The businessmen accused of ordering the hit – Babenko, born in 1961, and Uļmans, born in 1953 – were each sentenced to 15 years in prison and probationary supervision for 3 years. The court decided to include the time already spent in detention of both persons in the prison sentence.
Meanwhile, Russian citizen Krivoshey, born in 1974, faces life imprisonment with probationary supervision for 3 years for carrying out the contract killing. The court decided to include the time spent in custody in Krivoshey's sentence, too.
The judgment can still be appealed to the Riga District Court and most likely will be, further prolonging a legal process that started back in 2018 when insolvency administrator Mārtiņš Bunkus was shot on the morning of May 30, in Mežaparks at the wheel of his Range Rover. Shortly after the murder, a burnt-out car with fake license plates was found near the scene.
Prosecutor Rimants Kuzma had demanded that Krivoshey be sentenced to life imprisonment for committing the murder and that Babenko and Uļmans should each serve 20 years in prison and confiscation of property for ordering the murder when they became annoyed by Bunkus' investigation of a company linked to them and his attempts to retrieve assets.
According to the indictment, Uļmans and Babenko had agreed on a fee of 300,000 euros to have Bunkus killed. The suspected middle-man hiring the hitman has not been charged because he died a violent death himself during the interim: underworld figure Genadijs Valagins was shot in March 2022 in Riga's Pļavnieki suburb.
The investigation into one of the largest contract killings in the history of the State Police was completed by the State Police in November 24 and the case went to the criminal court in April 2023.