New York Daily News

Spitz ‘I’ll kill’ threat

- BY SHAYNA JACOBS and DAREH GREGORIAN

THE RUSSIAN beauty charged in a $400,000 shakedown of Eliot Spitzer told cops the former governor threatened her — and her little dog, too.

“He started to threaten me by saying things like, ‘I’ll kill your dog. I have people all over the world. Your mother will be killed. I hate you,’ ” Svetlana Travis Zakharova, 26, told doctors in February, after she claimed she’d been assaulted by the prostitute-patronizin­g former pol, newly unsealed court papers show.

She said Spitzer “became angry” and attacked her in the room he’d gotten for her at the Plaza after she said she was going back to Russia.

He “started to throw my belongings. He then grabbed me by the neck and then threw me down on the bed or the floor,” Zakharova (photo) allegedly told the doctors who were treating her. “Maybe my boyfriend is resenting the fact that I am leaving. He has been my boyfriend for 21/2 years. He used to be governor,” she said. She also claimed Spitzer was blackmaili­ng her.

Spitzer, 56, has denied ever attacking the woman, who prosecutor­s say was extorting him over a two-year period.

Zakharova went back to Russia, but was arrested on extortion charges when she flew to New York last month. She had clothing, makeup, electronic­s and other items, including “various personal sexual devices/items,” court papers say.

She told a detective then that she’d first met Spitzer — who resigned amid a prostituti­on scandal — via “a friend.”

“Eliot would give me money, not a lot, not like a million or two. He gave me money every month. The amounts were different. Yes, the payments were in the amount of $15,000 to $50,000,” she said.

A crying and gasping Zakharova pleaded not guilty to the extortion charges in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday, and was ordered to remain locked up on $1 million

bail.

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