The case against St. Petersburg crime boss Ilya Traber is built on the testimony of former prisoner Igor Lykov, who enlisted to fight in Ukraine while in pre-trial detention. While fighting in Ukraine Lykov was captured, then returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange, local outlet Fontanka reports, citing materials from the criminal case file.
Traber was arrested in June in connection with the murder of Alexander Petrov, a criminally connected businessman and deputy of the Vyborg City Council, who was shot dead in 2020. Arrested alongside Traber were his long-standing partner Vladimir Danilenko, former professional boxer Alisultan Nadirbegov, and Said Saladinov. Investigators believe that Nadirbegov and Saladinov were the perpetrators of the murder.
While still in Ukrainian captivity, Lykov gave a nearly three-hour interview to blogger Dmytro Karpenko in which he spoke about his criminal record and time in prison, his work in Traber’s circle, and his acquaintance with Danilenko. Russian investigators later added a portion of this interview to the Traber case file.
After returning to Russia as part of a prisoner exchange in the spring of 2025, Lykov was questioned as a witness. He stated that Danilenko had offered him the job of eliminating Petrov, but that he had refused. Danilenko then found other perpetrators, according to Lykov. Lykov also stated that he had met two men from Dagestan, had driven them to a restaurant, and had overheard conversations about a payment of 50 million rubles ($667,500).
In the interview with Karpenko, Lykov said he had signed a contract with the Russian Ministry of Defense planning to give himself up to the Ukrainian side, admitted to hating Russia, and claimed he wanted to stay in Ukraine. However, Russian investigators, according to Fontanka, focused on the portion of his account dealing with Traber, Danilenko, Petrov, and the alleged contract killing.
The outlet reports that Lykov may genuinely have had connections to the individuals in the case: a person with Lykov’s name served time in the same penal colony as Danilenko in the 1980s and worked as Traber’s driver in the 2020s. According to Fontanka, a significant part of the case against Traber rests specifically on Lykov’s testimony.
In its “Putin’s 4%” investigation, The Insider reported that Ilya Traber and Sergei Vasilyev controlled the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal, which exported petroleum products from the Kirishi refinery. The money that these Kremlin-connected “upstanding” businessmen earned at Russian ports was laundered through entities in Monaco and Liechtenstein, and the frontmen running those firms did business with friends of Putin, including Gennady Timchenko and Vladimir Yakunin.
In 2016, Spain placed Traber on an international wanted list on suspicion of participation in a criminal organization. Meanwhile, both Traber and Vasilyev are known to have been honorable guests at Putin’s birthday celebrations.
