Businessman pays $70,000 to stop hitman ‘ordered by father-in-law’

A BUSINESSMAN whose father-in-law allegedly put a hit out on him says he is just glad to be alive, after giving the would-be killer $70,000 to spare his life.

THE New York businessman who dodged execution by giving a hit man $35,000 more than the amount allegedly paid by his father-in-law to whack him says he is lucky to still be breathing.

“I’m happy I stay alive,” Oleg Mitnik told The New York Post on Friday outside Manhattan Supreme Court, where he is battling his wife for custody of their teenage kids.

The shipping executive hinted that in addition to his father-in-law, who was targeted in a federal court complaint as plotting his death, others might be implicated in the alleged murder plot, too.

“The FBI told me not to say anything. There are more charges coming,” Mitnik said.

A spokeswoman for the US Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

Meanwhile, tensions were so high in his two-day custody battle with estranged wife Ronit Potik Mitnik this week that an extra court officer was stationed in the courtroom.

Mitnik runs TRT International, a freight-shipping company in Newark. He is embroiled in a $20 million, scorched-earth divorce case.

Mitnik is fighting his wife in a $20 million divorce case at Manhattan Supreme Court.

According to the federal complaint detailing the alleged hit on her husband, Ronit told Mitnik “late in the evening” on January 20 that she “would entertain a proposed settlement” if he “would tell law enforcement he had made things up.”

Oleg hadn’t disclosed to his wife that he was secretly cooperating with the feds, documents say.

Mitnik went to the FBI last fall after one of his father-in-law’s associates arranged to meet him at a Brooklyn restaurant. There, he learned that his father-in-law, Anatoly Potik, wanted him killed for a $140,000 fee, papers allege.

Mitnik believes he may have set off his father-in-law when he tried to remove his wife as a beneficiary from his multimillion-dollar life-insurance policy, a source said.

The attempted assassination blew up in Potik’s face when the associate offered to spare Mitnik’s life for $175,000, documents state. Mitnik agreed to fork up a $70,000 cheque as a down payment to cancel the hit, the court papers say.

A week later, the hit man and his cohort were busted by the feds on extortion charges.

Additional reporting by Lia ­Eustachewich