A reputed Russian gangster brought to New York from Poland pleaded innocent Friday to charges that he participated in the kidnapping and murder of a promising Brooklyn boxer nearly a decade ago.
Natan Gozman entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he was ordered held without bail in the November 1995 murder of Sergei Kobozev, a 31-year-old boxer allegedly murdered in retaliation for breaking up a fight between Russian mobsters in a bar.
The body of Kobozev, a former member of the Soviet national boxing team who moved to the United States in 1990, was found buried in a Livingston, N.J., yard more than three years after he was allegedly confronted at a Brooklyn car-repair shop, shot and driven to New Jersey, where his neck was broken.
Gozman was brought to the United States Thursday from Poland, where he was turned over to agents from the FBI's Russian-organized crime task force after he lost his efforts to fight extradition.
Martin Beamon, a lawyer for Gozman, did not immediately return a telephone message for comment Friday.
If convicted, Gozman faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
|