[1][3][4] Shcherban and his wife Nadezhda (née Nikitina) were shot dead on a runway at Donetsk Airport on 3 November 1996 by several men posing as public force officers.

[1] Coincidentally, the event took place soon after replacement of the Governor of Donetsk Oblast Volodymyr Shcherban (no relation to Yevhen) with the former Minister of Coal Industry of Ukraine Serhiy Polyakov and the appointment of Viktor Yanukovych to the position of a deputy chairman.

Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko was implicated in Shcherban's murder by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Svyatoslav Piskun in January 2003.

[1][2] Piskun was fired from the office of Prosecutor General by two presidents of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko, but both dismissals were voided by the courts.

Since late October 2011 former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has also been implicated, particularly by the First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Renat Kuzmin.

[7] The wife of a key witness in the case, Izabella Kyrychenko who is a citizen of the United States, had complained that she was imprisoned to force a statement from her husband.