Police in Sihanoukville on Monday confirmed that a second man was injured in a violent attack on a group that included the manager of the company handling ticket sales for the upcoming Kazantip music festival at the Queenco Hotel and Casino on Friday night.
Two Russian men arrested Saturday morning on suspicion of participating in the attack were charged over the crime Monday evening.
According to police, the attack inside the hotel occurred at about 8:30 p.m. Friday after a group of six men demanded 50 percent of the revenue from ticket sales for the notoriously debauched rave—set to take place on Koh Puos island beginning Wednesday—threatening to kill the manager’s wife and children if he did not agree to their terms.
The manager, Moldovan national Vladimir Palancica, 30, escaped unharmed, but a second Moldovan man, Mihai Bulgar, 20, was stabbed in the torso and hospitalized. Police followed the assailants to a rented villa in Sihanoukville’s Bei commune, where they arrested the two suspects and seized air-powered pistols, stun guns and other weapons.
On Monday, deputy provincial police chief Kol Phally said a second man who was with Mr. Palancica at the hotel was injured in the attack, but that the whereabouts of the victim—whose name, nationality and age he claimed he did not know—were unknown.
“He did not come file a complaint and we tried to find him, but we could not,” Mr. Phally said, explaining that he knew about the man from multiple “sources,” declining to comment further.
Men Vanny, chief of the provincial police’s minor crimes bureau, also said there was a second victim. He said the man was reportedly shot in the knee, but that because no shell casings were found at the hotel, it was unlikely his wound was caused by a bullet.
“We suspect that he was hit by a pellet from an air-powered gun,” he said.
On Sunday, both Mr. Palancica and Ilya Rosenfeld, a representative of Emergency Legal Consulting Agency, a partner of Lotus Tours, claimed the attack was led by a Russian man employed by prominent Russian businessman Nikolai Doroshenko, 54.
Mr. Doroshenko’s son, Ostap Doroshenko, 36, denied on Sunday that the man worked for his family, and said that neither he nor his father were in any way involved in the attack.
Mr. Rosenfeld—who also serves as press secretary for fugitive Russian developer Sergei Polonsky, 42—said in an email on Sunday that the attack was carried out by men claiming to be mafia enforcers who began “shooting and stabbing indiscriminately.”
Mr. Phally, the deputy police chief, said the two men arrested Saturday—Aleksandr Kiselev, 29, and Aleksei Burlakov, 30—were charged Monday evening by the Preah Sihanouk Provincial Court with intentional violence with aggravating circumstances and sent to the provincial prison.
Deputy prosecutor Huot Vichet said he questioned the men earlier Monday but could not be reached in the evening.
Mr. Doroshenko and Mr. Polonsky are locked in a number of high-profile legal battles over property in Sihanoukville and off its coast. In December, the Russian heavyweights exchanged court complaints over Mr. Doroshenko’s claim that Mr. Polonsky ordered a hit on him that ultimately left his son with a broken jaw.
(Additional reporting by Chris Mueller)
Clarification: This story has been updated with the correct names and ages of the suspects.
