“I do all this for the sake of the child. I hope this time I’ll be lucky and come back alive. But, if suddenly I am gone, I will enter my sister into the contract. I asked her to divide the payments between my mother and my son, ”recalls the words of Igor Bogachenko, his ex-wife Elvira. A year ago, a resident of Zelenodolsk, who became famous for robbing a cash-in-transit vehicle, joined the Wagner PMC when he had about 7 years to go to prison. Four months later, he died at the front. Now his relatives cannot share the payments that are due for death in the NWO zone. About how, according to the ex-wife, Bogachenko bequeathed to manage the money, why on this basis the relatives had a conflict – in the material “BUSINESS Online”.
Life and death of Bogachenko
The whole of Tatarstan learned the name of Igor Bogachenko in January 2015. Then he, the collector of Sberbank, organized a daring robbery in the middle of the working day. The plan of “Zelenodolsky Robin Hood” was extremely simple: first, Bogachenko shot at the driver of the cash-in-transit vehicle, and then dropped him and his partner out of the car. He fled the scene of the crime with 63 million rubles.
The security forces came to the robber in hot pursuit. The operatives looked through all the recordings from nearby video cameras, and received orientations for a man not only in the regions of Tatarstan, but also in neighboring republics. Sberbank announced a reward of 1 million rubles for information about the fugitive. The search bore fruit exactly five days later. Bogachenko detained special forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the remote village of Mari El, along with accomplices – Ilya Kostrubin and Yuri Zelikov. At the same time, the security forces did not find all the money: the fate of the missing 13 million rubles is unknown to this day.
Litigation took only three months. The defendants pleaded guilty only partially, and Bogachenko even insisted that he went to the crime because of non-payment of his salary by Sberbank. In November 2015, the Zelenodolsk city court sentenced the collector to 14 years in a strict regime colony, finding him guilty of robbery, car theft, theft, transportation and storage of weapons.
Such a harsh sentence was supposed to determine the fate of Bogachenko until 2029, but the Ukrainian conflict happened. According to BUSINESS Online, in the summer of 2022, he joined the Wagner PMC directly from the colony. For about four months he took an active part in the hostilities in the NVO zone, they say, even under a false name.
The tragic news came to Zelenodolsk in mid-November. Bogachenko died near Artemovsk (in the Ukrainian manner – Bakhmut) at the height of the active offensive of the Russian army unfolding there. The cause of death was multiple shrapnel wounds. The funeral of the fighter was held at the central cemetery of Zelenodolsk on December 15, 2022. The body was buried in a closed coffin.
“Elvira, I’m doing all this for the sake of the child”
Litigation and a prison term gave a crack in the marriage with Bogachenko’s wife Elvira Tagirova. When Igor was imprisoned, the couple filed for divorce. But their communication did not stop, especially in marriage they had a common son. Elvira was one of the few people whom Igor told about his plans to leave for the NVO. “Signed a contract, informed us. We talked to him, we could not convince him. Just a few hours before departure, he called me, ”recalls Tagirova in an interview with a BUSINESS Online correspondent.
She could not even imagine that the words spoken by her ex-husband would become his oral testament: “He said:“ Elvir, I do all this for the sake of the child and I hope this time I am lucky and I will return alive. But still, if this does not happen, then I will include my sister in the contract. And if suddenly I am gone, she will receive payments (we are talking about posthumous payments to the families of Wagner PMC fighters – about 5 million – ed.). I asked her to split the payments between my mother and my son.”
In the conversation, according to Elvira, Igor asked that, in the event of his death, an apartment be purchased for his funeral for his son and his mother. The ex-wife sent an excerpt from a video call in which Bogachenko confirms these intentions.
“I want them to be ashamed that they deprived their only nephew of any inheritance”
For the first time after the funeral, Tagirova talked to her husband’s family 40 days later, then Elvira was not invited to the wake. “I buried my brother, he died in the same way in the NWO. They are not shipped right away. My brother was brought in a month later. But I didn’t think that for the Orthodox, these 40 days are counted from the moment of death, and not from the funeral.”
Then Elvira asked Igor’s sister Svetlana Guseva, whose husband works in the criminal investigation department of the Zelenodolsk police department, why they had not invited them: “She replied:“ I thought, you know, you didn’t come yourself.
On the same day, the women discussed payments for the first time. “To my question:“ What are you even going to do? Our child is growing up. Why are you silent? Why don’t you start a conversation on this topic? ”- she replied:“ What did you want? What do you need?’” says Elvira.
The sister, according to our interlocutor, said that she would buy an apartment for the child when he turns 18 (now the boy is 7 – ed.). But she categorically refused to provide something to confirm her words: “She said:“ I’m not going to prove anything to you, I’ll just buy it. ”
The cold in relations between families was felt for a long time, says Elvira: even during the marriage with Bogachenko, he did not seek to communicate with his sister, and during her life together she crossed paths with his mother only a few times: “All the years I was married, only I went to Igor on dates and took packages at her own expense. They never took part in it, they never invested in their relative.”
As Elvira explained, it was important for her that at least something remained from her father from her son, and not the words of a relative. The question of money became a stumbling block, because she regarded such behavior as a betrayal: “I feel very sorry for the child, I don’t need their money. I want them to be ashamed that they have disinherited their only nephew. The child still does not know that his father is dead. I go to my brother’s grave, and next to it is my husband’s grave. I take care of the graves, but they don’t even come.”
When preparing the article, the BUSINESS Online correspondent tried to contact the other side of the conflict, Guseva. However, the sister of the deceased collector refused to comment on the situation, saying that “she will settle everything herself.”
