Putin's friend and crime boss. Ilya Traber was detained in St. Petersburg. What you need to know about him

On June 17, FSB officers detained St. Petersburg businessman and former crime boss Ilya Traber. According to Fontanka, the detention is related to the murder of Traber’s former business partner, Vyborg municipal deputy Alexander Petrov in 2020.

Traber's home and office were searched. In addition, security forces detained Traber’s business partner Vladimir Danilenko and came with searches to another former criminal leader Gennady Petrov - he once headed the Tambov organized crime group.

“Paper” tells what you need to know about Traber and how the businessman is connected with Alexander Petrov, of whose murder he may be suspected.

"Not a crime boss"

“The only living crime boss whom Vladimir Putin admitted knowing,” is how the then journalists of the Dozhd TV channel Roman Badanin, Nikolai Kovalkov, Maria Zholobova and Daria Zhuk described Ilya Traber in their investigation in 2017 . This definition was widely circulated in the media, and the businessman succeeded in initiating a case under the article “On libel.” In 2021, after the statute of limitations had expired, journalists were searched in connection with this case.

Traber continued to dispute information about his connection with crime. So, in the same 2021, the Dzerzhinsky District Court recovered 300 thousand rubles from the Business News Agency and ordered the publication to publish a refutation of an article about Traber’s criminal past. The decision stated that the businessman is not a “gangster”, not a “raider”, not a “criminal authority”, not a “legend of Gangster Petersburg”, that he did not create a “criminal empire” and he does not have the nicknames “Antiquer” and “Moreman”.

Russian journalists, as Traber himself explained , referred in the text to Spanish colleagues and an interview with Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda, who had been leading the case of the Russian mafia since 2006. That case was called “Troika” and began with the testimony of former FSB lieutenant colonel Alexander Litvinenko, who was subsequently poisoned. The defendants were charged with money laundering through the purchase of real estate.

Traber's name appeared in the Spanish media in connection with the case, in particular in the publication Publico. The businessman was called one of the leaders of the Tambov organized crime group and death threats were attributed to Grind. In 2018, all the accused were acquitted due to lack of evidence, and in 2024, Traber filed a lawsuit against the Spanish prosecutor in a St. Petersburg court and won the libel case. A little earlier, the Spanish court did not accept a similar statement from Traber.

In an interview with Fontanka, Traber stated that the Americans were interested in the case led by Grinda. “They are putting together a situation about the connections of the Russian mafia with the state management machine, with the country’s leadership,” Traber explained . - That's the problem! If it concerned only me, I probably wouldn’t spend so much effort. I'm trying to destroy this story."

A “systemic” person who “chose the path of the lads”

Traber came into business after military service. Until 1980, he was an officer on the K-22 Krasnogvardeets nuclear submarine, then he resigned and got a job in a bar in the center of Leningrad, on Vladimirskaya Street.

Journalist Evgeny Vyshenkov explained that Traber is a “systematic” and “educated” person. He “chose the path of the lads,” but ordinary racketeering was “not his level.”

Quite quickly, Traber had his own antiques store on Nevsky (and with it the nickname “Antique”). The store grew into a whole network of points selling antiques, through which St. Petersburg residents were able to sell valuables abroad.

“Moreman [another nickname for Traber - approx. “Papers” ] was, perhaps, the only reseller in the city whose stolen antiques disappeared, as if into a “black hole,” wrote journalist Andrei Konstantinov in his book “Gangster Petersburg.”

Traber, according to Novaya Gazeta, enjoyed the support of the then mayor Anatoly Sobchak and became a virtual monopolist in the field of antiques in St. Petersburg. In addition, as Traber’s business partner and co-founder of the Sovex fuel company Maxim Freidzon later recalled , Traber was the link between the Tambov organized crime group and the city administration. In the second half of the 90s, the St. Petersburg oil terminal came under the control of Traber and the leader of the group, Gennady Petrov.

In the late 1990s, according to Novaya Gazeta, Traber was forced to cede his fuel assets to the leader of the Tambov organized crime group, Vladimir Barsukov (Kumarin), who was called the “night governor” of St. Petersburg. Barsukov is currently serving a sentence for organizing a criminal community, raiding and involvement in contract killings.

In exchange for fuel assets, Traber received assets in the seaport of St. Petersburg and assistance with the lease of a fuel refueling complex in Pulkovo by Traber’s company Sovex. In fact, Sovex has become a monopoly on aircraft refueling in the city. The order to transfer the complex for rent, as Freidzon later said , was signed by Vladimir Putin as vice-mayor. For this, according to Freidzon, he allegedly received the right to 4% of income from the sale of fuel.

Subsequently, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov confirmed the fact of Traber’s acquaintance with the president: “Dmitry Skigin and Ilya Traber at one time worked in St. Petersburg on a project to build an oil terminal, in connection with which they turned to the leadership of the St. Petersburg mayor’s office on certain issues.”

This was not Traber's only meeting with Putin. The businessman’s former security guard, Sergei Kosyrev, claimed that Putin once, not yet being president, came to Traber for advice. The businessman made Putin wait for his reception.

Later in 2008, Nikolai Shamalov, the father of billionaire Kirill Shamalov, married to Putin’s daughter, according to Dozhd, became Traber’s business partner in the port of Primorsk.

Business with Alexander Petrov, “the owner of Vyborg”

After losing his assets in the St. Petersburg fuel market, Traber started a business in Vyborg. There, together with businessman and deputy Alexander Petrov, Traber first opened a casino, a nightclub and two beer bars, and then took control of the hotel where they were located. Gradually, the Vyborg shipyard, the energy company Venco and the Vyborg port were taken over by businessmen. During the process of changing owners, several people were killed, writes Novaya Gazeta.

At the end of the 1990s, Traber left Russia for Europe, after which Petrov became practically the main person in the city. He was called "the master of Vyborg."

By 2007, Traber had practically sold off his assets, including shares in Sovex, the Vyborg Shipyard and Venco. Almost immediately after this, Petrov began to have problems. The development of the Shtokman field, the competition for the construction of drilling rigs for which the shipyard won, has been frozen. Petrov spent another part of his capital on the participation of his son, Vitaly Petrov, in the Formula 1 race. And then the United Shipbuilding Corporation deprived Petrov of the remaining shares of the plant.

During the 2018 fuel crisis, the former Venco company became unprofitable, and in the fall of 2020, a corruption scandal broke out in Vyborg : 1.5 billion rubles disappeared from the budget. The media claimed that Petrov was involved in the crime. On October 24, he was killed at a station in the village of Velikoye, two days before interrogation in a criminal case. The killer was not found.

Network of ports and telephone with free internet

After the start of a criminal investigation in Spain and then in France, Traber returned to Russia. Now he owns 31.7% in the Primorsky Universal Transshipment Complex. This company is building a network of ports along the Northern Sea Route and the first deep-water universal maritime complex in the Baltic basin.

In 2021, the businessman acquired first 50% and then another 33% of shares in the Baltic Methanol company. It is building a plant for the production and sea transshipment of methanol in Ust-Luga, the media wrote . Now the businessman is not among the owners; in April 2022 he transferred the shares to his old business partners.

Traber's other company, Primorsky Universal Terminal , is designing and building a complex in Primorsk. In addition, Traber is associated with the Baltic Ship Mechanical Plant. Since March, ports in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region have been attacked by Ukrainian drones; their work has been suspended due to fires.

Among the companies founded by the businessman is the Bureau of Digital Projects, which was created in 2024, against the backdrop of the blocking of YouTube, together with the former head of Rutube Alexander Moiseev. In June 2026, the Bureau of Digital Projects presented the Binrobi smartphone, the owner of which, as stated , will not have to pay for communications and the Internet - it will be paid for by advertisers.

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After the start of a full-scale war in Ukraine, it became known about the Starorusskaya, 12 charitable foundation, which helps the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg. The media linked the foundation specifically with Traber. In addition, in May 2022, the businessman himself said that with his money, St. Petersburg was plastered with war posters with “a grandmother with a red flag,” and in August, the Leningrad Regional Electric Grid Company, which then belonged to Traber, announced that it would hire 20 wounded military personnel.

Journalist and former St. Petersburg policeman Denis Korotkov, in a conversation with the publication “That’s So,” said that, in his opinion, Traber’s detention may be connected either with the redistribution of the market, or with the need to direct the businessman’s funds to the war (separately, Korotkov added that, in his opinion, Putin could not help but be informed about the detention). Journalist Andrei Kolomoisky, who lost his business in the 80s because of Traber, when asked by Bumaga about why the businessman was detained right now, also suggested that the state needed his money.

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Cover photo of “Fontanka”