Investigators are considering three possible scenarios behind the killing of businessman Eduard Akselrod, which is qualified as a contract killing, the head of the investigative department of the National Police's main office in Kharkiv region, Serhiy Chyzh, has said.

"Investigators put forward three versions, in particular, a deliberate murder committed for mercenary motives, revenge or hostility, a murder due to debt obligations (his personal debt or debt to him), and a murder committed in order to redistribute spheres of influence in a criminal environment in Kharkiv," he said at a briefing on Monday, November 6.

He said that Akselrod's murder was qualified as a contract killing (Part 2, Clause 11, Article 115 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

Chyzh noted that investigators were checking a possible link between the businessman's murder and the murder of former State Duma deputy Denis Voronenkov in Kyiv this summer, as well as the assassination of vice-president of the Sparta industrial and financial group Hennadiy Akselrod in Dnipro in 2012.

According to the police, Akselrod was registered as a private entrepreneur and established business ties. He was not tried on Ukrainian territory. Investigators sent inquiries to other countries to find out whether he had a probable criminal record abroad.

Chyzh also said that Akselrod was shot from automatic weapons in Kharkiv. The killer fired 15 times.

As reported, Akselrod was shot dead in his car in the center of Kharkiv in the early hours of November 5.

Later, Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said that Akselrod was associated with the murder of former State Duma deputy Denis Voronenkov in Kyiv.

"Akselrod is the connection of Tyurin and Vasylenko in the organization of Voronenkov's murder. The PGO investigation correctly identified [Russian criminal boss] Tyurin as the mastermind," Lutsenko wrote on his Facebook page late on Sunday, November 5, while commenting on a statement by MP Ihor Mosiychuk about the identity of the person killed.