Banker's Killing: A Case of From Russia With Hate?

Foul play is confirmed, but the identity of the players may make for the great murder mystery of international finance. Edmond Safra, owner of the Republic National Bank of New York and one of the world's richest men, was murdered Friday in Monte Carlo after two knife-wielding hooded men broke into his penthouse apartment and set a fire after the banker locked himself in a bathroom. Safra and a nanny died in the fire, while his bodyguard was badly injured. The killers have not been apprehended.

The attack came as Safra was moving to complete the sale of Republic National to the London-based HSBC banking group for $10.3 billion. He'd been forced to reduce his price by $450 million after Japanese financial regulators claimed that one of Safra's clients, Princeton Analytics, may have cheated Japanese investors out of $1 billion. The bank had also lost $191 million from Russia's 1998 debt default, and last summer alerted the FBI to the possibility that some of its accounts were being used for money laundering by Russian organized crime. Indeed, concerns over money laundering prompted Republic National only last month to end some 40 percent of its dealings with Russian banks. All of that will inevitably provide fertile ground for speculation as to the killers' motive, but until they're caught — if they're caught — speculation is all that it is.