The criminal case against St. Petersburg businessman Ilya Traber, who is accused of involvement in a murder, is based on testimony from his former employee Igor Lykov. This was reported by Fontanka, whose journalists reviewed the case materials.
On June 17, 2026, investigators searched Traber’s premises, and later the same day a Moscow court placed him in pretrial detention. His longtime business partner Vladimir Danilenko was also arrested. Investigators believe they may have been involved in organizing the 2020 murder of St. Petersburg businessman and municipal deputy Alexander Petrov.
According to the outlet, Lykov is 60 years old, was born in Gudermes, and has several prior convictions. In December 2024, he was being held in a St. Petersburg detention center in another criminal case, then signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry and went to war. In February 2025, he was captured by Ukraine and later returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange.
Lykov said he had first met Danilenko in 1987 in Yaroslavl. Years later, he claimed, Danilenko contacted him again and introduced himself as a person from Traber’s inner circle. Lykov says he then became one of the drivers on Traber’s team and carried out, among other things, sensitive errands.
During questioning in Moscow in February 2026, Lykov said Danilenko had предложed that he kill Petrov, but he refused. After that, according to his account, other people were found for the job, and the reward discussed was 50 million rubles.
Also arrested in the case were Sait Saladinov and Alisultan Nadirbegov, whom investigators consider the direct perpetrators of the murder. Fontanka says the case file also references a video of Lykov’s interview with Ukrainian blogger Dmytro Karpenko.
Traber is known as an influential St. Petersburg businessman whose career began in the 1980s. In the 1990s, he gained control over the city’s seaport and was linked to the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal. In 2017, the TV channel Dozhd described him as the only living criminal authority whose acquaintance with Vladimir Putin had been publicly acknowledged.