Ilya Traber was detained in St. Petersburg. The media linked him with Putin

Businessman Ilya Traber was detained in St. Petersburg, and searches are underway at a number of addresses associated with him. This was reported by the Fontanka publication, according to which, operational activities on June 17 were carried out by employees of the Central Office of the FSB of Russia. According to Fontanka, his business partner Vladimir Danilenko was detained along with Traber.

The publication writes that, according to its data, the detention is connected with the murder of businessman and local deputy Alexander Petrov in Vyborg in 2020. Petrov was shot by a sniper, but in hot pursuit neither the shooter nor those who ordered the murder were found. While there is no official confirmation of Traber's detention, it is unknown whether any charges have been brought against him.

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Traber has been a prominent figure in the business of Leningrad and St. Petersburg since the late 1980s; the media wrote about his closeness to the current Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he crossed paths in the 1990s and was allegedly among those invited to his birthdays, and also called him an authoritative businessman nicknamed Antiquarian, hinting at connections in the criminal environment (the businessman achieved a refutation of this in court). In particular, he appeared as a suspect in a case that was investigated in Spain in connection with money laundering by Russians through shell companies. In 2018, all the accused were acquitted, as the court could not prove their guilt.

As Fontanka writes, Traber, who is now 75 years old, is still, despite his non-publicity, an important figure in St. Petersburg business. “Today his business can be characterized as a large infrastructure and port group, the core of which is marine terminals, logistics, land assets in the Baltic, service companies for ports and related projects in the oil and gas and transport sectors.”

The Primorsky Criminal Procedure Code has been a key project in recent years, the publication notes. This was the subject of, in particular, an investigation by the publication “Proekt”, published in 2020.

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