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation has established the motive for the murder of thief in law Vyacheslav Ivankov, better known as Yaponchik. The incident itself took place on July 28, 2009 in Moscow, when 69-year-old Ivankov was leaving the Thai Elephant restaurant on the Khoroshevskoe highway. He was shot from an SVD sniper rifle with a telescopic sight from a parked Gazelle on the opposite side of the road. Yaponchik was treated for a long time, was in a coma, experienced clinical death and eventually died from peritonitis on October 9 in a private clinic.
“The main motive for the murder of Ivankov was the personal dislike of the organizer of the crime, the thief in law Ilya Simonia (Makho),” – Rostsilav Rassokhov, deputy head of the RF IC, said in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper.
He also noted that Makho and Yaponchik began to feud back in the 80s of the last century, when they were serving their sentences in colonies in the Irkutsk region.
In addition, Rassokhov stated that during the investigation no information was received that the accused in the murder of Yaponchik were involved in the death of Ded Khasan, another criminal authority of Aslan Usoyan. On January 16, 2013, Usoyan was fatally wounded from a Val submachine gun in the courtyard of a restaurant in central Moscow.
Recall that a number of suspects in the murder of Yaponchik were identified and arrested this spring. All of them are natives of the Caucasus.