St. Petersburg businessman Ilya Traber has been detained, and searches are underway at his properties, Fontanka, a St. Petersburg-based news outlet, reports.
Officers from the central office of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) carried out the detention, according to Fontanka. Security forces searched Traber’s country home in the Leningrad region and his office at 12 Starorusskaya Street. The reason for the searches is unknown.
In the 1990s, Ilya Traber controlled the St. Petersburg port and the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal located there — the largest oil products transshipment hub in the Baltic region. In a 2017 investigation, TV Rain described Traber as “the only living crime boss whose acquaintance Vladimir Putin has acknowledged.”
The investigation also said that Traber had been dealing in antiques since the late 1980s, “made a dizzying career in the shadow economy,” and by the early 1990s had become a “recognized authority.” According to the journalists, he had business interests in all ports in northwestern Russia.
After the investigation was published, Traber filed a defamation lawsuit, and a criminal case was opened, though it was not disclosed who, if anyone, was named in it. In 2021, searches were carried out at the homes of the investigation’s authors. The journalists, however, said they believed the searches were linked to a separate investigation their outlet had published about Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev.
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