The Antiquarian’s right-hand man under arrest: Vladimir Danilenko’s bloody trail from extortion to high-profile contract killings
As it became known, on Friday, a court in Moscow extended the pre-trial detention of Vladimir Danilenko – the "right-hand man" of Ilya Traber (aka "The Antiquarian," whose arrest was extended a day earlier).
A source close to our project, who is well-acquainted with Traber, recounts details about Danilenko, his relationship with Kumarin, and which other high-profile murders may be linked to The Antiquarian and Danilenko:
"Danilenko was born in Kazakhstan. He first ended up behind bars while studying at a veterinary technical school. He got out, and then went right back in. That’s how his life went. During one of his stints in prison, he met Lykov (one of the key prosecution witnesses in the case of the murder of Alexander Petrov, the ’owner of Vyborg’ – ed.). Danilenko was the barracks ’overseer’ (a prisoner in charge of maintaining order). He had everything running smoothly there. Then, suddenly, a new operative shows up at the penal colony. He starts imposing new rules on the convicts, which naturally doesn’t sit well with them. The operative was persistent. Danilenko strikes up a friendship with Lykov, who also doesn’t want to put up with the new rules in the barracks. Lykov beats up the operative for a pack of cigarettes. Lykov gets three years added to his sentence, and Danilenko is put on a transfer convoy to another prison. But Volodya wouldn’t be who he is if he didn’t manage to cut a deal with the colony chief and stay to finish his time in Yaroslavl. Next, Danilenko arrives in St. Petersburg. He wants money, excitement, and adventure. He’s ready for anything.
It was at this time that the fateful meeting took place between the ever-ready Danilenko and Traber, who was building his team. Traber was already quite firmly on his feet by then. It took some time before The Antiquarian let him get truly close. They’ve been together since roughly 1995-1996. They became especially close after the murder of Manevich (the Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg, shot by a sniper in 1997 – ed.).
At the time of the meeting between Traber and Danilenko, Traber was closely associated with Kumarin. Kumarin didn’t like Danilenko’s appearance on the scene. Danilenko didn’t like Kumarin either. He used to say, ’We’re not friends; he gets rid of people just like that…’
By the way, The Antiquarian also had dealings with Shutov. They later fell out. I don’t know the details of their quarrel. But I suspect he had a hand in Shutov’s arrest. Later, he would say what a fantasist and a senile old man Shutov was. And he really wasn’t a very pleasant person. A different matter was his ’right-hand man,’ Airat Gimranov. He was very interesting, well-rounded, educated, gallant… and a killer. He’s currently serving a life sentence at ’White Swan’ (a notorious maximum-security prison).
Getting back to Danilenko – everything was going great for him, he came into a lot of money. And then, bam – the incident with the ’Watermelon King’ (The Antiquarian sent Danilenko to intimidate a businessman who controlled watermelon supplies, but Danilenko tortured him to death – ed.). He was caught and sent back to prison.
Traber went to great lengths to get Danilenko transferred to a penal colony settlement in Knyazhevo after a few years inside… That was a super ’connected’ place at the time, where convicts could live at home for money, only showing up for registration once or twice a month.
Shortly after his release, Danilenko received a gift from Traber – several hectares of land in the Pskov region, on the border with Latvia. I suspect the gift wasn’t for his release, but for organizing the execution of someone. In my opinion, the deaths of Manevich, Kapysh (head of the BFPG [Baltic Financial and Industrial Group] – ed.), Zyuzya (Vitaly Ryuzin, who took over BFPG after Kapysh’s murder, found dead in 2001 at a recreation center in the village of Balsovo, Pskov region – ed.), and Petrov – those definitely point to Traber. He would relish telling about them, saying how ’wonderful’ they were. With one caveat: wonderful, but stupid… And he would smile."
