The day before the assassination of lawyer Pāvels Rebenoks, a character from the local criminal world was intensively looking to contact one of the people at Olainfarm - Jānis Kiršblats. They were so demonstrative that they might as well have have placed an ad on the radio - so that everyone knew that influential criminals wanted to contact those who stood on the opposite side of Rebenoks’ guarded camp in the fight for Valērijs Maligins’ legacy. With this murder, a claim to the inheritance has been declared by a Russian-Latvian joint venture. A drug cartel.
So far, three versions of the murder have appeared in public: robbery, fighting for influence in Olainfarm, or a scheme with the mandatory procurement component (OIK) for electricity consumers that has been disrupted by the lawyer or the interests he represented.
Neatkarīgā has received a fourth version of the murder. It is also associated with Olainfarm, but in a different aspect, and unites decades-old events, where the unifying factor in all of them is drugs, more precisely - amphetamine. Underground production on a grand scale, the success story of privatization with an astronomical purchase sum at the time, the new owner's predilection for various substances and lobbying for soft drug legalization. Later on, his death, which no longer looks natural at all, and now also the death of the lawyer. The information available to Neatkarīgā allows us to make a credible statement that the assassination of Pāvels Rebenoks is a message of the drug cartel to all parties involved in the fight for Olainfarm - wives, lovers, daughters, lawyers, consultants, advisers and everyone else who have taken their share or are still hoping to get it. And the message is this: Olainfarm belongs to us and you will act as we tell you. Or we’ll beat you to death with a terrace board.
The Latbiofarm factory, which was renamed Olainfarm after privatization, has a long tradition of drug production. In Soviet times, they were creating medicine for military use - intended to maintain the soldiers’ combat capability even during extreme exhaustion. The Soviet Union collapsed, stocks of terene and promedol from old first aid kits were depleted. But the drug business needed a new product. And the Latbiofarm factory had both raw materials (officially - used for the production of rat poison) and chemists who knew how to make excellent amphetamine from them. Some of them were arrested, including the factory management at the time, under whose orders it was cooked. The volumes were shamelessly large, and it was only a matter of time before the newly restored Latvia was visited by drug enforcers from Western European countries.
Between August and December 1992, the Latbiofarm factory produced 16 million amphetamine tablets, flooding Europe.
They were transported from the country by hiding them in packets of remantadine. The price was 6 to 7 lats per unit. The amount of drugs that was seized at the factory, was valued by the Germans to be worth at least 10 million German marks.
The above facts can be found in the transcripts of the Saeima debates, when eight years later the necessary amendments to the Pharmacy Law were discussed, as the next cooking scandal had taken place. This time at Maligins’ privatized Olainfarm plant. He was not even 30 years old at that time, but he had one and a half million lats to buy a controlling stake. He earned that by the distributing medicine in Russia. At least that is what he himself said in his last interview at the end of 2017 to the publication "Dienas Bizness".
Although the predecessors of the drug cooks were imprisoned, the recipe was passed on to the next generation of chemists. Because the drug business needed the product. New arrests followed in 1998, but not at senior management level. The police stated that none of the managers of Olainfarm, including the owner Maligins, was involved in this case. Newspaper publications of the time even reported that the exposing of the criminals took place in accord with the new leadership.
But what does all this history have to do with Rebenoks’ murder? Mainly, the fact that the drug mafia does not forget where to get the product. And it doesn't forget its investments, if any were made. And in this case, it obviously happened. At least in this way, it is possible to explain the presence of high-level criminals and special services in this story. Of course, it must be emphasized once again that this is just a version, but it seems much more plausible than the police claims that Rebenoks was beaten to death with a wooden board because of his beautiful cufflinks and watches. Yes, the robbery took place, but it was just a decoration for the contract killing. It is not known who the commissioner is, but Neatkarīgā received three names of the criminal world in connection with this. The sources are reliable.
The day before the assassination of lawyer Rebenoks, an influential figure from local criminal organizations sought the contacts of Jānis Kiršblats, an adviser to the board of Olainfarm.
For the safety of the editorial and its sources, we are not publishing the name of this character X. However, it is an important fact that this summer X spread the news in circles related to the criminal world that he personally knows the Russian criminal authority with nickname Sļiva (from Russian - plum). Therefore, it is now possible to handle more serious things through him.
Sļiva's real name has also been mentioned in the Latvian public space, as Alla Juraša, the wife of the New Conservative Party politician Juris Jurašs, provided him with legal services regarding temporary residence permits. She didn’t do too well, because after being blacklisted, Sļiva had to sell properties in Jūrmala. However, the source reports that Sļiva nonetheless occasionally visits Latvia to check on his business. What is this business about? The source claims - drugs. The last time he visited was at the beginning of the year.
Another name from the Russian circles that has been mentioned in connection with the claims of criminal entities to the Olainfarm business is a former officer of the USSR State Security Committee with contacts at the Kremlin level.
Very influential. And no one ever leaves the secret service.
A person of Sļiva’s caliber could figure out some dark things with this KGB officer, but not character X, who is a local player. Smaller spirit. The latter probably did not know at all that after his public activities and search for contacts, someone from Olainfarm would die the next day. He just had to spread the word. Character X called at least two people working in the criminal world, but to the best of the Neatkarīgā’s knowledge, they are not a part of it. X did not get the required phone number from them, but most likely it was not needed at all. Neatkarīgā managed to get Kiršblats’ phone number without much difficulty, because he is also an assistant to the Saeima deputy Ļubova Švecova. Kiršblats claims that he did not receive any weird calls from strangers. Why are news circulating that someone is searching for his contact information? "I have absolutely no idea, and I have nothing to do with this tragic case!" Asked if he and other people close to the company felt threatened after the murder, Kiršblats replies: "People with a clean reputation don't have to worry about their safety." Truly, a very optimistic statement.
Most likely, character X was ordered to inquire about Kiršblats to give the police a fake clue. The situation now looks like this: one of Olainfarm's warring parties, the one represented by Rebenoks, has been knocked out of order. The other half, where Kiršblats is playing, may be suspect. As a result, a third party may become the beneficiary. The real murderer.
As for the trio who physically did the work, they may not even know why they had to kill the person.
Simply arrived to do the job: lawyer Pāvels Rebenoks must be brutally murdered in Latvia, and it would be beneficial for a witness to survive. So the message is conveyed more clearly. And that is what happened.
Rebenoks’ colleague Mārtiņš Krieķis claims that it was a professionally organized contract killing, done by another country's special services. According to version no. 4 and the information available to Neatkarīgā, this possibility is much more plausible than the police-issued version no. 1 - the cufflink robbery.