Popular Russian investigator-turned-lawyer found dead

PanARMENIAN.Net - Russian investigators said Monday, July 15 they were looking into the death of a TV host and former investigator who helped inquire into the abortive coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, according to RIA Novosti.

Boris Tarasov, born in 1952, was found dead in his apartment in downtown Moscow after his neighbors complained about an unusual smell, Moscow investigators said on Monday.

He had been dead for between two or three weeks before his body was discovered by the police, according to a statement on the Investigative Committee website.

A preliminary inquiry has been opened into the death, though no visible signs of foul play were found at the scene, investigators said.

Tarasov made his name as an investigator in the early 1990s. He was involved in the investigation into the actions of the eight hard-line high-level Communist Party leaders, who called themselves the State Emergency Situation Committee (GKChP), who attempted to oust Gorbachev and halt his perestroika reforms, Echo Moskvy radio station reported.

In the past few years Tarasov was best known to Russian TV audiences as the host of popular court show “Sud Idyot” (Court in Session), a Russian version of the American arbitration reality show “The People’s Court.”