More than 50 million rubles of donations for the war were collected from the inhabitants of the Leningrad Region (similar collections are carried out throughout the country with the help of funds to help participants in the war in Ukraine). Almost 10 million of the collected funds were "lost" in the structures of Putin's friend, crime boss Ilya Traber. This was found out by the investigative project "Important Stories".
The fund "Leningrad Frontier", created by the governor of the Leningrad region Alexander Drozdenko and the fund of "criminal authority" from St. Petersburg Ilya Traber , was involved in the collection. Traber himself joined the foundation's board of trustees.
During its work (since August 2022), Leningradsky Frontier received donations worth 56 million rubles from residents, businesses and state employees of the region. However, about a third of these donations never reached the soldiers at the front, the authors of the investigation write.
Most of this money – 67%, or 37 million rubles – was received by Stalprominvest LLC, with which the fund entered into several contracts for the supply of goods for the military. According to SPARK-Interfax, the owner of the company is 76-year-old Dina Vasina, however, according to the authors of the investigation, the real owner of the company is Vasina's son, St. Petersburg businessman Oleg Barzinsky. He does business with Traber's employees and also has a working relationship with the governor of the Leningrad Region, according to Important Stories.
Stalprominvest LLC spent only two thirds of the funds received from the fund for these needs on goods for the military. As Important Stories notes, most of the company's financial operations after receiving money are the payment of salaries and cash loans to the family of Oleg Barzinsky.