Paul Edward Tatum (April 2, 1955 – November 3, 1996) was an American businessman who was killed in a Moscow subway station near his hotel.

Tatum was born in Edmond, Oklahoma. He went to Russia in 1985 to do business there. He started the Americom Business Centre and became part-owner of the Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel, a fancy hotel in Moscow that served foreign businesspeople and important guests. Tatum ran the hotel together with a Chechen businessman named Umar Dzhabrailov. On April 7, 1995, while fighting for control of the business, Tatum was blocked from entering his own hotel by his business partners.

He was friends with President Clinton, who often stayed at his hotel during trips to Russia. During an attempted government overthrow in Russia in summer 1991, Tatum helped President Boris Yeltsin by providing satellite communication from a building surrounded by army units trying to remove Yeltsin's new democratic government.

In writings about Trump's early contacts with Russia, one author mentions that Tatum was murdered just days before a planned Trump visit to Moscow in 1996. Tatum had many arguments with Dzhabrailov. He even published a full-page ad in a Moscow newspaper claiming Dzhabrailov was trying to force him out of their hotel business. A few weeks later, Tatum was killed, shot 11 times in the head and neck. Soon after his death, Dzhabrailov and the Moscow government took full control of the hotel.

Carol Williams, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, believed it was a planned murder. Later, someone called to warn her it was "unhealthy to pursue certain avenues of inquiry." Tatum was buried in Kuntsevo Cemetery, Moscow.

Tatum's murder exemplifies the violent business disputes of 1990s Russia, where Western businessmen partnering with Russian figures faced lethal consequences. His connections to Clinton and proximity to Trump's early Russia dealings place him in the broader context of U.S.-Russia business relationships during the chaotic post-Soviet period.

Sources

Wikipedia: "Paul Tatum"; Zarina Zabrisky (Medium): Trump-Russia timeline; Los Angeles Times: Carol Williams reporting on Tatum murder.