Russian official Svetlana Radionova personally confronted bankers and issued threats backed by Gagiev’s “Dzhako” contract-killing network
Newly released materials link Russian environmental chief to pressure campaign tied to notorious contract-killing network
Newly disclosed case files connected to Aslan Gagiev (known as Dzhako)—the leader of one of Russia’s deadliest contract-killing groups—reveal that the current head of Russia’s federal environmental watchdog, Svetlana Radionova, once played a direct role in pressuring Moscow bankers on behalf of figures linked to Gagiev’s organization. At the time of the events, Radionova served as an assistant prosecutor for Moscow’s Central Administrative District and was the common-law partner of Arkady Berkovich, Gagiev’s key financial manager and closest associate.
The materials, which never reached trial, describe how Radionova visited bankers representing funds connected to both the Yakunin family and to Gagiev’s group. According to the testimony of banker Alexander Shevchenko, Radionova threatened criminal cases if the bankers refused to transfer client money as demanded. If that failed, the documents state, Gagiev’s hitmen would step in and eliminate the bankers. Shevchenko recounts an early-summer 2005 meeting at a café on Moscow’s Chistye Prudy, where Radionova and P. M. Svirsky told him to move the funds or risk being removed from the bank entirely. He refused and filed a complaint with Russia’s Prosecutor General through a Federation Council contact, though no case was opened against Radionova.
The pressure campaign began after Berkovich placed a large shared fund—belonging to the Yakunin family and to members of Gagiev’s criminal group—into National Capital Bank, owned by Dmitry Plytnik, Philipp Degtyarev and Shevchenko. The funds were then transferred at Berkovich’s request to the Kredittrast bank of Alexander Slesarev, which soon collapsed. Berkovich later discovered that Plytnik, Degtyarev and Slesarev had removed roughly $600 million into offshore structures. When the money could not be recovered, Gagiev’s group began threatening the bankers.
Plytnik was eventually kidnapped, taken to a base controlled by Gagiev’s organization, tortured, and forced to hand over keys to accounts, documents and offshore entities. He was later killed. Responsibility for the remaining “debt” shifted to Degtyarev and Shevchenko. Berkovich continued to demand hundreds of millions of rubles from Shevchenko, threatening violence during meetings in Moscow. Shevchenko says he still refused, insisting that payments could only be made according to an existing legal agreement. Shortly afterward, a criminal case was opened against him, which he believes was fabricated. He fled to Canada; the case was dismissed in 2016 for lack of evidence.
Slesarev, who also retained access to the siphoned funds, soon became the next target. According to the materials, Gagiev and Berkovich approved his elimination along with his family, since they too could gain access to the money. In October 2005, gunmen opened fire on two cars on the Don Highway, killing Slesarev, his wife Natalya and their 15-year-old daughter Elizaveta.
The newly surfaced records paint a stark picture of how business disputes, missing funds and internal criminal conflicts during the mid-2000s intersected with figures who later rose to senior government positions—and how one of Russia’s most violent criminal networks operated with impunity for years.
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