Sergei Furgal, the governor of Russia’s far-eastern Khabarovsk region, has been arrested on charges of involvement in multiple murders, the country’s Investigative Committee said Thursday.
The committee said Furgal is accused of involvement in the murders of several businessmen in the region and nearby territories in 2004 and 2005.
He will be charged for organising the murder and the attempted murder of the businessmen, local media reported. If found guilty of all the charges, he could be jailed for life.
Furgal is a member of the populist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. He won the 2018 election against the longtime incumbent, Vyacheslav Shport, who had represented United Russia, the main Kremlin party loyal to president Vladimir Putin.
The LDPR is also supportive of Putin, but Furgal was at the time described by analysts as “an undesirable candidate for the Kremlin”.
