American’s Slaying Feeds Western Fears in Moscow

The contract-style slaying here of a former Orange County entrepreneur has been condemned as a criminal act that will not go unpunished, but business people and diplomats privately expressed fears Monday that the chilling assassination of Paul E. Tatum will scare away already wary Western investors.

Tatum, the 41-year-old Oklahoma native who held a 40% stake in the lavish Radisson-Slavjanskaya Hotel here through his Americom Business Centers, until recently based in Irvine, was gunned down by a single assailant as the businessman emerged from a subway station Sunday about 5 p.m. He died of his 11 bullet wounds in a hospital half an hour later.

He is believed to be the first U.S. businessperson specifically targeted and slain in post-Soviet Russia, although Russians are increasingly the victims of hit men.

The killing occurred only a few hundred yards from the four-star Slavjanskaya, at the busy riverfront intersection where both the hotel and the always crowded Kievskaya train and subway station stand. Police recovered a machine gun in a plastic bag at the stairwell entrance from which the assailant ambushed Tatum.

Tatum had been waging a legal battle with the Moscow city government and the Radisson chain, which were the majority partners in the acrimonious joint venture. He had publicly sparred with local administrators who locked him out of his hotel apartment and offices for two weeks in 1994 and tried again to evict him early last year, prompting him to hire bodyguards and wear a bulletproof vest.

At the time of the 1995 incident, Tatum charged that the attempted eviction was part of the Moscow government’s larger scheme to nationalize the lucrative Slavjanskaya. “They stabbed one of my guards less than six weeks ago and gave him a message: ‘It’s high time Paul left for home,’ ” Tatum said then. “That’s the kind of tactics [they’re using].”

One Russian official involved in the ownership dispute, Anatoly Romanovsky, president of the Moscow International Tender Center, insisted in a statement that the financial conflicts between Tatum and his partners had been addressed “in a civilized way through Moscow and Stockholm courts.” The center is the government-designated broker in the city’s effort to take control of the whole venture.

But suspicion has fallen on the gangland interests that permeate business throughout Russia, especially in major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Contract killings in such cities are nearly a daily occurrence--and have become emblematic of the broader breakdown of authority and the evolution of a market-driven economic free-for-all.

With that in mind, some of Tatum’s former business associates said his slaying was not entirely unexpected.

“We all knew that Paul was putting his life on the line with some of the positions he had taken,” said Gary Winkelman, formerly director of sales and marketing for Americom’s offices in the Moscow hotel complex.

Winkelman, now a consultant in Newport Beach, said he left the company in 1994 “because it just got too dangerous. Paul stuck it out because he was absolutely committed and passionate about what he was trying to do. You have a project that was his entire life that went from an idea on a napkin to a $50-million venture.”

Winkelman said even some of the tenants of the Moscow office complex appeared to have mob affiliations and that his life was threatened when he attempted to evict one tenant. “People were dropping hints,” Winkelman said, “like they would remove your ears and send you home in a body bag.”

Winkelman and others said Tatum, who was never married and had no children, was formerly a fund-raiser for the Republican Party who came to Southern California in the late 1980s. It was in Orange County that Tatum made the high-powered connections--H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, former chief of staff for President Nixon, among them--that helped him launch Americom.

Americom closed its offices in an Irvine high-rise in June and left no forwarding address, said a property manager at the building. The company is now based in Moscow, said Bernie Rome, a co-founder of Americom who retired last year.

Rome said his reaction to the news of Tatum’s death was “one of shock, but not necessarily surprise because of the environment that exists there.”

Both Rome and Winkelman said they had spoken with Tatum in recent weeks. “I could tell Paul was getting nervous,” Winkelman said. “But he was also upbeat and positive.”

Although Tatum was one of the few Western business people in Russia to be specifically targeted, others have been killed in the cross-fire of warring mobsters. In May, a British businessman was killed when gunmen stormed an elegant St. Petersburg cafe to assassinate a Russian rival.

“Mr. Tatum was one of the first American entrepreneurs to enter the Moscow real estate market,” the U.S. Embassy said in a statement, declining comment on his killing except to say that the U.S. government “deplores any killing” of its citizens.

State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said in Washington: “We are working with the Russian government to try to make sure that the Russian government mounts a very aggressive investigation, a criminal investigation into this brutal murder of an American citizen.”

Officers investigating the killing vowed to catch those responsible and bring them to justice.

One envoy observed privately that the incident is likely to intensify the impression held by many Westerners that Russia remains too unruly a place for serious investment.

“And they ask us why we don’t bring in more money for projects here!” the diplomat said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Tatum had lately been trying to drum up funds to bankroll his defense against Radisson Hotels International, which held an initial 10% stake in the Moscow joint venture, and the Moscow City Property Committee, which owns 50%.

The Minnesota-based Radisson chain and the city government committee had accused Tatum of running up debts for the U.S.-Russian joint venture that opened the hotel in 1991.

As the only Moscow hotel partly owned and operated by American businesses, the Slavjanskaya played host to many visiting U.S. dignitaries--among them President Clinton.

The relationship between Americom and Radisson soured more than two years ago, prompting the hotel chain to seek dissolution of the partnership.

Williams reported from Moscow and Miller from Orange County.