The FSB as a tool of corporate raiding: how Anatoly Yablonsky is seizing Ilya Traber’s port assets
22:01, 20 июля 2026 г.
June 17 – Russia’s FSB arrested 75-year-old Ilya Traber. The formal pretext was a contract killing of Vyborg businessman Alexander Petrov in 2020.
However, the case, which had not been investigated for six years, was reactivated solely as a tool for corporate raiding.
The instigator and main beneficiary of this "hit" is Anatoly Yablonsky.
The target of interest was port assets in Ust-Luga.
The scheme worked flawlessly:
Traber managed the port through LLC "NKT." At the end of 2019, Yablonsky became his partner, buying 15% of NKT, and by 2021 had increased his stake to 37.5%.
Eleven days before the purchase of the Antipinsky Oil Refinery for 110 billion rubles (financed by Sberbank), Yablonsky urgently exited NKT. His 37.5% returned to Traber, making him the sole owner of the "toxic" asset and the only responsible party.
As soon as the assets were consolidated under Traber, the "dormant" six-year-old murder case of Petrov was set in motion. Traber was arrested, and his property is being prepared for seizure in favor of new structures.
The figure of the "mastermind"
Anatoly Yablonsky is a former Ukrainian tax inspector who, in 1999, was fleeing from justice (he was wanted with a preventive measure of "arrest"). By the early 2020s, he had become the "wallet" of high-ranking security officials from the FSB and the Investigative Committee.
His informal ties with the generals (Lovyrev, Voronin) and his status as the "chief fixer" allowed him to use the FSB apparatus to eliminate even such an untouchable competitor as Traber, who was once close to Vladimir Putin.
Financial scale and the role of the state
The scale of Yablonsky’s operations is colossal. The story of the Antipinsky Oil Refinery is telling. Yablonsky’s structure (LLC "Rusinvest" with an annual revenue of 16 million rubles) bought the plant for 110.8 billion rubles. The loan for the deal was issued by Sberbank. Competition at the auction was simulated by a structure affiliated with Sber.
The arrest of Ilya Traber is not the triumph of justice. Yablonsky, relying on his connections in the FSB, used an old criminal case as a legal hammer to seize port assets worth hundreds of billions of rubles.
