Dilshod Saidmurodov, who is suspected of organizing kidnapping and killing of Shuhrat Ismatulloyev, the first deputy head of Orienbonk, has reportedly been detained in Russia and extradited to Tajikistan.
An official source within law enforcement authorities has confirmed this information in an interview with Asia-Plus.
Tajik authorities have said that Dilshod Saidmurodov was the leader of the criminal group that abducted and killed Shuhrat Ismatulloyev.
After committing the crime he reportedly fled to the Russian Federation.
Tajikistan’s Prosecutor-General’s Office had applied to Tajiks living in Russia assist in the detention of Dilshod Saidmurodov. It was also been noted that Tajik authorities offered a reward for his detention but the amount was not specified.
Saidmurodov previously worked in law enforcement agencies. His employment records include working for the Interior Ministry’s Organized Crime Control Directorate and a stint with the Anti-Cybercrime Unit within the General-Prosecutor’s Office. According to some sources, Saidmurodov had also worked for the state anticorruption agency but had been unemployed in recent years.
Recall, Shuhrat Ismatulloyev, 49, the first deputy director of Orienbonk, which is one of the largest financial institutions in Tajikistan, went missing in the evening of June 23 near his home in Dushanbe.
Tajik authorities said the banker was forced by four men into a car with tinted windows and driven away at around 8 p.m. local time.
The Interior Ministry offered a US$30,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the kidnappers. The ministry also issued what it described were images of the car taken by security cameras.
Two weeks later, the Tajik Prosecutor-General’s Office claimed Ismatulloyev had been killed by his abductors several hours after he was kidnapped.
It said in a July 7 statement that Ismatulloyev was taken to a house in the village of Shodob, outside Dushanbe, where he was beaten, tortured, and subsequently killed by his kidnappers. The banker’s body and the car were thrown into the Zarafshon River, it added.
The crime was allegedly plotted by a 40-year-old Dilshod Saidmurodov, who set up a 10-man “armed criminal group” to carry it out.
The banker’s body was found in the Zarafshon River almost two months later
