Jamal Gogia, an official from the Abkhaz Prosecutor’s Office who is in charge of investigating the assassination attempt against the breakaway region’s Prime Minister Alexander Ankvab, which took place on April 1, said in the interview with the news agency Apsnypress on April 7 that investigators are considering three possible reasons behind this failed attempt.

This first one, he said, is linked to the “Prime Minister’s professional activities.” “According to this version, those entrepreneurs who were actively engaged in corrupt deals with the authorities over the past 10 years and whose interests were undermined as a result of increased control over the economy are being suspected,” the chief investigator said.

He also said that the second version of the investigation focuses on “criminal elements, who are displeased by the Prime Minister's statements and actions aimed at fighting crime.”

Jamal Gogia said that the investigators deem foreign involvement a possiblity as well. He said the assassination attempt could have been organized by the Georgian special service, or some other, unspecified, foreign special service agency, “in an attempt to destabilize the political situation in Abkhazia.”

The Abkhaz PM survived a second assassination attempt against him in the past two months, when unknown gunmen opened fire on his convoy in the outskirts of the Abkhaz capital Sokhumi late on April 1. Neither the PM, nor de facto Vice Premier Leonid Lakerbaia, who was accompanying Ankvab, was injured. Their driver, however, was wounded as a result of the attack.