FIJI – Murdered Russian couple Yuri Shipulin and wife, Natalia had started behaving strangely seven days before they mysteriously disappeared last month, the Fiji Sun has reported.

Their business partner, Andrew Luzanenko, told reporters on the day the couple disappeared he had no idea where they were going when they left the farm in apparent haste in their metallic grey Landcruiser.

Luzanenko felt their hurried departure from the Nausori Highlands vegetable farming property was “weird”.

He said the couple left “without even speaking to me.”

“I tried calling several times on Yuri’s phone but no answer and then it was diverted.”

He said they had recently “hit the bottle” in a boozing spree – drinking and smoking heavily.

The next day, June 17, their vehicle, covered in dust, was found abandoned at Natadola Beach in Nadi. The key was still in the ignition. There was no sign of the couple until body parts began washing up on the beach last week.

Luzanenko arrived in the country on January 16 this year, on an invitation from the Shipulins to help them on the farm.

He speaks little English but told the Fiji Sun the farm’s financial situation took a nose dive after it was ravaged by Cyclone Winston in February.

He said the couple were increasingly worried over this.

When reporters visited him on the farm before the body parts were found he showed them a plastic rubbish bag full of empty cigarette packets saying, “see, only one week.”

On a table on the veranda, the couple’s iPads still lay there.

Inside, their beds were unmade. Expensive camera equipment lay stashed in one corner while their suitcases and clothes were still there.

Luzanenko claimed the couple had been running the farm for the past two years.

He did not know what happened in the preceding three years when travelled to Fiji from Ryazan City in Russia five years ago to invest in Fiji and start a new life. They leased land in the Nausori Highlands and began farming.

They lived in a converted shipping container growing pumpkins, water melons, tomatoes, pineapples and few other vegetables which they sold to resorts and market vendors.

Luzanenko said that since he arrived in January, whatever money was brought in from vegetable sales was divided equally amongst them.

Luzanenko, who is from Krasnodar City, met the couple, who he said were in their late 40s, through the internet and was invited to come to Fiji to work as a business partner on their farm.

Luzanenko said the fact that the couple’s clothes and travelling bags were still in the house convinced him they had not left Fiji.

However, he said their financial problems included arrears for the lease of the land that was still owing to the iTaukei Land Trust Board.

“The financial situation was very bad,” Luzanenko said. “I have very little money for myself right now.”

- Fiji Sun/PNC