Russian Partner of Slaying Victim Denied U.S. Entry

Richard Hoagland, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, said the State Department decided Nov. 22 that Umar Dzhabrailov was in breach of a section of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, which prohibits the issue of a visa to “any alien who the consular officer or the attorney general knows or has reason to believe seeks to enter the United States to engage solely, principally or incidentally in unlawful activity.”

No link was made between the visa ban and the Nov. 3 contract-style slaying of Tatum, a onetime Orange County entrepreneur who held a 40% stake in the four-star hotel through his Americom Business Centers. Tatum’s killer remains unknown.

But Russian Interior Minister Anatoly S. Kulikov has said that one of the leads police were following in Tatum’s killing was a possible connection to a dispute over the ownership and management of the Radisson-Slavjanskaya.

Tatum had been involved in a long-running quarrel with the Moscow government and the Radisson chain, which were the majority partners in the acrimonious joint venture. Local administrators locked him out of the hotel for two weeks in 1994 and tried again to evict him early last year, prompting him to hire bodyguards and wear a bulletproof vest.

Dzhabrailov, the official representative of the Moscow City Property Committee on the board of the U.S.-Russian joint venture, was a key figure in the dispute.

A furious Dzhabrailov said Saturday that the U.S. decision was unjustified, “just based on some rumors or nightmare scenario,” and restricts his human rights as well as those of Americans who wanted to meet him on their home territory.

“I never expected in my life that sweet-dream America could treat people in this way. . . . There should be respect for any human being in the world. Business is business, politics is politics, but damaging someone’s reputation is too much,” he said in a telephone interview.

But Dzhabrailov added that he does not plan any immediate protest or appeal. “What to do? Life goes on,” he said philosophically.

Tatum’s death caused alarm in the Western business community over the spread of gangland interests in Russia and the possible dangers of doing business here.

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Asking the FBI to join the Russian investigation into Tatum’s killing, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) wrote in a letter dated Nov. 7: “If the spread of Russia’s lawlessness to the death of the first American goes unremarked and unpunished, then it is clear where we shall be headed: towards more of the same.”

The Radisson-Slavjanskaya, a glitzy hotel packed with designer stores and expensive restaurants, has hosted President Clinton and other U.S. officials.

“The FBI should also examine the implications of the U.S. government’s use of [Dzhabrailov’s] Slavjanskaya hotel and [his] exploitation of his contacts with the president, vice president and other U.S. officials,” Cox said in his letter to FBI Director Louis J. Freeh.