Crime Fighter Faces Kidnap Charge

An organized crime detective has been charged with kidnapping a businessman in exchange for $1,200 and a car, police and a newspaper said Sunday.

Anatoly Nikulin, a senior detective in Moscow’s organized crime directorate, will face trial in a Moscow court, said Vladimir Koval, a police department spokesman. He refused to discuss details of the case.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper said Nikulin was hired by two businessmen to kidnap a third man in December 1994 to extort money from him.

The victim, identified only as Obukhov, was taken from his hotel room and locked up in a police cell, the newspaper said.

Threatened with arrest for a crime he never committed, the man agreed to sign over ownership of two apartments, a country house and three garages and pay the businessmen 70 million rubles - the equivalent of $12,700 - and $120,000, it said.