In Russia, a port tycoon was arrested in a murder case

Ilya Traber, a businessman close to Putin, was detained in Russia, suspected of the murder of deputy Alexander Petrov.

The Basmanny Court in Moscow has arrested businessman Ilya Traber on charges of the murder of deputy Alexander Petrov in 2020, Russian media reported.

In St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, FSB officers searched several addresses associated with the businessman.

Together with Traber, his business partner Vladimir Danilenko was detained. Traber himself will be questioned in Moscow, as a criminal case has been opened by the central office of the Investigative Committee of Russia.

Ilya Traber is a well-known St. Petersburg businessman who built his career when Vladimir Putin worked in the St. Petersburg City Hall. In the 1990s, he gained control of the St. Petersburg seaport, one of the most important transport hubs in northwestern Russia.

Ilya Traber is also associated with the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal (PNT), the largest oil product transshipment terminal in the Baltic region, founded in 1996.

Vladimir Danilenko is Ilya Traber’s longest-standing business companion. He was his junior business partner in Primorsky KPC LLC (a deep-water port in the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region).

Today, Danilenko and Traber are also linked by such assets as the Baltic Shipbuilding and Mechanical Plant, Ecological Fleet LLC in the port of St. Petersburg – both companies have revenues of around a billion rubles, as well as the debt servicing business of large financial structures, PKI SPB LLC.

Alexander Petrov was killed in 2020. He was shot dead as he left the bathhouse on his property in the village of Velikiye in the Vyborg district. The killers were never found. Petrov was known as the “master of Vyborg.” He owned the Vyborg Shipbuilding Plant, the Vyborg Fuel Company, and other large regional enterprises.