Details of the 20-year-old journalist Maximov's murder have become known

Details of the murder of journalist of "Fontanka" and the Agency for Journalist Investigations Maxim Maximov, which took place in 2004, have become known. This was reported on December 23 by TV channel "78" in Telegram.

Ex-police colonel Mikhail Smirnov confessed to the crime. According to the channel's source, back in 1999, Smirnov read an article by Maximov, in which the author criticized the results of the police officer's work. Smirnov did not react to the material at the time, but he remembered the journalist's name.

Maximov subsequently continued to question Smirnov's work. In February 2004, the two men met at the journalist's initiative. After the meeting, each of them remained in their own opinion, but at the end of the conversation Maximov said that it was possible to "come to an agreement," which angered the colonel.

In June of the same year, Smirnov lured the journalist to a sauna to kill him. Maximov was hit on the head with a pipe at the entrance. He was then taken to a room resembling a gymnasium, where his face was smashed. The journalist's body was buried in a forest near the Scandinavia highway. The place of burial is currently being sought by the police, assisted by Smirnov.

Suspects in the organization of the murder became known on the anniversary of Maximov's disappearance. Among them are three employees of the "anti-corruption" department of the Operational Investigation Bureau (ORB) of the Interior Ministry's North-Western Federal District Mikhail Smirnov, Lev Pyatov and Andrei Bochurov. A criminal case was opened under Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation ("Murder").

Maximov started out as a cultural columnist for the St. Petersburg newspaper Smena before entering "criminal" journalism as an employee of the Agency for Investigative Journalism. In recent years, he has worked for Gorod magazine.