An official with a million dollar signature, who could make or break fortunes in Moscow’s property market, has been killed by a car bomb in what is believed to be a contract killing.

Police believe that Valery Yakovlev’s former post, in charge of land registration for the city’s most exclusive suburb, may have been the reason for the murder.

The Odintsovo district, on the western edge of the city, is home to many of Moscow’s wealthy elite and is known as the Russian Switzerland for its palatial family homes surrounded by forests.

Mr Yakovlev, 39, died when a homemade bomb tore through his luxury Lexus 4X4 as he drove through southwest Moscow on Tuesday afternoon. It had been been triggered by remote control.

As head of the Federal Real Estate Registry department for Odintsovo, Moscow’s equivalent of Beverly Hills, Mr Yakovlev approved or rejected plans for building on plots of land. Developments worth millions of dollars could not take place without his signature.

The area is popular with the Russian political elite and super-rich businessmen, many of whom built vast country houses on land that was formerly protected state property. A typical “cottage” often sells for more than £6 million.

President Putin, the former President, Boris Yeltsin, and Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, all have dachas there. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the fallen oil giant Yukos, lived in Odintsovo before he was jailed in 2003.

Roman Abramovich, who also owns property in the area, is building an £80 million hospital near by, which is destined to be the elite’s first port of call for medical assistance. Daria Zhukova fled London to her father’s tightly guarded house in the wealthy suburb after being linked romantically with the Chelsea owner last year.

Mr Yakovlev was placed in charge of the registry in the summer of 2004 when the local district administration was embroiled in a corruption scandal involving illegal land sales. He resigned last April.

Police are said to be investigating whether his murder was linked to legal action involving the owners of hundreds of properties whose land approvals were declared invalid in the corruption inquiry.

Kommersant newspaper reported that investigators were also examining whether the assassination was a revenge attack against Mr Yakovlev for failing to help somebody to register a property legally before he left office.

Prices for land in the Odintsovo district hit record levels last year in a Moscow property boom fuelled by the billions of dollars in oil and gas revenues that flooded into the Russian economy. Estate agents say that a plot of 100 sq m is worth up to £150,000, ten times the rate in other, less prestigious parts of the capital. Mr Yakovlev’s death follows the murder of the Central Bank deputy Andrei Kozlov last September and that of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya in October.

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive