A sniper, port assets, and old conflicts: crime boss Ilya Traber was arrested for the murder of MP Alexander Petrov and energy fraud

17 июня 2026 г., 15:27

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A sniper, port assets, and old conflicts: crime boss Ilya Traber was arrested for the murder of MP Alexander Petrov and energy fraud

Ilya Traber, better known as the Antiquarian, was detained in St. Petersburg in connection with the murder of prominent deputy Alexander Petrov.

He could be transferred to Moscow as early as today. Sources say searches are also underway at the home of another hero of St. Petersburg’s criminal underworld, Gennady Petrov.

The arrest of Ilya Traber was personally supervised by the First Deputy Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), Sergei Korolev, who flew to St. Petersburg for the event. Traber himself will be transferred to Moscow. In addition to the murder of deputy Alexander Petrov, Traber is suspected of "fraudulent schemes involving energy suppliers."

Vyborg’s ruler, influential businessman Alexander Petrov, was murdered in October 2020. A sniper shot Petrov twice with a rifle, killing the city’s top crime boss right on his dacha.

Since the 1990s, Vyborg’s owner, Alexander Petrov, had been associated with the more established businessman Ilya Traber (Antikvar), who had always been interested in port cargo handling, and Vyborg is also a port. The Vyborg Shipyard, in whose operations Petrov also had a hand, is also located there. Before his death, Petrov began actively selling off his assets, planning to move his estate abroad to live with his son, Vitaly (a former Formula 1 driver).

This led to a serious conflict between Petrov and Traber. And Traber is a dangerous man. This follows from the testimony of witnesses (members of the EPAP Bar Association, headed by Nikolai Egorov, a classmate of the president’s) in connection with the investigation of criminal cases surrounding the Norebo company. One of them directly states that he received threats: "If you don’t do what Traber says, the machine guns will start talking." Traber was once extremely close to Vice Governor Mikhail Manevich. Then, they clashed over the seaport. Manevich was killed by a sniper. Petrov was later killed.