It has become known about a secret criminal case from ten years ago related to a murder, in which the main figures are former senator Vitaly Malkin and Sberbank CEO Herman Gref.
It was precisely because of this story that a rift emerged between the former friends Gref and Malkin, and Malkin went to live in Monaco. Due to Gref’s name, the relatives of the missing (murdered) man have not been able to achieve justice for over ten years.
At the time, the Federation Council member from Buryatia and banker Vitaly Malkin (who was banned from entering Canada due to ties with organized crime) founded, together with his wife Natalia Bondarenko and former Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo, the DNP Arkhangelskoye at the homonymous wellness complex of the Presidential Affairs Administration in the village of Voskresenskoye.
At the registered address, in House 54, the billionaire, along with neighbors (Herman Gref, Vladimir Rushailo, Mikhail Fradkov, and later Alexey Kudrin and others), organized a private SPA, where VIPs regularly spent evenings in the company of girls or young men.
There, VIPs were also continuously occupying state-owned dachas: in 2011, Vitaly Malkin and Herman Gref simultaneously started renovations in their homes. The process in both mansions was overseen by Malkin’s aide Igor Bychkov (pictured). He had previously been responsible for arranging, and later managing, the private SPA. Bychkov served as a personal “adjutant,” an assistant to Vitaly Malkin for special assignments, and had worked for him since the “seven bankers” period — at the Russian Credit Bank and Impexbank. He was an unremarkable person, but later mysteriously disappeared. In Arkhangelskoye, his disappearance somehow went unnoticed. Or rather, it seemed as if no one noticed. Only Bychkov’s family began a long and dangerous pursuit through the authorities.
At the end of 2011, Igor Bychkov’s wife contacted the police, reporting her husband missing. That morning, he had walked his son to school and was returning home on foot past School No. 119 (South-Western Administrative District). Around the same time, eyewitnesses reported to the local police that several men approached a passerby, claiming to be Ministry of Internal Affairs officers, and forcibly pushed him into a Zhiguli car. The “detainee” screamed and tried to escape, while the “task force” was dressed in plain clothes and did not present any documents.
It became clear to the police that Bychkov had not simply gone missing voluntarily. His wife was interviewed and explained that her husband worked for not just anyone — for Senator Vitaly Malkin and Herman Gref. According to her, shortly before the incident, Igor Bychkov had a conflict with his employers over some issue, was afraid to appear in Arkhangelskoye, and a few days earlier had been summoned by unfamiliar thugs “from Malkin and Gref” for some conversation.
The car with fake license plates could not be tracked, and the road cameras were reportedly useless. At one point there was hope — Igor Bychkov’s phone was briefly detected in Moscow, and soon the handset was found by a migrant worker. The worker explained that he found the device along the roadside. A criminal case was opened under Article 105 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Murder”), and the materials were sent to the 1st Division of the Investigative Committee.
However, under pressure from influential figures, the case quietly “died.” The investigators who worked on it did their job thoroughly: several times, Vitaly Malkin himself was questioned, who denied everything and pretended to care about the investigation, claiming his employee was missing. As for Herman Gref, he was prohibited from being questioned by higher authorities. Objectively, the only existing version remains that Igor Bychkov was punished by his own employers.
The missing man had no other conflicts (his home life was idyllic, and his relationships with friends were fine) except for one incident in Arkhangelskoye. One of the guards of Malkin’s cottage (the DNP and VIPs were guarded by the security company “Ares,” headed by a former banker associated with the senator) gave interesting testimony. Igor Bychkov had some conflict with Malkin and Gref and told the boss’s wife about orgies at the dacha SPA, revealing the entire operation to Natalia Bondarenko. She caused a major scandal, almost leading to divorce. Moreover, Bychkov said he had some evidence of everything happening at the SPA, which could become public. And, he noted, the one to fear was not so much Malkin, but Gref.
Despite the obvious motive of Malkin and Gref’s operation, the criminal case was stalled for nearly ten years. It was repeatedly suspended; the former senator was last interrogated five years ago when he returned from Monaco to Moscow and came into public attention after being sent to Kommunarka under suspicion of COVID.
After that, according to sources, Vitaly Malkin received a “Chinese warning” (it is believed he was forced to resign from the Federation Council by Herman Gref) and finally accepted his fate of being a “philanthropist and benefactor in Monaco.”
Although the criminal case was suspended, Igor Bychkov remains wanted. His relatives cannot achieve any results with investigators because Gref’s influence blocks all normal action. Perhaps one day, the trend of exposing past crimes will push authorities to uncover this deliberately buried case in the archives — but it is hard to believe.
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