Media.

Something strange is going on.

Another member of the Russian elite has been found dead.

Reports suggests that he fell out of a window poisoned with mushrooms.

He died of heart failure, died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

How comesy are they?

Dozens of Russian oligarchs, politically motivated millionaires have died in the space for three years, most of them in suspicious circumstances.

Many have hidden links to the Kremlin.

This is sad Oligach season two, an ongoing investigation into these recently stead of.

Russian power brokers.

Sad Oligach is created by me jake Hanrahan and my Ukrainian colleague Sergey Slipchenkov.

This is a H eleven Studio and Coolso Media production.

Before we get into this episode, tale of Death and Goulags, we have a bit of an update from episode seven Hanged with hands bound.

If you remember, this was the case where businessmen and local Putin politician Batally Kapustin was found hanged high up in a tree and I witnessed said that his hands were tied behind his back.

Still, the police deemed it a suicide.

For that case, I went down the rabbit hole of police corruption in the area where Kapustin was hanged, a place called at Kresnador Cry.

To be frank, it seems to be one of the most corrupt regions in the whole of Russia, and that saying something.

I've kept looking into the case, and there seems to be a big issue with strange murders, organized crime and state embezzlement all in this one area.

So I reached out through a source in Russia who's involved in documenting the Krasnodar Kry underworld.

He was going to come on to sad Oligak to speak about it, but it was perhaps a little bit too risky for him, even under anonymity.

It's understandable.

He did, though, send us a sort of statement or overview of how he understands the corruption in Kresnal door Kry.

We translated this all from Russian and I'm going to read it out here in full, as I think it adds some great context to the mysterious death of Vitally Kapustin.

The following is from our anonymous source in Russia.

Quote.

Since Soviet times, Krasnal door Kry has held a special place within Russia's law enforcement system.

The reason is simple.

The country's main results are here, and that's where the entire political and security elite go on holiday with their families.

Their holidays are arranged and facilitated by local officials, police, businessmen, fixers, and so on.

If you organize a good stay for an important guest from Moscow, you're immediately welcomed into the inner circle.

From that point on, you don't really answer to local leadership, but to whichever Moscow official took a liking to you.

Depending on the guests rank, a local bureaucrat or security official can essentially become untouchable with guaranteed career advancement.

Complaining about them at the local level is pointless and often useless.

Even at the federal level, this dynamic produces chosen ones who feel free to do whatever they want.

There was even a period when many law enforcement personnel from Cresnal door Cry were relocated to Moscow.

For example, Vladimir Yakovenko, a prosecutor from Sochi, jumped from Krasnodor Krei into the presidential administration, then went on to head the main investigative directorate of the Investigative Committee in Moscow and is now head of Rossi Mushestvo.

When he was running Moscow's Investigative Directorate, his deputy was another Krasnada native, Sergei Senagovski, the son of former Nova Rossiisk mayor Vladimir senor Goovsky.

Senorgovski ended up involved in a major corruption scandal involving bribing Investigative Committee officials to free the crime boss Andrei Kotchukov, known as the Italian All its colleagues were jailed, but Senyorgovsky got away with just being fired.

You can also recall the Sapok gang, which terrorized Kuzhnyajovskaya for many years and eventually murdered twelve people, including small children.

During the investigation, it was proven that all law enforcement officials in the prisonage of Skaya district were receiving money from the gang, yet none of them went to prison.

Many actually built successful careers.

Another example from Krasnodor Krii is the well known fixer Andre Mattis, who handles problems between law enforcement and business.

He reached the federal level after organizing holidays in Sochi for FSB officers.

Two men who controlled the entire judicial system of Krasnodor Krii for many years became billionaires.

Former head of the Krasnodar Regional Court Alexander Shnov and Supreme Court Judge Victor Momotov their assets worth tens of billions and now being seized.

But this isn't an anti corruption drive.

It's simply a change of ruling clans in Moscow, where one group of corrupt officials is being replaced by another.

An ordinary person has a very little chance of getting justice in the Krasnodor Krei region because police, prosecutors and judges often work together.

For years, there's been a corruption slash criminal alliance involving Amen Aretagnan, first deputy head of the Criminal Investigation Department of the Regional Interior Ministry and Vladimir Kishlak, former head of the Civil Division of the Krasnodar Regional Court.

Despite his position, Atonian Wield's enormous influence over the whole Interior Ministry apparatus in the region, and Kishlak still maintains control over the regional court.

Duo controls key processes the opening and closure of criminal cases in the investigative committee, obtaining the right decisions in court, corporate raids, an extortion target in business people and citizens across the Cuban area.

With such mutual protection, real miracles can occur, such as outright murder being passed off as suicide.

One example is the case of Constantine Pliganoff, an FSB captain in Komisk Non for fighting corruption.

He'd been working on a case against the head of the Comisk district, Surgey Less.

In July twenty twenty four, Pliganov's body was found in the reeds of Lake Tuscan Skuoya, with his legs tied and a bullet in the back of his head.

It was declared an unusual suicide.

Recently, Les was arrested on corruption charges after attempting to flee with gold bars cast in the shape of railway nails and painted black end quote.

I think it's safe to say our initial suspicions about the Capustin case were definitely not paranoia.

The statement I just read out is backed with a ton of investigative work that our anonymous source has spent a long time on.

Needless to say, the Kresnal Door Crier corruption issues are by no means new.

What I find most interesting about that, though, was the last bit about the death of Konstantine Pluganov in the Kersnal door Kryt region.

That's the FSB officer who was apparently genuinely trying to fight corruption in the area, a very hard task knowing what we know now.

He was found dead in shallow waters with a bullet in the back of his head, both legs tied together with rope.

The police calling.

Pluganov's death and unusual suicide almost feels like a very macab in joke.

Now it seems he committed suicide the same way a CIA whistleblower might commit suicide.

Shot in the back of the skull.

The suicide thesis obviously does not add up.

Now.

Both Kapustin and Pluganov were found dead in the same region.

The two areas are roughly three hours drive away from each other, but the police in those areas answer to the same boss, and both are accused of extreme corruption.

All this new information only reinforces for me the theory that I put forward at the end of episode.

Okay, all right, now it's time for a quick outbreak.

All right, enough for that, Now back to the shore.

I believe Vitaly Kapusstin was murdered and it was shoddily covered up by a police force that acts as an enforcement arm for the district's corupt politicians and businessmen.

And as I was Sawce said, these bandits are swapped in and out of Moscow and rewarded depending on how much money they make this quasi deep state elite.

Once again, all roads lead to the Kremlin.

Now let's get on with this episode's case, the multi millionaire tycoon who found himself trapped inside a Moscow gulak.

July eighth, twenty twenty four, fifty two year old oligarch Igor Katelnikov is in a bad place mentally, physically, spiritually.

Accused of fraud and embezzlement, He's locked away in a dingy cell in a Moscow pre trialed attention facility.

These are considered some of the worst prisoner apparatus in Russia.

Conditions are absolutely horrendous.

Overcrowding is the main issue.

Cells constructed for four people often hold a dozen men at a time.

They sleep in shifts due to the lack of space that they can manage to sleep at all.

Humid, filthy, stinking in post trial Russian prison colonies, inmates work outside, forced to do backbreaking labor.

Believe it or not, this is often preferred to the nightmare of near twenty four hour lockup in pre trial detention.

Prisoners here get one hour outside the cell if they're lucky.

Even then, it's a monotonous walk in a small concrete courtyard with a mesh fence roof above.

It's claustrophobic, it's stifling back inside the overcrowded cell.

The open toilets are often overflowing or blocked.

The stench of shit and piss and sweat and blood disgusting cockroaches scutted across the floor.

Rats are not uncommon either.

Every crevice in the room is a breeding ground for black mold and good luck.

If you get sick, there's no real doctor on site.

First aid is about as good as it gets.

This is the Sesspeit Katlnikov finds himself in.

He is a multi millionaire who's lived a very privileged life.

He is not built for this.

He owns a fleet of expensive foreign kaz As, serious upmarket real estate, first class flights, expensive suits, find dining maids, drivers, the lot, the decay and slow rot of overcrowded, sweaty jail cells is not the five star treatment Katelnikov.

Is used to.

He's found himself in this predetention nightmare for messing around with money that was meant to be sent to Russia's war machine investment that will extend that Russia's massacre of the people in Ukraine.

Where have we heard before?

Kotolnikov paces up and down in this small space he has in the grotty shared cell.

Despite the conditions, he is actually in good health.

Before he went in, he was doing fine.

The authorities who put him here in this pre trial pit went him to testify it against a man called Tima Ivanov.

He's a former deputy minister of the Russian Department of Defense.

We'll learn more about him later.

Prison guard opens up the heavy iron door to the rancid cell and calls for Kotlnikov to come with him.

He's taken to speak with someone more senior, not a prison officer, but a lawmaker attached to the case.

There's pressure to snitch on Ivanov.

They want him to get up into that perspex witness box in the Russian court.

And tell all.

But for whatever reason, Katelnikov will not do it.

He refuses, point blank, He's not going to inform.

He will not stand up in that court and speak against Ivanov some kind of punishment for this refusal.

After the meeting, Katelnikov is put into solitary confinement, small cell, no windows, no communication, and then Katelnikov dies.

This is literally all we know about his death.

There are no other details anywhere.

Nobody is speaking.

Did he die from the awful conditions some and of health complication, or was he killed after being put into solitary confinement.

Katelnikov's role within what we'll discover is a complicated web of military corruption leading all the way to the Kremlin could quite likely be what got his card punched.

Avamurkachiva, a member of Russia's Presidential Council for Human Rights, called the death suspicious and mentioned that Katelnikov seemed to be in good health prior.

To his death.

Either way, July eighth was an especially unlucky day, as another man involved in the Katelnikov case died on that same date.

What a coincidence.

There's actually a bit of an underlying pattern that I've not really mentioned on sad Oligarch.

But if you put all the dates and locations of these strange deaths into a mapping program, there are notable clusters here and debth.

That's not to say someone is planning the deaths on certain dates or anything, but I think it does show there are potential links to these dead oligarchs and their cronies that we've not quite worked out yet.

The elite network of the oligarch deep state is quite a small world anyway.

We'll get into the Kotelnikov web of corruption in a bit, but first let's establish who he really was.

Let's talk to our friend Sergey.

So we know almost nothing at all about Kotelnikov's death other than he was ushered away into solitary confinement after refusing to give evidence against this Ivan offeler, and then he died randomly dead.

Don't know anything else.

I think that's what's kind of interesting, Like it doesn't seem like he has any kind of not background, Like he's not, you know, a relative of anyone who's not like some rich person's son.

It kind of seems like he he was the middleman for the military and like different businesses, essentially running a fraud scheme.

Like it almost seems like he was an important till this thing happened, right, and nobody kind of cared.

And even in this story he's kind of more so a witness for like the higher military guys.

Right, His main kind of prominence is like he did he did a lot, right.

He went to the Bugalkov so ex deputy Minister of Defense.

He went to him, got him to give him different contracts.

It seems like mostly in the food kind of like logistics area, right, So not not particularly like weapons or anything like that, but food rations for the military.

So this is where the fraud and embezzlement began, at least for the case that landed Kotelnikov in jail.

Who knows what else he got away with before this.

Now he was already rich and up to no goods, but he was kind of a nobody as far as go until this.

It doesn't seem he was on anyone's radar still through his state contacts, from working on government projects through his various businesses.

Kotelnikov got a contract to supply rations to Russian soldiers invading Ukraine.

These rations are meant to sustain soldiers for a day or two between supply line runs whilst fighting in the trenches.

A typical ration pack.

For them includes canned meat, dry crackers, a bit of chocolate, a bit fruit, a drink, and sometimes matches to get field supply stoves going.

At least that's what's meant to be in their rations.

There are multiple reports of Russian soldiers tearing open their packs to find nowhere near the right items, or not even having enough to go around.

This was happening even at the very start of the war.

Okay, all right, now it is time for a quick tagbreak.

All right, enough for that, Now back to the shop.

This from a twenty twenty two Reuter's article explains the issues.

Quote all soldiers on the front mentioned an acute shortage of supplies.

The sources described little or no safe drinking water, field rations for one man being shared among several and units having to scavenge for food.

We drank water with dead frogs in it, said a student conscript.

Supplies for the soldiers right now are a disaster.

So the source close to the don Yatsk separatist leadership, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Neither the Kremlin nor the separatist authorities replied to Reuter's questions about supplies and equipment for the draftees from Dombas end quote.

No surprise there.

Honestly, I don't get why they didn't get rid of the frogs in the water before they drank it, But anyway, that's a d n R four yea.

As we can see, issues with rations have been a serious problem throughout the invasion, from the start to the present.

Even so, what was the full scam that Ktelnikov and several collaborators got caught red handed in the middle of surgery explains.

Pretty typical scheme.

They do this in a lot of industries with different products, but this one specifically seems like they were responsible for getting rations for the Russian military.

Usually it would be like canned food, dry dry food that can kind of last long, you know, typical military rations.

They were supposed to be.

Delivering, from my understanding, canned beef and you know, kind of process it and it kind of looks like a very processed slop of meat.

It's I mean, like, I'm sure it's better than nothing, but it's not great to begin with.

And what they were doing is, first they were using cheaper materials.

The biggest d of standout is they were ordering beef, they were getting chicken instead, or they were mixing other meats together to kind of reduce the price that they had to pay right much cheaper to get chicken than beef, especially this time.

I'm sure then some deliveries were just not making it.

They were basically doing everything they could to lower the price while delivering the minimum, and they get to keep the difference.

The damages are one point three billion rubles.

Let's say they had contracts, and this was various contracts from the military, not one giant contract.

If they got all these contracts, they can cut a little here, cut a little there, and you know, keep half the money if they if they're good enough while making it seem like they're delivering what they need to, they're fulfilling their orders and the military is getting what it needs.

You know, they're getting these contracts from the military, so I'm sure whoever is in charge can also kind of say like, yeah, yeah, we're good, we're getting what we need.

Now this bit is why, this is how the scam became a full on conspiracy.

Now, I know it's all a bit confus using, so let me break it down simply to make the chain work and to steal a lot more money.

Several people in the circle needed to be involved in the same way as the people outside of the circle.

The circle in this case being the military.

Katolnikov needed people on the inside that were okay with fucking over their own soldiers to make a buck.

Turns out there were plenty, So think of it this way.

Katnikov and his link into the military contract to supply food for rations A, person A and B.

They need someone within the military to get the dodgy rations into rotation and sign it all off without a hitch.

This is persons C.

To keep the fraud going and pocket bigger profits, they need all the i's dotted and all the t's crossed.

For this.

They need a few people close to accounting and supply to essentially forge documents, lie about money, keep everything moving.

This is person D, E, F and so on.

A chain is built up.

The more people involved usually means the less money to go around.

But these people all became a cog in the operation.

Person DEE and F wouldn't make money without person A, B and C.

You get it.

Everyone started making money by facilitating the supply of dodgy food to soldiers who are sent out to fight a war for Putin's megalamania and frantic paranoia.

Honestly, I cannot think of a more perfect situation to demonstrate the characteristics of Putin's Russia in twenty twenty five.

It's almost two on the nose.

I think something else was going on though, as well, because, like you said, okay, his companies were making like, you know, a collective maybe seven eight million dollars in US money, which is is good money, obviously, Like fuck me, it's it's incredible.

I wish I was making money like that, but that doesn't really put you at the oligarch states he was at.

He had from what I see, he had like a fleet of cars, all this real estate, and I think the fact he's involved in this case as well as we see he's doing some kind of corruption, stealing from the government, stealing from the military in the middle of you know, Russia's invasion, which is a huge no no, as we've learned during this series.

That itself makes me think, well, this is not his first rodeo.

You know, his money has been coming from somewhere else as well as these businesses, perhaps their front for something else.

I don't know, it's just speculation, but I don't think it's unreasonable.

No, one hundred percent.

If he's already kind of involved in this, right, he clearly knows what he's doing.

He knows people's kind of what's interesting.

I think a lot of these cases we see politicians or somebody who's in some way has some kind of power, whether they were on a committee of like a regional office, or they were like some kind of parliamentarian.

Again, he kind of seems like the middleman, and he kind of seems like maybe the domino that started, kind of like a domino effect, because we see that a lot of multiple officers or like some kind of military ranking guys start getting arrested or removed from their offices following his arrest.

So I don't know if there was an investigation on going and then they kind of, you know, started taking people out if he got arrested and then he maybe sold somebody out or something, But it definitely seems like he was doing a lot of the connecting, and I think he knew a lot of the I guess you could say operation maybe from there that's where like the investigation is going on.

This case gets even more complicated and even more strange.

So I'm going to break it down into two parts.

This is part of Next Week, Part two.

You've been listening to sad Oliga season two, produced by H eleven Studios for.

Cool Zone Media.

Writing, editing, producing, concept and recording by myself, Jake Hanrahan.

Research and reporting by Sergei Slipchenko, Me and Victim Mihail.

Executive producing by Sophie Lichtmin.

Music by Sam Black at work by George Zutful.

Sound mixed by Splicing Block.

See my other projects at Hanrahan dot tv.

Get me on social media at Jake the School Hanrahan.

That's h A N r A h A N

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