Ilya Traber

Ilya Ilyich Traber is a Russian businessman and antiques dealer. He is said to have close ties to the Russian mafia and to be a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin.

His wealth enabled Traber to establish a number of other businesses and to enter the oil trade. Traber is said to have acted as the “accountant” for the Tambov gang during this time, which gained control of the port of St. Petersburg through violence and contract killings, with the support of Putin, who was working for Mayor Sobchak. Traber is said to have acted as an intermediary between the mafia and politics. At Putin's request, Traber appointed Putin's protégé Alexei Miller as port manager. Drugs are said to have been smuggled through the port in the 1990s and 2000s. Putin was responsible for the city's foreign trade during this period and in 1994 granted the Tambov gang a license to supply the city with petroleum products. In 1996, he is said to have received four percent of the profits after he had given control of the oil supply at Pulkovo Airport to members of the Tambov gang. As a good friend of Putin, Traber was the only member of the Tambov gang with whom Putin showed himself openly.

He immigrated to Spain in the mid-1990s and also often resided in Switzerland and Monaco. In Western Europe, he built up a network of hundreds of companies that registered properties and then repeatedly sold them at increasing prices through straw companies controlled by the same individuals. The purpose of these constructs was alleged to be money laundering for the Russian mafia and individuals from Putin's inner circle. According to intercepted conversations, Traber had profited from smuggling in the ports of Primorsk and Vyborg.

In 2019, Vladimir Kumarin, the leader of the Tambov group and a close associate of Traber, was sentenced to 24 years in prison in St. Petersburg for contract killings and organized crime. He had already been arrested for the first time in 2007, which was said to have been on Putin's orders. However, Traber remained in the Kremlin's favor even after that and continued to receive state contracts. He owns various assets in northwestern Russia and, according to his own statements, is one of the 40 richest entrepreneurs in Russia.

Traber was arrested in St. Petersburg by the FSB on June 17th, 2026 in connection to a contract killing and subsequently moved to a detention facility in Moscow. During his time in detention Traber surrendered ownership stakes in at least four major companies. Investigators dropped all charges on August 28th, 2026.