Remains of journalist Maximov killed 20 years ago have been found

The remains of Maxim Maximov, a journalist of "Fontanka" and the Agency for Investigative Journalism, killed in 2004, were found by law enforcement agencies. This was reported on December 25 by the TV channel "78" in Telegram.

"At the burial site are working employees of the St. Petersburg criminal investigation," - added there.

It is specified that they provide the investigation with operational support for the investigation of the murder of Maximov.

Attacked the light: ex-colonel confessed to the murder of journalist Maximov

Former police officer Mikhail Smirnov is accused of two similar crimes at once

Earlier, on December 23, "78" told about the details of the murder of the journalist. It was reported that 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 performance of the police officer. In June 2004 of the same year Smirnov lured the journalist to a sauna and hit him on the head with a pipe. The journalist's body was buried in a forest near the Scandinavia highway.

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 began his career as a cultural columnist for the St. Petersburg newspaper "Smena" before entering "criminal" journalism as an employee of the Agency for Journalist Investigations. In recent years, he has worked for Gorod magazine.