Paul Klebnikov (; June 3, 1963 – July 9, 2004) was an American journalist and historian of Russia. He worked for Forbes magazine for more than 10 years and at the time of his death was chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes. His murder in Moscow in 2004 was seen as a blow against investigative journalism in Russia. Three Chechens accused of taking part in the murder were acquitted. Though the murder appeared to be the work of assassins for hire, as of 2022, the alleged organizers of the murder had yet to be identified. According to another version, widely reported in Russian media, Klebnikov was killed by a close associate to the high-ranking member of linked both to Russian FSS service and Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch. Early life Paul Klebnikov was born in New York to a family of Russian émigrés with a long military and political tradition: his great-great-great-grandfather Ivan Puschin participated in the Decembrist revolt in 1825 and was exiled to Siberia, and his great-grandfather, an admiral in the White Russian fleet, was assassinated by Bolsheviks. As a child, he was known as a daredevil including swimming during hurricanes. He attended St. Bernard's School and Phillips Exeter Academy, and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley with a BA in political science in 1984. He then enrolled in the Officer Candidates School of the US Marine Corps as a way to test himself, but upon completing the course, declined to take the offered commission. Instead, he pursued a PhD at the London School of Economics, where he would go on to win the Leonard Schapiro Prize "for excellence in Russian studies". Klebnikov wrote his doctoral thesis on agrarian reform in Russia following the Stolypin Reforms that sought to build an independent, progressive, and prosperous peasantry. His thesis was titled "Agricultural development in Russia, 1906-1917: Land reform, social agronomy and cooperation". From 1987–88, he lectured at the Institute of European Studies in London. On September 22, 1991, he married Helen "Musa" Train, the daughter of prominent Wall Street banker John Train. The couple would go on to have three children. Reporting on Russia Klebnikov joined Forbes in 1989 and gained a reputation for investigating murky post-Soviet business dealings and corruption. In 1996, he wrote a cover story for Forbes titled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" with the kicker 'Power. Politics. Murder. Boris Berezovsky could teach the