MOSNEWS
http://www.mosnews.com/mn-files/klebnikov.shtml#news

Born in New York in 1963 to a fam­i­ly of Russ­ian immi­grants, Paul Kleb­nikov grad­u­at­ed from Cal­i­for­nia Uni­ver­si­ty, Berkley and the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, com­plet­ing his doc­tor­ate in 1991. Kleb­nikov start­ed work­ing for Forbes Mag­a­zine in 1989. Pro­mot­ed to senior edi­tor, Kleb­nikov was an expert on Russ­ian and East Euro­pean pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics. His spe­cial field of inter­est was con­duct­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into the ori­gins of wealth of the so-called oli­garchs and their pos­si­ble ties to the Russ­ian mafia.

In 1996 he wrote an arti­cle in Forbes call­ing exiled Russ­ian busi­ness­man Boris Bere­zovsky the “God­fa­ther of the Krem­lin” and sug­gest­ing that the tycoon — who made his for­tune dur­ing Russia’s con­tro­ver­sial pri­vati­sa­tion pro­gramme in the 1990s — might have been impli­cat­ed in the mur­der of a well-known TV anchor­man and had links with Chechen orga­nized crime groups.

Bere­zovsky sued the mag­a­zine for defama­tion, after which Forbes admit­ted in open court that the alle­ga­tions were unfound­ed and Bere­zovsky with­drew his suit. Dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings, how­ev­er, Kleb­nikov pub­lished an equal­ly con­tro­ver­sial book, God­fa­ther of the Krem­lin: Boris Bere­zovsky and the Loot­ing of Rus­sia in which he assert­ed that Bere­zovsky had also chan­nelled hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars out of Rus­sia.

Klebnikov’s sec­ond book, Con­ver­sa­tion With a Bar­bar­ian, writ­ten in Russ­ian and pub­lished in 2003, was based on a series of inter­views with Chechen sep­a­ratist leader Khozh Akhmed Nukhayev and dealt, among oth­er sub­jects, with orga­nized crime in Russia’s ongo­ing war in Chech­nya.

Paul Kleb­nikov became the edi­tor-in-chief of the Russ­ian edi­tion of Forbes in April 2004. In May, the mag­a­zine pub­lished a list of the 100 wealth­i­est peo­ple in Rus­sia, many of whom said they were unhap­py about the pub­li­ca­tion.

While in charge of the new Russ­ian Forbes, Kleb­nikov was also under­tak­ing cer­tain inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions that he did not speak of, Russ­ian online news ser­vice Gazeta.ru report­ed, cit­ing the source from Forbes.

On Fri­day night, July 9, 2004, Paul Kleb­nikov was shot sev­er­al times as he was leav­ing his office build­ing in Moscow. He died while in an ambu­lance en route to the hos­pi­tal.