KIEV, March 27 - A Russian businessman once allied with Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych was shot dead by a sniper on Tuesday as he was being escorted from a Kiev courthouse by police, officials said.

A police officer who was guarding Maksim Kurochkin, 38, was seriously wounded in the incident, which occurred during a break in his extortion trial, said Volodymyr Polishchuk, head of the Kiev department of the Interior Ministry.

Kurochkin died on the spot after being hit by a single bullet fired from a building neighboring the Svyatoshynsky District Court. The same bullet apparently wounded the police officer, a police source said.

Police later recovered the sniper rifle that had been apparently used to kill Kurochkin, while several hours later it had found a car, Mazda, which had been apparently used by the killers to escape from the scene.

Kurochkin once controlled assets in hotel, power and natural gas distribution sectors in Ukraine. In an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda last year, Kurochkin said he had invested $200 million in various business projects in Ukraine, including construction of Premier Palace, Kiev??™s first five-star hotel.

Kurochkin also had wide-ranging political connections in Ukraine. He ran an organization that had supported Yanukovych during the bitter 2004 presidential campaign and the Orange Revolution mass protests.

Last year, Kurochkiv told a Russian newspaper that he had financed the Bloc of Natalia Vitrenko, a vehemently pro-Russian and anti-NATO group, which had narrowly missed of being elected to Ukrainian Parliament in March 2006. The comment triggered a political scandal forcing Kurochkin to later deny making any funding.

Kurochkin was arrested in November 2006 at Kiev's airport, while the trial, which began last month, has been closely watched because of his ties to Yanukovych.

Kurochkin had said the case, which involved the privatization sale of a Kiev hotel and a Dnipropetrivsk-area goods market called Ozerka, was fabricated.

Ukrainian media reported that Kurochkin had repeatedly asked the court to release him on bail, saying he feared for his life and claiming that he had survived 18 assassination attempts, including a November 2004 car bombing that seriously wounded his bodyguards.

Polishchuk said that three other businessmen connected to Kurochkin and the Ozerka market were shot dead earlier this month as they rode in a car in the Kievsky region. In October, the market's director was killed, he said.

During the 2004 presidential election, Kurochkin ran the Russian Club, an organization uniting political analysts and journalists supporting Yanukovych. (tl/ap/ez)