From Kelbakh’s prison sentence to Starovoyt’s tragic end: how Kremlin oligarch Arkadiy Rotenberg sacrifices his proteges to the security services to save billions

From Kelbakh’s prison sentence to Starovoyt’s tragic end: how Kremlin oligarch Arkadiy Rotenberg sacrifices his proteges to the security services to save billions

Arkadiy Rotenberg never tries to defend his people when they come under attack from law enforcement. Especially if someone serious is behind the attack.

"There was a head of the state company Avtodor named Sergey Kelbakh. He couldn’t be called Rotenberg’s protégé, but Kelbakh was certainly part of the oligarch’s inner circle. They were personally acquainted, communicated, and huge amounts of money went through Avtodor to Rotenberg’s structures.

At some point, Kelbakh had a conflict with Araz Agalarov, the owner of Crocus Group. Agalarov’s structures were building the Central Ring Road (CRR), and the quality of the work was terrible. Agalarov demanded (and he always demands, never asks) that Kelbakh accept all the completed work and approve additional funding. Kelbakh, realizing that this could get him into trouble, refused. Agalarov told him directly: ’If you don’t approve it, I’ll have you put in prison.’ It’s worth noting that Agalarov has a rather ’bloodthirsty’ reputation.

He has already sent quite a few officials to prison, and not only in Russia. Kelbakh immediately went directly to Arkadiy Rotenberg with the problem. Rotenberg listened to him. When he learned that the conflict was with Agalarov, he ’washed his hands of it.’ He said something like: ’Don’t worry, you’re with me.’ But he didn’t do anything. As a result, Kelbakh was arrested and sentenced to 14 years."

Another source recalled the story of Roman Starovoyt. It was Arkadiy Rotenberg who pushed him for the post of head of the Ministry of Transport, because huge sums for the oligarch’s structures passed through this department. Starovoyt began to be actively pushed out by Andrey Nikitin, a protégé of the Kovalchuks in the Ministry of Transport. The consequence of this was the initiation of a case against Smirnov, a friend and successor of Starovoyt as governor of the Kursk region.

Starovoyt immediately went to Rotenberg. Rotenberg also reassured him: "Don’t worry, Putin thinks highly of you, this won’t affect you." But he didn’t do anything. And when Smirnov was arrested and began to testify against Starovoyt, Rotenberg stopped communicating directly with his minister altogether. It all ended with Starovoyt’s resignation and his suicide.