Security Forces Arrived At The Home Of Putin's Second Criminal Associate Of The Day
- 17.06.2026, 16:43
He claimed that he had worked with the Kremlin leader in the KGB.
Law enforcement officers in St. Petersburg conducted searches at the home of businessman Gennady Petrov, who is known as one of the leaders of the Tambov-Malyshev organized crime group. This was reported by "Important Stories" and "VChK-OGPU" by informed sources. However, they did not specify which case the investigative operations are related to. Earlier, on the morning of June 17, officers from FSB officers detained Ilya Traber—an influential crime boss, businessman, and longtime acquaintance of Vladimir Putin—in the Leningrad Region. The basis for this was the 2020 murder case of Vyborg entrepreneur Alexander Petrov, who was considered Traber’s right-hand man. The businessman’s partner, Vladimir Danilenko, was also detained in connection with the case.
According to The Moscow Times, Gennady Petrov was registered in the early 1990s as a member of the Malyshev organized crime group. Through companies he owned, he held stakes in the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal and the St. Petersburg Fuel Company. These businesses were also linked to Traber. Later, Petrov acquired a stake in Bank Rossiya alongside Putin’s friends from the Ozero cooperative—Yuri Kovalchuk, Nikolai Shamalov, and developer Viktor Myachin. In 1996, Petrov moved to Spain, where he became the target of wiretaps by local law enforcement. The Spanish investigation revealed that he had been conducting joint business with FSB Major General Sergei Korolev, who currently serves as the service’s first deputy director. In addition, Petrov maintained friendly and collaborative relations with St. Petersburg prosecutor Sergei Litvinenko.
During his trial in Spain, Petrov claimed that he had worked alongside Putin in the KGB. Former FSB officers told *Novaya Gazeta* that he may have been an informant for the security service. In 2010, Petrov was released on bail and later left for Russia. The case against him in Spain fell apart.
According to “Vazhnye Istorii,” Petrov has recently been involved in two projects worth hundreds of billions of rubles—the construction of the “Tavrida” highway in Crimea and the “Scandinavia” highway between St. Petersburg and Finland. He also supplied coal, cast iron, and railway raw materials throughout Russia and abroad via the largest trader, which entered the market after “Evraz” was added to the sanctions lists.