On June 17, police in St. Petersburg arrested criminal kingpin Ilya Traber, city news outlet Fontanka reports. The outlet added that criminal charges have been brought against Traber and that searches are underway at addresses linked to him. Traber’s business partner, Vladimir Danilenko, was also detained. According to preliminary reports, the two men were arrested in connection with the contract murder of Vyborg City Council deputy Alexander Petrov, who was shot dead in Vyborg in October 2020.
Traber is the closest associate and business partner of Tambovskaya organized crime group leader Vladimir Kumarin (Barsukov), who has been in prison in Russia since 2007. One of the crimes for which Kumarin was convicted involved his group’s corporate takeover of the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, which supplied fuel to the city’s Pulkovo Airport. In May 1996, St. Petersburg Deputy Mayor Vladimir Putin signed an order to lease the Pulkovo fuel supply complex to the company Sovex (ЗАО «Совэкс»). As an investigation by The Insider revealed in 2017, this company was controlled by the same people as the oil terminal: Traber, Dmitry Skigin, and Sergei Vasiliev. According to Sovex co-founder Maxim Freidzon, Putin demanded a kickback in exchange for the “gift” from the mayor's office and negotiated at length with the principal owner, Skigin, asking for 15% of revenues but ultimately receiving only 4%.
Freidzon also recounted that Traber served as the liaison between the Tambovskaya organized crime group and the St. Petersburg mayor’s office. Skigin transferred all control of the terminal to the gangsters in 1997–1998. When Skigin died in 2003, Tambovskaya gang members orchestrated an assassination attempt on Freidzon. He survived, but the effort succeeded in forcing him out of the business.
Western airlines that used Pulkovo transferred payment for fuel to the Liechtenstein-based offshore firm Horizon International Trading, which owned both Sovex and Monaco-based Sotrama. When Monaco launched an investigation into the Tambovskaya gang’s money laundering activities, a travel ban was imposed on Skigin, who is described in the case materials as “Traber’s man from the Tambovskaya gang.” According to Monaco police, Skigin brought Traber to the Côte d'Azur on multiple occasions. Spain issued an Interpol wanted notice for Traber on suspicion of participation in a criminal organization.
Traber and Vasiliev had remained close to Putin even since. The Insider’s sources named them among guests at the president’s birthday celebrations in 2004 and 2016, where they sat in places of honor.
Wiretaps of Gennady Petrov’s telephone conversations, made public in a Spanish court during proceedings regarding money laundering carried out by Russian nationals linked to the Tambovsko-Malyshevskaya organized crime group, revealed that the “Tambovskies” secured favors not only from Russian officials and members of the security services, but also from Putin personally. More details can be found in The Insider’s courtroom report.
Another investigation by The Insider revealed that one of the Tambovskaya gang’s other key assets, the St. Petersburg Fuel Company (PTK), may also link Traber to Putin, as it was created with the active participation of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office. The company’s CEO, Vladimir Smirnov, served as the first director of the Ozero cooperative, and its vice president was none other than Tambovskaya gang leader Vladimir Kumarin (Barsukov). Immediately after PTK’s creation in 1995, Putin signed Decree No. 292-r “On the Creation of a City Reserve of Motor Fuel,” providing for the purchase of large volumes of fuel from PTK using public funds from the city budget.
Earlier today, in connection with the arrest of Traber, law enforcement officers in St. Petersburg also conducted searches at the home of Gennady Petrov, the leader of the Petrovsko-Malyshevskaya organized crime group, as reported by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel and iStories. Details of the search at Petrov’s residence are not yet known.
In the 1990s, Petrov moved to Spain, where local law enforcement placed him under surveillance. In 2008, he was detained in Majorca but was later released on bail and returned to Russia.
As The Insider reported, wiretapped conversations revealed that Petrov had conducted business with Major General Sergei Korolev, currently the First Deputy Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). Petrov also maintained personal and business relations with St. Petersburg Prosecutor Sergei Litvinenko, and the wiretaps indicated that he was one of the de facto leaders of the United Aircraft Corporation.
During the Spanish court proceedings, Petrov was described as a former KGB officer. It was at the Soviet security agency that he met his “close friend” Vladimir Putin. Novaya Gazeta reported, citing sources, that Petrov may have been an “unofficial informant” of the agency.
