Three men have been detained in Daghestan as part of the criminal investigation into businessperson Ibrahim Suleimanov, whom investigators suspect of organising several contract killings.
The men are accused of being Suleimanov’s accomplices and are accused of involvement in an attempted murder committed in 2021, Russia’s state news agency TASS reported. According to their source, the murder had failed, and the unidentified victim had survived.
The arrests in Daghestan followed more than forty searches carried out in Moscow, the larger Moscow region, and Daghestan as part of the ongoing investigation against Suleimanov. The businessperson himself has been charged with planning two murders and one attempted murder, TASS reported.
Earlier, law enforcement officers detained the alleged leader of an organised criminal group, Abakar Darbishev, who reportedly died of a heart attack shortly after being taken into custody in the Moscow region, according to the state news agency RIA Novosti. The agency also reported that Darbishev was related to another defendant, Mukhammad Darbishev, who was arrested on charges of attempted murder committed by a group of people with particular cruelty.
Ibrahim Suleimanov, a native of Daghestan, was detained on 2 October and remanded in custody by Moscow’s Basmanny District Court the following day for two months. Investigators believe he may be linked to the murder of Gennady Borisov, the leader of the trade union of Vnukovo Airlines, which took place in January 1999. Borisov was stabbed to death in the entrance of his apartment building.
Before his death, he had organised several protests over unpaid wages. At the time, Vnukovo Airlines was owned by Suleimanov and businesspersons Tatevos Surinov and Suleiman Kerimov, who is now a Russian MP.
Investigators also suspect Suleimanov of involvement in the 2004 murder of Georgy Tal, the Head of the Federal Service for Financial Recovery and Bankruptcy, as well as the 2001 attempted murder of lawyer Ilya Peregudov.
Suleimanov denies all charges. His lawyer, Georgi Abshilava, told the newspaper Kommersant that the accusations were unfounded, adding that his client called the case ‘a smokescreen’.
‘He stated that he had nothing to do with any of the alleged incidents,’ Abshilava said.
The lawyer added that Suleimanov suffers from serious heart problems, having previously fallen into a coma and undergone surgery to install a stent. The court did not take these arguments into account, and the defence plans to appeal the court’s decision.
According to publicly available data, Ibrahim Suleimanov owns or co-owns several companies connected to the IT and aviation industries. His main company, Sirena-Travel, develops and maintains the Leonardo booking system used for airline ticket reservations. According to the Russian independent investigative media outlet Agency, up to 80 percent of airline tickets in Russia are sold through this system.
Among the company’s co-owners is Rasul Suleimanov, a relative of the arrested businessperson. Data from the SPARK corporate register shows that both men also hold shares in the companies Miksvel, Universus, and Avto Val, which were previously listed as founders of Sirena-Travel.
In 2007, Ibrahim Suleimanov was sentenced to 10 years and 10 months in prison for fraud and was later released on parole. He is also connected to businessperson Platon Lebedev, a former partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky in the Yukos oil company. Suleimanov is married to Lebedev’s daughter.
Nate Ostiller
