Her former colleague — Mikhail Glushchenko, the former deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) - was considered as the main suspect of the organization of this crime. However, recently he made ​​a sensational statement that his partner and the main customer of the murder was St. Petersburg businessman Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin).

Nevertheless, this statement has not become a sensation either for Gluschenko’s advocate, or for the investigator. The advocate said that no matter what the motive his client had making such a declaration. In his opinion, the main point is that the motive was truthful. The investigator Nikitin, commenting the case, only shortly promised that he would check the “confession” of Gluschenko using a polygraph. In any case, the point at issue is how plausible was the motive of the murder which Gluschenko attributed to the customer. He said that the motive was that Starovoytova had planned to integrate St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region but Barsukov allegedly hadn’t wanted the association. Because, according to Gluschenko, it could ruin Barsukov’s own plans.

To make his statement to look more realistic, Gluschenko refers to the friendship connected Starovoytova and the former gambling king Michael Mirilashvili. According to Gluschenko, Mirilashvili wanted to put his own governor in the new integrated subject of the federation. And Starovoytova allegedly agreed on the proposed candidate.  Let us remember here a popular Russian saying - it's neither here where the elder is, nor in Kiev where uncle lives, or to say it shortly – he is “mixing apples and oranges”.

Meanwhile, Michael Mirilashvili could not have much influence on such global political issues, as his political figure was then associated with the disgraced ex-mayor Anatoly Sobchak, hiding in France in those days, and with the former State Secretary Gennady Burbulis, who occupied the modest post of the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant.

And the idea of ​​the integration of the two major subjects of the federation was not so popular. In 1998, when Starovoytova and Mirilashvili allegedly decided to integrate the city and the region, the governor of the Leningrad region Vadim Gustov and St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev signed a certain decree on the preparation of association of St. Petersburg and Leningrad region. Then Gustov went to the government, later he was withdrawn from it, then he tried to become governor again and lost the regional elections of 1999. Valery Serdyukov, the opponent of the association, won the election then. And Yakovlev's rating sharply went down.

The vice-governor of the Leningrad region Grigory Dvas and the representative of the president in the Leningrad region Fyodor Shkrudnev were opponents of the association. But there were many opponents in St. Petersburg too. For example, it was the former vice-mayor of St. Petersburg Vladimir Putin. Here Gluschenko should remember that Putin, being the President of the Russian Federation, took up Valentina Matvienko shortly when in 2007 she tried to ask about hypothetical possibility of the association.

But the story told by Gluschenko doesn’t hang together. The fact is that nobody exactly knows that Galina Starovojtova nurtured such far-reaching plans. Even her sister Olga Starovoytova or  her aides Ruslan Linkov and Vitaly Milonow never heard about them.

Thus, in the end of 1998,  the question of the association of the city and the region was not actual at all, but another question was on the agenda – it was about  the election of the regional governor, which had to take place (and it took place) in 1999. And that issue was really interesting for Galina Starovojtova. She even considered to be a candidate - as an alternative to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who just then going to run for the post (in practice, a deputy from the LDPR Yury Kuznetsov participated in those elections). In the same year, she repeatedly acted with rigid criticism of the Liberal Democratic Party, where Gluschenko was not only a member but not a miner player.

It is obvious that Glushchenko who has already sentenced to 8 years of prison for a large extortion and accused not only of the murder of Galina Starovoytova, but also of  the triple murder in Cyprus in 2004 — the murder of his former fellow party member, the St. Petersburg businessman Vyacheslav Shevchenko, his business partner and his translator — now is looking for any opportunity to avoid responsibility. It tries to use any method for this purpose - up to a slander. And of course, it is easier for him to choose for the slander Vladimir Barsukov convicted for “raider affairs”. But remember that Barsukov was justified on the main charge - on the organization of the attempt on the billionaire Sergey Vasilyev. That discharge greatly troubles the prosecutors being in need of urgent safety net. So, the Gluschenko’s version appeared in time.

Though, with the same success, he could accuse at once two ex-governors, the leader of the oldest parliamentary party and the former vice-mayor …