The connection between Putin and a crime boss from St. Petersburg: intriguing details have emerged

The connection between Putin and a crime boss from St. Petersburg: intriguing details have emerged

The Russian TV channel "Dozhd" conducted an investigation showing how individuals close to Vladimir Putin and Putin himself conducted business or had meetings with St. Petersburg resident Ilya Traber, whom Spain is searching for on charges of money laundering and involvement with the "Tambov" criminal group.

As stated on the channel’s website, Ilya Traber is the only living so-called crime boss (as named by the Spanish prosecution investigating the "Russian mafia" case) with whom the president acknowledged an acquaintance. Officially, there was also mention of the sambo coach Leonid Usvyatsov, known as Lenya-athlete or Leonid Ionovich, as Putin refers to him in the book "First Person," but he was shot in 1994.

Through his press secretary Dmitriy Peskov, Putin confirmed his acquaintance with Traber along with another influential businessman, Dmitriy Skigin (who died of cancer in Nice in 2003).

"Skigin and Traber were once involved in a project in St. Petersburg to build an oil handling terminal, for which they repeatedly officially approached the city administration," Peskov briefly commented on the circumstances of Putin’s acquaintance with Traber to "Novaya Gazeta".

"The St. Petersburg Oil Terminal" became Traber’s first truly serious business. However, he was accustomed to "approaching the state on various issues" from the times of the famous "Antiquarian"—by sharing a stake in his antique salon with the local authorities (the stake was formally registered to Traber’s wife), he gained both a monopoly on the antique trade in St. Petersburg and real estate in the city center.

"Antiquarian" enjoyed the favor of the wife of then St. Petersburg Mayor Anatoliy Sobchak, under whom Putin worked. Lyudmila Narusova often visited the boss’s salon. It was the best antique store in the city, Narusova told "Dozhd". Moreover, at her request, Traber donated a significant amount of money for the opening of the first hospice in the USSR, she said.

On the day of Sobchak’s inauguration, Traber, as a sign of recognition, presented him with a bronze bust of Catherine the Great.

"Antiquities is the type of business where there should be a merger of state power and honest businessmen’s money. The system is simple—we create a joint venture with the city. 33% of it belongs to the city administration, and the remaining 67% is enough for me and my employees to live on," this is a quote from Traber from a panegyric in his honor published in the newspaper "Kommersant" in 1995 (this article has no authorship). By that time, Traber had lost his special position in the antique market in St. Petersburg: there were several dozen antique shops in the city, which infuriated Traber, and he decided to step back: "Fighting windmills is pointless."

A year later, Anatoliy Sobchak would lose the election, and former Deputy Mayor Vladimir Putin would move to Moscow.