Paris Soir - Police hunt for Ukrainian woman over Monaco bomb attack

Identified as Anastasiia Berezovska, 39, the suspect is wanted in Monaco for attempted murder, placing an explosive device on a public road with criminal intent, and criminal conspiracy over the explosion on Monday, according to an Interpol Red Notice.

German law enforcement said they searched her rented apartment in the Frankfurt area on Thursday.

"The woman being sought is currently on the run," they said, adding they had secured evidence and would hand it over to the Monaco authorities.

Monaco's deputy public prosecutor, Morgan Raymond, told reporters the suspect's last known residence was in Germany.

According to Raymond, she fled through France and then Italy in a rental car.

The sequence of events suggests the suspect "may not have acted alone", he said, confirming that the individual was "a woman posing as a man".

The bombing has sent shockwaves through Monaco, an ultra-secure microstate near Nice in southern France that is a playground of the world's ultra-rich. Prince Albert II has described the attack as a "heinous crime".

- Tattoo on right arm -

The Monaco authorities have not confirmed the victims' identities, but according to several sources, the attack targeted Vadym Yermolaiev, 58, a wealthy businessman originally from Ukraine and now a Cypriot national, as well as his partner and his 13-year-old son.

On Monday evening, an individual left a package in the entrance hall of a small apartment building near the French border.

Shortly afterwards, an explosive device went off in the hall just as three residents -- a couple and a child -- were entering.

The suspect, who was captured on CCTV wearing a black fisherman's hat, was initially believed to be a man.

But a review of surveillance footage and testimony from a person who came into contact with the suspect led investigators to focus on a woman who had allegedly conducted several reconnaissance visits in the days before the explosion, Raymond said.

The suspected woman with dark shoulder-length hair appears in two photographs released by Interpol.

The notice says the woman has a tattoo on her right arm, "possibly" depicting a snake, and that she speaks German.

- Convicted of fraud -

The couple received particularly serious injuries.

A source following the case initially said the man had suffered severe burns and the woman was in critical condition, without providing further details.

The child was admitted in non-critical condition to the Lenval children's hospital in Nice, while the two adults were taken to the Nice University Hospital with their lives in danger.

By Wednesday, the man was no longer in critical condition, although the woman's condition remained unstable.

A resident of Monaco since at least 2021, Yermolaiev has been subject since December 2023 to sanctions in Ukraine over his business activities in Crimea, which was annexed by Russia.

In 2021, the Ukrainian edition of Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $220 million, ranking him the country's 45th richest person.

A source told AFP that people would have been lining up to gun down the construction magnate in Dnipro, the industrial Ukrainian city where he made his wealth.

The magnate's 35-year-old son Artur Yermolaiev is believed to also have made a long list of enemies.

According to Estonian authorities, he had been involved in phone scams since at least 2017.

He was convicted of fraud in Estonia earlier this year, where he pleaded guilty to running a fake investment phone scam out of Ukraine that obtained around 100 million euros through fraud between 2019 and 2022.

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I.Masson--PS