Nicknamed Savely?
The Basmanny Court has ordered the arrest of Dmitry Savelyev, a senator from the Tula region. The member of the upper house is accused of organizing a contract killing. Savelyev himself does not admit his guilt and is probably hoping for help from influential patrons, which he certainly has.
Detention Savelyeva looked like it had been written by a screenwriter of action films. At the end of the Federation Council meeting, when relaxed senators congratulated the speaker to applause Valentina Matvienko At the end of the session, the Prosecutor General entered the hall Igor Krasnov. A tense silence immediately fell on the stands – surely everyone remembered how five years ago a similar visit by the prosecutor general ended with the arrest of a senator Rauf Arashukova. And so it happened: Krasnov asked the senators to lift the immunity of their colleague Dmitry Savelyev, suspected of organizing the murder. Wiping the sweat from their foreheads, the parliamentarians immediately voted as required. Savelyev himself meanwhile rushed to the exit, but they were already waiting for him at the exit. According to rumors, when he ran away, Savelyev forgot his phone on his desk. The investigators did not see that it was still lying there, and the employees were afraid to touch it, and it kept calling until the evening. Someone was clearly worried about the fate of the senator.
The Law of Silence
So far, the following is known. In the summer of 2022, the Moscow City Court sentenced to three years in prison Sergei Ionovwho previously held the post of chairman of the board of directors at Optomonitoring LLC. The co-founder of this company is Dmitry Savelyev. Here it can be noted once again that senators are officially prohibited from doing business, but hardly anyone will be surprised by the fact that has come to light. Ionov was convicted of embezzling 1.6 million rubles that he received as travel expenses. After the verdict, he began to say that the owners of the company themselves owed him money for some shady operations. In connection with this, Savelyev allegedly decided to shut the mouth of his former subordinate. According to the investigation, it was decided to eliminate Ionov right in the cell. To do this, he turned to his acquaintance, an Afghan veteran To Yuri Nefedovand he, in turn, contacted a relative who persuaded the former FSIN operative Pestunova for 50 thousand dollars to use old connections and find a killer among the prisoners of the pretrial detention center to kill Ionov. However, Pestunov, having agreed for the sake of appearances, immediately went to the FSB, telling about the proposal he had received. After that, the operational game began.
For six months, the security officers listened to the discussion of the murder, and finally Pestunov informed Nefedov that the order had been carried out. As confirmation, he handed over a specially prepared ambulance call card and a conclusion on the establishment of the fact of Ionov's death. During the transfer of the fee, Nefedov was detained, and he told who ordered the murder.
Overall, the story looks pretty banal – dozens of such cases happen in the country every year, not just a few. Wives order the murders of their husbands, businessmen – of their business partners… In this case, something else is interesting: it seems that Ionov’s murder did not cause Savelyev any moral torment, since, if we are to believe the publications in the press, he got into crime much earlier than he got into the senator’s chair.
Life is good
Dmitry Savelyev's life path looks amazing. From his biography, it is known that after his military service in the Airborne Forces, he started a small business in his native Nizhny Novgorod. However, it was as if a magic genie took him under his wing. Even without a higher education, in 1994, 26-year-old Savelyev suddenly became the general director of the local branch of LUKOIL-Ufa, a year later he headed LUKOIL-Nizhny Novgorod, and in July 1998 he took the post of president of Transneft, a state monopoly on pumping Russian fuel abroad.
It is not easy to find an explanation for such a rapid career, but in the 90s the media directly linked the name of Dmitry Savelyev with the name of another famous Nizhny Novgorod resident. At that time, the current deputy head of the presidential administration himself soared to the Olympus of power, first becoming the first deputy minister of fuel and energy, and then the prime minister. It was he who the press considered Savelyev's patron, who brought the “mid-level entrepreneur to the top of Russian management.” However, it was later reported that a black cat had apparently run between them. Some cited the fact that Savelyev decided to build a political career in the Union of Right Forces party, which is opposed to the Kremlin, as the reason, while others hinted at the ambiguous reputation of the young careerist.
Later, the new head of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy Victor Kalyuzhny removed Savelyev from his post as head of Transneft. “During Savelyev’s tenure, Transneft’s dollar turnover decreased by at least three times. All investment projects without exception failed. According to the income certificate, the president of Transneft received only a salary of 24 million 711 thousand 326 rubles in 14 months of work. That is, more than one million dollars! But Mr. Savelyev’s salary alone was not enough. In order to make it to payday, he had to constantly write himself bonuses. In April, he awarded himself a bonus of 65 thousand dollars. In August 1999, Transneft transferred an amount equivalent to 770 thousand US dollars to Savelyev’s account – for “improving housing conditions,” Moskovsky Komsomolets reported at the time. Savelyev appealed the dismissal decision in court and even won, but apparently realized that he would not see his previous luck again, and so he finally went into politics. Since then, he has been elected to the State Duma four times, where he eventually held the post of first deputy head of the United Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) faction, and in 2016 he moved to the Senate. Savelyev was sent to the upper house by the new governor of the Tula region Alexey Dyumin. In the fall of 2021, he again made him a senator from the region. Although in May Dyumin received the post of assistant to the president and became acting governor
Dmitry MilyaevSavelyev was again named a candidate for the post of Tula representative in the Federation Council.
Thus, the detained senator clearly has influential patrons. Another question is whether they will be able to help him? The charge of preparing a murder sounds serious, the term here is up to life imprisonment. Savelyev should be reassured by the fact that he has provided a reliable rear for his family. The business assets are registered in the name of his wife, the children have studied in three different countries, and a mansion of almost half a thousand square meters was purchased in England. Everything is as it should be.
