GC TRUE CRIME
A FORMER Russian KGB colonel was gunned down in his driveway by frogmen working for the Russian mafia who fled in the darkness of a Gold Coast canal. The death of Gennadi Bernovski, 41, in 2000 still intrigues today…
A Russian KGB Colonel is shot in a case that reads like a James Bond script.
GENNADI Bernovski moved to Australia after the fall of the Soviet Union. His past is murky to say the least.
Before coming out to Australia he had been a colonel in an elite SAS-style military unit. Very little is known about Mr Bernovski and how he came about his money, although there were claims he had owned a successful business in Russia before migrating to Australia in 1994.
He had a close circle of Russian friends and was known to frequent the casino.
THE KILLING
On July 25, 2000, Gennadi Bernovski’s life was snuffed out in the driveway of his palatial Sir Bruce Small Boulevard home.
He had gone outside with his 28-year-old wife, Svetlana, about 9.30pm to throw out the garbage.
His wife went inside but Gennadi lingered, taking in the warm summer night air.
Suddenly, eight shots from a .32-calibre semiautomatic weapon were sprayed towards him. One hit him in the knee. Two others were fatal shots into his abdomen.
Police tried to revive Mr Bernovski, but he died before paramedics could arrive.
A witness described seeing two men and possibly a woman dressed in wetsuits running from the scene, carrying what looked like guns.
No cars were seen leaving the area, only reconfirming the hitmen swam to a car, or boat to make their getaway. Police have never found the killer frogmen.
At the time, Detective Sergeant Terry Winters, of Burleigh Heads CIB, said police believed it was a cold-blooded hit by the Russian mafia.
“There is no doubt it was a contract killing,’’ he said.
“The house was next to a canal and if these people were involved, they could have made their getaway by boat or even underwater.’’
THE INVESTIGATION
A large-scale investigation was launched into Mr Bernovski’s history. Detectives were looking for a motive. They found a money trail.
They discovered a number of Russians migrated to Australia specifically to become involved in business schemes organised by Mr Bernovski.
It’s thought the Russian immigrant owed his countrymen upwards of $860,000, including about $400,000 to close business partner Oleg Kouzmine.
Both of the men held interests in Prima Foods, a smallgoods distribution company based in West Burleigh, and a second-hand car-broking service. Both ventures failed.
It is understood the relationship between the pair soured when Prima Foods went under and Mr Bernovski sold his share in the business.
In a police interview after Mr Bernovski’s death, Mr Kouzmine claimed Mr Bernovski boasted of being a Russian mafia boss.
“I don’t know (if he had any enemies),” said Mr Kouzmine. “I know just one thing, that he didn’t make any secret out of it. He just said he was the head of the Russian mafia in Yakutsk and also in Kalingrad . . . he didn’t hide this.”
Asked if he knew who would kill his compatriot, he simply replied “no”.
In the days after his police interview, Mr Kouzmine flew back to Russia. He promised to speak with police when he came back to Australia in a few weeks.
Detectives uncovered what they believed to be the strongest motive – money, and that money led to Mr Kouzmine, who had arrived in Australia in 1998 with $1.3 million of “dubious” origins.
Police spent months interviewing people, laboriously checking phone records and intricate financial dealings.
Detectives claimed that when Mr Kouzmine lost all of his money, he made it known that he blamed Mr Bernovski.
After widow Svetlana Bernovski buried her husband at the Serbian Orthodox Church, the funeral party went to Spargo’s restaurant at Southport for a wake.
Mr Kouzmine was not among those at the party. But another business partner of both Mr Kouzmine and Mr Bernovski, Michael Shnirman, arrived home to find a chilling, typed note in his letterbox. It read: “1. Bernovski. 2. Shnirman. 3. Starikov.’’
On the note, Mr Bernovski’s name had a line through it. Shnirman went into the witness-protection program, Starikov disappeared.
Mr Kouzmine became the prime suspect when his fingerprints were discovered on a gate at the Bernovski home in the days after he had flown out of the country.
He did not come back to Australia and was arrested a month later by Russian police on embezzlement charges.
He spent eight months in prison and was said to have spent a lot of money to stay alive within the corrupt prison system. An arrest warrant was taken out against Oleg Kouzmine in April 2001.
Eight months after being locked up in Russia, Mr Kouzmine was released from the St Petersburg prison, without charge. Burleigh detectives revealed Mr Kouzmine wrote to them from Russia in September 2001, via the Australian Embassy in Moscow and Interpol.
The letter, written in broken English, is the ramblings of a clearly angry Mr Kouzmine, who cannot return to Australia to see his two children from his former marriage.
Mr Kouzmine blamed the police and the media for not being able to return.
“While I was imprisoned in Russia, the Australian policemen charged me with the murder of Gennadi Bernovski on the only ground that I had gone to Russia and had not returned. In my opinion that fact can’t be a cause for an accusation of such a serious crime and an official retrieval by Interpol,’’ he wrote.
“I have the right to be unpleased with the actions of Australian policemen ... depriving me of my opportunity to leave Russia.’’
But the accused gunman remains untouchable as Russia does not have an extradition treaty with Australia.
TODAY
The investigation into the killing of Gennadi Bernovski is still very much alive. A phone call to Crime Stoppers in 2004 reinvigorated the case, with new information about two other people there the night Mr Bernovski was killed. Police haven’t heard from them since. The claim that frogmen came and went out of the canals, like in a spy thriller, is still very much a theory talked about by police. What they do want, and need, is to question Mr Kouzmine again.