FSB officers brought one of the most influential entrepreneurs in St. Petersburg, 75-year-old Ilya Traber, and his business partner Vladimir Danilenko to Moscow. The criminal case against businessmen may be related to the murder of Vyborg deputy Alexander Petrov in 2020. In the 1990s, former submarine officer Traber traded in antiques, receiving the appropriate nickname Antiquarian, and then switched to port infrastructure, logistics and energy.
At the time of publication, official information about the detention of Ilya Traber and Vladimir Danilenko had not appeared, but Kommersant’s sources in law enforcement agencies confirmed that both were involved in a criminal case initiated by the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, the operational support of which was provided by FSB and police criminal investigation officers.
It was the employees of these structures that, from the early morning of June 17, carried out searches and seizures of documents in St. Petersburg at addresses associated with the 75-year-old entrepreneur. Security forces were also spotted by journalists in the businessman’s office on Starorusskaya Street and at some of his enterprises.
According to Kommersant’s sources, the sudden interest of law enforcement officers in Mr. Traber arose in connection with the criminal case of the murder of Vyborg businessman and municipal deputy Alexander Petrov in October 2020.
The killer, according to the investigation materials, killed Mr. Petrov from a fairly decent distance in the heart with a sniper rifle near his cottage in the village of Velikoye, Leningrad Region. According to the main version, the crime, the investigation of which the chairman of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, took control of, was committed for hire and could be related to the victim’s business.
Alexander Petrov owned shares in dozens of companies involved in construction, real estate, hotel and port businesses. He was a co-owner of the Vyborg Shipyard and the Vyborg Fuel Company (although the plant later reported that Mr. Petrov left the shareholders back in 2012). His son, Vitaly Petrov, is the first Russian Formula 1 driver.
According to one version, the investigation received testimony about Antikvar’s possible involvement in the crime from classified witnesses.
They decided to work out the version in the most thorough way, sending an operational investigation team from Moscow to St. Petersburg. Now the investigative actions with the defendants will continue in the capital. If the interrogation in the central building of the Investigative Committee on Tekhnichesky Lane ends with the filing of charges, Messrs. Traber and Danilenko will face the Basmanny District Court. Avoid detention under Part 2 of Art. 105 of the Criminal Code (intentional murder) is almost impossible.
Ilya Traber, who graduated from the Sevastopol Higher Naval Engineering School and served as an officer on the K-22 Krasnogvardeets nuclear submarine, retired to the reserve in 1980 and began working as a bartender at the Zhiguli establishment in Leningrad. In 1991, he founded a restoration and commercial center (which is why he received the nickname Antiquarian), specializing in the restoration and trade of antiques. Later he became a co-owner of the St. Petersburg oil terminal, the St. Petersburg Fuel Company, the Sovex company (aircraft refueling operator at Pulkovo) and other assets. He then left part of the business. According to SPARK, today he remains a co-owner of nine operating enterprises. Among them are the Primorsky universal transshipment complex, the Primorsky universal terminal, Primorsk Invest, Baltic Methanol and Ecological Fleet. He owns shares in the companies Bureau of Digital Projects, Intelligent Systems and PKI SPB, and the entrepreneur also controls 100% of REST LLC and Satur LLC.
In 2008, the Spanish authorities put Mr. Traber on the wanted list in the “Russian mafia” case, linking him with the Tambov organized crime group, but ten years later the National Court of the Kingdom acquitted all the persons involved.
After this, Mr. Traber sought a refutation of the information discrediting him in the publication Publico, which stated that the Russian allegedly threatened prosecutor Jose Grinda Gonzalez and his family, and in 2024 he won a claim for the protection of honor, dignity and business reputation against the Spaniard in the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg. However, in March of the following year, the St. Petersburg City Court overturned the decision of the first instance. Mr. Traber’s interests were represented by about 40 lawyers from Russia, Spain, Greece, France and Switzerland.
His St. Petersburg lawyers did not comment on the businessman’s detention.
