Aslan Usoyan

Alleged ties to PKK Usoyan, an ethnic Kurd, was accused of supplying money and weapons to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Death On 16 January 2013 and a month before his 76th birthday, Usoyan was shot in the head by a sniper perched on the sixth floor of an adjacent apartment building after leaving a restaurant which served as his office, and despite efforts of his bodyguards and ambulance workers he died en route to the hospital. The family decided to fly Usoyan's body to be buried in his native Tbilisi, but the Tbilisi International Airport refused to accept the plane. His death was thought to be likely to spur chaos in the criminal world. The day Usoyan was shot dead, an Armenian crime fiction writer, Sergey Galoyan, said in a conversation with a local news website that the mafia king's murder might be linked to a certain unrest in the criminal world, particularly the construction of the Sochi Olympic facilities which are said to have attracted considerable investments.

The main suspects behind Usoyan's murder are Tariel Oniani and Rovshan Janiev.

Personal life

Aslan Usoyan's wife was Dulsha Avdoeva (born in 1937), with whom Usoyan had two children - daughter Nuna (born in 1960) and son Nodari (born in 1962). Nodari was a co-founder of several commercial structures. Nodari also had shares in enterprises registered abroad, in particular in Austria. Nodari Usoyan is completely clean before the law. However, the companies in which he was a co-founder were involved in criminal cases. Religiously, Usoyan was a Yazidi.