An American Dream Is Crushed by Violence

On the afternoon of Jan. 23, three days after his apparent abduction by a local kidnapping ring, George Safiev phoned his Beverly Hills-area estate and told the nanny to put his 4-year-old son, Denis, on the line.

“They spoke for a long time, as if they both knew they were talking for the last time to each other,” said the nanny, Alina Prokofyeva. “[Denis] said, ‘Daddy, why don’t you come home? You have been away so long. Please come back.’”

Nearly two months later, long after the phone had stopped ringing and hope had started to fade, the family learned that Safiev, a Russian banking mogul, would never be coming back. Last week, his body and those of three other Russian immigrants, including his partner in a fledgling film company, were pulled from New Melones Lake in California’s gold country. A fifth body had been found in the same waters in October.

Today, two men are in federal custody on charges of kidnapping Safiev, 37. They and two others are also charged with kidnapping or aiding and abetting the abduction of Alexander Umansky, 35. Another two men are being held on charges of handling ransom payments. All the suspects have Eastern European roots.

Federal authorities said more charges are likely in the five deaths, and another suspect is being sought.

The arrests have done little to ease the pain of the victims’ relatives. Their ordeals began with a loved one who did not come home one night. The families made frantic calls--to friends of the missing, to co-workers and finally to the police. Nothing. Then, in some cases, calls came from the missing themselves, reassuring at first, but desperate in the end.

For the Safievs, things began to go wrong Jan. 20, the night of the 59th annual Golden Globe Awards. By some accounts, Safiev and Nick Kharabadze, 29, had planned to hit the post-awards parties. Instead, the two partners in Matador Media disappeared.

The next day, Safiev called Prokofyeva, who was watching Denis while his wife, Svetlana, and 17-year-old daughter, Evgenia, vacationed in Moscow. He told the nanny not to worry, not to call anyone, that he and Kharabadze encountered a minor problem. He hinted that the younger man had been jailed for drunk driving, Prokofyeva said.

Three days later, Safiev’s Mercedes turned up in Burbank. He called Svetlana and Evgenia four times.

“He said the same thing in all the calls,” Svetlana said in a heavy Russian accent. “‘Someone is standing next to me. I can’t talk.... But don’t worry please. I’ll sort everything out and meet you on Saturday at the airport.’”

At one point, Svetlana asked her husband whether he was in trouble with the police.

“I said ... ‘Maybe something is wrong with your car,’” she said. “He said yes, yes--just to make me quiet.”

The Safievs have moved back to Moscow, where George Safiev had bodyguards. Svetlana and her daughter are in California this week to perform the grim task of identifying Safiev’s body.

They don’t know what they are going to do about the multimillion-dollar house on a ridge top above Beverly Hills, where Denis’ swing set sits empty in the backyard. There is also the swank Santa Monica office of Matador, the desks piled with notes on movies never made.

“Here ... he believed it was safe,” Evgenia said of her father. “He couldn’t believe you would need bodyguards.”

“He brought his dreams here,” Svetlana added. “And such a disaster happened.”

Wearing stylish clothes but looking tired, they slumped in chairs in the Colorado Boulevard office, thumbing through pictures of him that Svetlana carries in her white leather purse. There were shots from Mexico, Russia and Los Angeles. In each, Safiev wears an impish grin, his arm around family members or friends.

Safiev’s mother lives in Moscow and has cancer. Svetlana kept the news of his death from her for a week, afraid that it would kill her.

But Svetlana herself is determined to view his body, to see for herself what had happened to the man she met when both were teen-agers.

“Before I see it, I won’t believe he is dead,” Svetlana said. “For us, he is alive. I feel him every moment.”

Last June, the Safievs arrived in Los Angeles in style. They moved into a gleaming contemporary home in a gated community off Mulholland Drive, with views from the ocean to the San Fernando Valley. A white stone lion guards the driveway. Out back, the swimming pool reflects the palm trees swaying in the breeze.

Children Relish New Life in America

Evgenia and Denis adapted joyfully to this new world. Denis was his father’s constant companion, coasting down Mulholland with him to the beach, joining him on skiing vacations. Evgenia took a broadcasting course at a community college.

Svetlana, however, had a different reaction to Los Angeles.

“I felt something wrong inside of me,” she said as she looked around the Matador office--at the stacks of paper, and the two workers wondering what to do with them. “My spirit refused. I don’t know why. All the time, I felt wrong.”

Matador had started up only last May. But Safiev and Kharabadze had spent the last year or so making waves in Tinseltown. Safiev schmoozed at Sundance, Kharabadze sipped cocktails at Shutters on the Beach, and both did lunch with established players.

With Safiev as the money guy and winsome Kharabadze as the Hollywood connection, they planned to produce “Manslaughter,” a psychological thriller with roots in a true story, and “Amphibian Man,” a horror film based on a Soviet-era classic.

For Safiev, Hollywood was a long way from the cold and sometimes brutal homeland where he amassed his fortune, which authorities say is in bank accounts around the world. His family says they knew little about his business dealings, but that he fought for that fortune with the same fervor that had made him a boxing champion in his youth.

Safiev had originally dreamed of becoming a pilot, but his colorblindness disqualified him for a license. He found a new focus in the free markets emerging from the crumbling Soviet system.

While studying engineering at the University of Kiev, he met Svetlana at a dance. They were married in 1983. Neither had much money, Svetlana said. Evgenia was born in 1984.

The young father took a variety of odd jobs, from cook to cleaning man. When the Kremlin loosened its rules on entrepreneurship in the mid-1980s, he threw his efforts into a small computer start-up. From there, he went into banking, Svetlana said. She said she could provide no further details.

“He was a self-made man,” she said. “He didn’t have any enemies. He had lots of friends.”

His daughter said Safiev “was not only someone who loved life, but he taught us how to get pleasure from every single moment. Sometimes, he had so many problems, but he would come home and make his family feel so loved.”

Safiev also loved the movies, she said. Prokofyeva said he had crafted a film treatment based on the life of Hadji Murad, a famed 19th century Chechen warrior who had been the subject of a Tolstoy novella.

With his daughter, Safiev flew to Los Angeles for a vacation about 18 months ago, and fell in love again. For a man who spent part of his youth in the Siberian town of Norilsk--a frozen and polluted mining center above the Arctic Circle--L.A. was a wonderland.

“Inside, he is very artistic,” Svetlana said, a small smile creeping across her face. “He was tired of all the business [in Russia]. He loved L.A. and the people here.”

He bought in-line skates to ride along Santa Monica Beach. He was a health nut, doing yoga every day and extolling organic foods to anyone who would listen.

What might have been the first sign of trouble came Dec. 5, though the Safievs say they didn’t realize it then. That day, Matador’s accountant Rita Pekler disappeared. Pekler only did occasional work for Matador, so no one in the office knew she was missing until a few weeks later. When Safiev found out, he didn’t think it had anything to do with him, said Matador office manager Olga Preiss.

Pekler’s body was pulled from the lake last week, along with those of Safiev, Kharabadze and Umansky, a North Hollywood businessman. In October, Meyer Muscatel, 58, a Sherman Oaks real estate developer, had been found dead in the lake, with his hands bound and a bag over his head.

Six weeks after Pekler’s disappearance, Safiev, Denis and Prokofyeva spent a Sunday morning at Santa Monica Beach. In the afternoon, they headed back to Beverly Hills so Prokofyeva could prepare dinner for Kharabadze and another Safiev friend, Gary Paronyan.

Then there was a change in plans. Safiev announced that he and Kharabadze would eat at Paronyan’s house. Prokofyeva said she never saw him again.

The next morning, the calls from Safiev began. One of them went to his business manager, instructing him to transfer $1 million from Moscow to an account in the United States.

Victim Assured Family Until the End

Svetlana and Evgenia said they last heard from him on the same day he had the long talk with Denis.

“Don’t worry please,” he said, according to Svetlana. “I’ll sort everything out.” And they agreed to meet at the airport.

Mother and daughter flew into LAX three days later, but Safiev was not there to greet them.

For nearly two months, Svetlana said, she was in constant contact with the FBI, despairing at the lack of progress.

Finally there was news from Northern California.

“These are horrible people, like animals,” Svetlana said. “Even now, we don’t believe it.”

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Times special correspondent Sergei Loiko and staff writer Maura Reynolds in Moscow, and staff writer William Overend in Ventura contributed to this report.