MOSCOW: Russia authorities ordered the detention of two dozen people including a Chechen mixed martial arts fighter on Friday over a shootout in central Moscow that left two people dead.
A group of men turned up at the offices of Russian retail giant Wildberries on Wednesday, in what CEO Tatyana Bakalchuk described as an armed takeover attempt by her estranged husband and two disgruntled former executives.
Bakalchuk — Russia’s richest woman — and her husband had for months been locked in a bitter dispute over a company merger deal that President Vladimir Putin had personally approved but which Chechen ruler Ramzan Kadyrov denounced as an illegal seizure.
Among the men remanded into custody on Friday was Umar Chichaev, a mixed martial arts fighter and deputy commander of a national guard unit linked to Kadyrov, according to Russian news agencies.
“The court granted the petition of law enforcement agencies and remanded Chichaev in custody for one month and 30 days,” Moscow’s Basmanny court ruled, according to the state-owned TASS news agency.
The shootout came just over six weeks after Wildberries finalized its merger deal with Russ, a Russian advertising firm that is several times smaller than the corporate giant.
Bakalchuk’s husband Vladislav denounced the merger as a huge mistake, and enlisted the help of Kadyrov in July to stop the deal.
Two security guards were killed in the shootout, which injured seven others.
Tatyana released a tearful video message on Wednesday accusing her husband of organizing the attack.
Bakalchuk founded Wildberries in 2004 while on maternity leave, selling clothes out of her Moscow apartment with her then-IT technician husband Vladislav.
The business has since become an industry leader and made Bakalchuk a billionaire, although her fortune took a hit from the recent merger, according to Forbes.
In July, she announced she had separated from Vladislav and was getting a divorce.
In total, 30 people have been detained over two days in connection with Wednesday’s shooting, state media reported.
Vladislav’s lawyers said on Thursday he had been arrested on suspicion of murder and other crimes.
But late Friday, he released a cryptic video on Telegram saying that he was at home and would continue to fight for his “family business.”
“The truth is on my side. May justice prevail,” he said in a message accompanying the video.
The chaotic shooting just a few streets from the Kremlin evoked memories of the 1990s in Russia, where corporate disputes were sometimes settled through violent turf wars and criminal means.
