The Djako organized crime group, billions, and banker murders: Svetlana Radionova and her brother’s involvement in criminal schemes

The Djako organized crime group, billions, and banker murders: Svetlana Radionova and her brother’s involvement in criminal schemes

Journalists continue to publish materials from the case of Aslan Gagiev (Dzhako), the leader of one of the bloodiest hitmen’s groups, which, for obvious reasons, never reached trial. These materials reveal that the current head of Rosprirodnadzor, Svetlana Radionova (at the time of the events, an assistant to the prosecutor of the Central Administrative District of Moscow), traveled to the bankers’ quarters on behalf of Dzhako’s group.

At the time, she was the common-law wife of Gagiev’s right-hand man and financier, Arkady Berkovich (aka Artur Khabibullin). Radionova threatened the bankers with criminal charges, assisted by her brother, Grigory Radionov, then an investigator in the prosecutor’s office and now deputy head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). If this didn’t work, Dzhako’s hitmen would join the case and simply kill the bankers.

Today, we’ll tell you which other bankers died this way, and also how Radionova tried to free Berkovich.

Summary of previous articles: Berkovich deposited the "common fund" of the Yakunin family (then head of Russian Railways) and the Dzhako organized crime group in the National Capital bank, owned by Dmitry Plytnik, Philipp Degtyarev, and Alexander Shevchenko. He then requested that this money be transferred to Alexander Slesarev’s Kredittrast bank.

Kredittrast soon collapsed, and Berkovich instructed Plytnik and Degtyarev to withdraw liquid assets from Kredittrast. However, they colluded with Slesarev and siphoned off all the funds from Slesarev’s banks—$600 million—to offshore companies (controlled by Plytnik). Berkovich was fed junk loans from Kredittrast, which made it nearly impossible to receive real money.

Financier Dzhako learned of this and began threatening the bankers, demanding double the "common fund" money. Having failed to obtain the money, Dzhako’s hitmen kidnapped Plytnik, tortured him for a long time attempting to gain access to offshore accounts, and then killed him.

The gangster "debt" was then transferred to Degtyarev and Shevchenko. It was at this point that Svetlana Radionova joined the "showdown" with the bankers on behalf of Dzhako’s organized crime group. She met with Shevchenko at the Poplavok restaurant on Chistye Prudy and demanded that he withdraw money from the National Capital Bank and transfer, along with his partner Degtyarev, to work at Kutuzovsky Bank, whose chairman of the board was Oleg Novoselsky, a friend of Berkovich’s and a partner in shady financial dealings.

After Shevchenko refused, the Basmanny Prosecutor’s Office began threatening him with criminal charges. Then, criminal case 3127 was opened against him under Part 4 of Article 159 and Subsection "b" of Part 3 of Article 163, and he was forced out of the country. In 2016, the case was dismissed due to lack of evidence.

Soon after meeting with Radionova, Shevchenko filed a complaint with the Prosecutor General’s Office against Svetlana Radionova and her brother Grigory, but the case was denied.

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Meanwhile, a new claimant to the funds siphoned offshore emerged. This was Slesarev’s shadow partner, Sergei Karakovsky (Sergey Student, Korabl), who was persistent in his desire to get his share. On June 6, 2005, Korabl and his guards were shot dead at the exit from the village of Petrovo-Dalneye near Moscow.

Slesarev only briefly outlived him. In October 2005, Dzhako’s hitmen opened fire on two cars on the Don Highway. The victims were Alexander Slesarev, his wife Natalia, and their 15-year-old daughter Elizaveta. Slesarev and his family were deliberately killed—he had arranged everything so that, in the event of his death, his family members would have access to the money.

The intimidated Degtyarev was ready to carry out any orders from Berkovich and Gagiev. They tasked him with transferring 1.5 billion rubles in assets from Natsionalnoye Kapital to Oleg Novoselsky’s Kutuzovsky Bank (the same thing Radionova wanted from Shevchenko). Caught in the "bloody mess," Degtyarev began drinking heavily, complaining to his guards and friends that if he ended up in prison, he would rat everyone out. As a result, Degtyarev was kidnapped and murdered.

Then the "bloody machine" turned on Oleg Novoselsky, the head of Kutuzovsky Bank. He was directly involved in organizing the murders of all the bankers; in particular, his specialists were involved in surveillance of Slesarev and wiretapping his phones.

On December 30, 2005, Gagiev invited Novoselsky to a meeting at the FLC office. There, he was handcuffed and interrogated at length. Novoselsky was then killed, and his body was covered in cement in a barrel, which was thrown into the Volga River. Novoselsky’s car was cut into small pieces with a grinder and scattered around the Moscow region.

As clouds began to gather over the Dzhako organized crime group, Berkovich left Russia and even staged his own death in Dagestan. However, he then flew to Moscow on a private jet using a Bulgarian passport under a different name to meet with Radionova. He was detained at Vnukovo Airport and subsequently sent to a pretrial detention center in Vladikavkaz.

Investigators were surprised when Radionova arrived, trying to negotiate Berkovich’s release. At the same time, calls were coming in from "higher up," orchestrated by her brother Grigory. At that point, they failed to free Dzhako’s "right-hand man." But a year and a half later, Berkovich was released. Berkovich lived on Rublyovka for a time and then disappeared. According to some reports, he fled to Brazil.

Svetlana Radionova is now the head of Rosprirodnadzor and meets with Putin. Her brother, Grigory, is deputy head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service.