Speaker 1: Media. Something strange is going on. Another member of the
Speaker 1: Russian elite has been found dead.
Speaker 2: Reports suggests that he fell out of a window, poisoned
Speaker 2: with mushrooms.
Speaker 1: Died of heart failure, died of carbonnoxide poisoning. How comes
Speaker 1: they are they?
Speaker 3: Dozens of Russian oligachs, politically motivated millionaires have died in
Speaker 3: the space for three years, most of them in suspicious circumstances.
Speaker 4: Many have hidden links to the Kremlin.
Speaker 3: This is sad Oligach Season two, an ongoing investigation into
Speaker 3: these recently dead Russian power brokers. Sad Oligach is created
Speaker 3: by me Jake Hanrahan and my Ukrainian colleague Sergey Slipchenkov.
Speaker 3: This is a H eleven studio and Coolso Media production.
Speaker 3: September eighth, twenty twenty five. A bridge in Kaliningrad. The
Speaker 3: Kaliningrad region is an unusual place. It's Russian territory, but
Speaker 3: it's completely encircled by European countries. It's like an island,
Speaker 3: only instead of being surrounded by water, it's surrounded by
Speaker 3: Poland and Lithuania, countries that both have serious hostilities with
Speaker 3: Russia NATO countries. This six thousand square mile exclave is
Speaker 3: over four hundred miles from the Russian border. Still, Kaliningrad
Speaker 3: answers directly to the Kremlin. It's Russia, just not mainland Russia.
Speaker 3: It's been like this for a while. Originally, though Kaliningrad
Speaker 3: was part of the Kingdom of Prussia, thought of proto
Speaker 3: Germany that began in the seventeen hundreds. Back then it
Speaker 3: was called Koenigsburg. Was eventually seized in nineteen forty five
Speaker 3: by the Soviet Union at the end of World War Two.
Speaker 3: The Communists kicked most of the Germans out and gave
Speaker 3: the region the new name Kaliningrad. The namesake is a
Speaker 3: nod to the Soviet politician Mikhail Kalinin.
Speaker 5: Kalinin, who rose from peasant by to be President of
Speaker 5: the Supreme Council.
Speaker 3: When the USSA collapsed in nineteen ninety one, Kaliningrad became
Speaker 3: part of the new Russia. It's remained that way ever since.
Speaker 3: Of course, a strategically important area for the Kremlin, a
Speaker 3: highly militarized fly in Europe's ointment. It's here in Kaliningrad's
Speaker 3: Gurievsky area, where a body of forty three year old
Speaker 3: entrepreneur Alexi. Sinitsin is laid out under a bridge. His
Speaker 3: limbs are stiff, is positioned on the bank of a
Speaker 3: small river. He's dead, very dead. His body is missing
Speaker 3: one vital component.
Speaker 4: It's head. Snitsin has been decapitated.
Speaker 3: The nailed up spine sticks out from a gaping wound
Speaker 3: at the neck. Strangely, the head is not near the body,
Speaker 3: it's some distance away. Next to this gruesome scene is
Speaker 3: a carefully coiled towing cable high strength nylon rope made
Speaker 3: for pulling vehicles. Polisa called after this nightmare is discovered
Speaker 3: by passers by crops arrive not the scene, and then
Speaker 3: their rapport.
Speaker 4: They write that.
Speaker 3: Its quote could be a suicide. How Sennitskin managed to
Speaker 3: cut off his own head, I don't know. The toe
Speaker 3: rope is thick, woven, dull. It's not like a piano
Speaker 3: or razor wire, which in theory, could maybe decapitator man
Speaker 3: if he used it as a noose. But then how
Speaker 3: would the body end up on the riverbank with its
Speaker 3: head in another location? It could be a suicide, but
Speaker 3: that is very unlikely, it seems. The police are also
Speaker 3: not so sure. They open a criminal investigation into the case,
Speaker 3: mostly citing the tow cable suspicious evidence. Such a grizzly
Speaker 3: scene creates a lot of questions. First and foremost for us,
Speaker 3: who the hell was Sinnitsin? A death as brutal as
Speaker 3: this does not happen on a whim. We've been working
Speaker 3: on this case tirelessly, and the simple answer is so
Speaker 3: Knitsin is a bit of a ghost. Very little information
Speaker 3: is out there about him, no real social media presence,
Speaker 3: no record of his childhood, no real effort made to
Speaker 3: follow up on the report of his death. Even by
Speaker 3: the standards of the Kremlins Russia, it's very unusual. I
Speaker 3: reached out to people associated with him and I got nothing.
Speaker 3: Every single time brick Wall, You'd think someone would at
Speaker 3: least want to make sure the correct impression was given
Speaker 3: about this man after he was left headless under a bridge.
Speaker 3: This is not a normal death. Researcher Victi Mihiel, who's
Speaker 3: working on this with us, managed to dig out some information,
Speaker 3: but honestly, there is not a lot out there.
Speaker 6: We have no clue and no information about this guy.
Speaker 6: If you look him up, you cannot find any information
Speaker 6: other than his birthplace and some very vague stuff such
Speaker 6: as that he appeared in Russia two times on records,
Speaker 6: once when he was born in Vorkuta in nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 6: if I'm not mistaken, and the second one when he
Speaker 6: self proclaimed as an entrepreneur in twenty fourteen in Saint Petersburg. Well,
Speaker 6: there is a bit of a distance between Saint Petersburg
Speaker 6: and Kaliningrad, right in twenty sixteen he moved randomly in
Speaker 6: Kaliniingrad twenty eighteen started to work for this K potash company,
Speaker 6: and in twenty twenty two, just four years later, somehow
Speaker 6: he became the general director the company.
Speaker 3: Victor mentions here K potash is something I'll get to
Speaker 3: in a bit related to soap mines and fertilizer. Keep
Speaker 3: it in the back of your mind, though, as it
Speaker 3: may hold some answers as to why Senitzin died the
Speaker 3: way he did.
Speaker 6: There is no information about his studies, parents, whatever, what
Speaker 6: makes him eligible to work as a director. When you
Speaker 6: need studies, when you need a diploma in economics, you
Speaker 6: need to be even an engineer. I'm saying because an engineer,
Speaker 6: because this guy was literally making projects, as in engineering
Speaker 6: projects of the minds which did these extractions and whatnot.
Speaker 6: But what I was saying, at some point in the
Speaker 6: Colini Grad collective unconsciousness, people thought, wow, I wonder if
Speaker 6: we have a director for this company, because for some
Speaker 6: reason nobody knew the director was from twenty to twenty two,
Speaker 6: twenty twenty five where this person was to beheaded.
Speaker 3: This is another interesting point Victors brought up here. Not
Speaker 3: only is Senitsan's past highly elusive, so are the records
Speaker 3: of some of the places he worked at. It says
Speaker 3: if he floated in as a specter and took with
Speaker 3: him everyone's memories as he left. Maybe it's just bad
Speaker 3: record keeping in Kaliningrad. Maybe Russia, in all of its
Speaker 3: iterations throughout history, has been a place of meticulous record keeping.
Speaker 3: They're literally known for it. From Imperial Russia and the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union to post USSR collapse and now Planet Putin,
Speaker 3: bureaucracy has always been a big part of the Russian experience.
Speaker 3: They're great record keepers, but they're also selective record keepers.
Speaker 3: When it helps state, red take and minute details are
Speaker 3: all very important, but when it doesn't help the state,
Speaker 3: everything suddenly vanish. It many such cases when the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union went belly up. For example, Russia eventually ended up
Speaker 3: restricting access to the Soviet era archives. Courts would unlawfully
Speaker 3: limit the records so researchers couldn't uncover the true horrors
Speaker 3: of the USSR. They'd reclassified documents, hide them, destroy them,
Speaker 3: or simply say they got lost along the way. Another
Speaker 3: example is the twenty sixteen drug scandal, when a state
Speaker 3: run doping program for Russian Olympic athletes was exposed. It
Speaker 3: was found that the Russian government was guaranteeing that the
Speaker 3: tests that came back positive for performance enhancing drugs were hidden.
Speaker 3: There was an institutional effort that made any incriminating documents disappear. Okay,
Speaker 3: now it's time for a quick outbreak. All right, enough
Speaker 3: of that, now back to the shore. You get my point.
Speaker 3: Records have regularly vanished into the ether in Russia when
Speaker 3: they might expose stay wrongdoing.
Speaker 4: Don't get me wrong, though, This is not just a
Speaker 4: Russian problem.
Speaker 3: It is a political problem all across the world, left
Speaker 3: right up, down center. Everybody is at it. Just take
Speaker 3: the so called Epstein files for example. The US government
Speaker 3: on all sides has or is actively hiding important evidence
Speaker 3: that exposes the involvement of the rich and power full
Speaker 3: in the world's worst known pedophile human trafficking ring. Try
Speaker 3: to get your head around that these are people who
Speaker 3: talk about the morals of their government and excoriate their foes,
Speaker 3: and yet they are knowingly taking part in an open
Speaker 3: cover up to help some of the worst people on earth.
Speaker 3: It's absolutely diabolical, It's corrupt, and sadly, I don't think
Speaker 3: it will ever change.
Speaker 7: Anyway.
Speaker 4: I digress.
Speaker 3: Still, the fact that this all takes place in Cliningrad
Speaker 3: might be why things are a little difficult to decipher.
Speaker 3: It's not exactly an area that has the spotlight. In fact,
Speaker 3: it's not a place many people in euro have been
Speaker 3: too atall. A holiday destination, is not. I actually tried
Speaker 3: to go to Kaliningrad myself in twenty seventeen. At the time,
Speaker 3: there were rumors that the state had been fortifying the
Speaker 3: borders and bringing more heavy weapons into the area. I
Speaker 3: wanted to go and see what I could verify and
Speaker 3: write a story on it. As a journalist, I had
Speaker 3: to apply for a visa. I was denied. Later I
Speaker 3: was told that the reason for this was my recent
Speaker 3: report in the so called Denetsk People's Republic or the DNR.
Speaker 3: This is one of the most contentious separatist held areas
Speaker 3: in East Ukraine. The Russian back militias controlling the area
Speaker 3: framed it as some kind of post Soviet utopia. They
Speaker 3: even brought in hardline communist extremists from across Europe to
Speaker 3: live there and help spread international propaganda.
Speaker 4: It was very weird. Now I had an inklin.
Speaker 3: It wasn't quite the war torn red paradise they made out,
Speaker 3: so I traveled over to see for myself. As soon
Speaker 3: as I arrived, I was assigned a group of minders
Speaker 3: who took me on a three day press tour of
Speaker 3: the region.
Speaker 4: We've been allowed permission here on condition.
Speaker 3: That we have a minder, so basically they take us
Speaker 3: to the people they want us to speak to. It's
Speaker 3: very controlled, but we've come here anyway because these guys
Speaker 3: no longer see themselves. I couldn't go freely myself anywhere.
Speaker 3: It was essentially a North Korea style propaganda campaign.
Speaker 4: In real time.
Speaker 3: They put on a show to make it seem as
Speaker 3: if everything was running great and that the only issue
Speaker 3: was the Ukrainians attacking them.
Speaker 4: But every staged event they took me to fell apart.
Speaker 3: Something would go wrong, and the minders would just hope
Speaker 3: that I didn't notice.
Speaker 7: Okay, can we go in.
Speaker 3: For example, when they took me to an old lady's
Speaker 3: house that had been bombed, they prompted her to tell
Speaker 3: me how much she loved the then separatist leader of
Speaker 3: the DNA, Zakachenko. Only problem was when they presented her
Speaker 3: with a newspaper with a full page image of Zakachenko.
Speaker 3: She didn't know who he was.
Speaker 1: Then.
Speaker 3: This sweet Bubushka also accidentally let on that the house
Speaker 3: they were showing us around that wasn't actually hers. She
Speaker 3: lived in a different house in the same compound. She
Speaker 3: was being used for propaganda and forced to lie for
Speaker 3: the camera. In the evenings, the one hotel I was
Speaker 3: allowed to stay at became a human trafficking hub. Big
Speaker 3: men with flattheads entered the restaurant bar area with a
Speaker 3: dozen or so young women. They would offer these women
Speaker 3: up like cattle to anyone willing to pay.
Speaker 4: Surprise, surprise, the.
Speaker 3: Local comrades had no qualms about this at all. If
Speaker 3: that wasn't bad enough, my DNR minders also faked a
Speaker 3: gun battle at a front line position whilst there They
Speaker 3: literally told me the shooting will begin soon.
Speaker 1: Movement for soldiers.
Speaker 3: And that is that incoming, And sure enough bullets flew
Speaker 3: past our heads as we ducked into a trench. I
Speaker 3: covered many wars by this point, and I knew that's
Speaker 3: just not how it works. Front Lines are, of course,
Speaker 3: by nature, very unpredictable. At this scene, the DNA commanders
Speaker 3: explained how the Ukrainians were constantly violating the ceasefire. Only
Speaker 3: the gunfire was coming from an opposite burm across the way,
Speaker 3: which I knew was the DNR position. I even checked
Speaker 3: it when I got back, angulated it on the maps,
Speaker 3: got analysts to check it out. It was DNR position.
Speaker 3: No Ukrainians there. The whole thing was staged to influence
Speaker 3: my reporting. Luckily I twigged early on, and we've been
Speaker 3: filming every fuck up on the slide. Long story short,
Speaker 3: I made a documentary showing that the DNR is an
Speaker 3: authoritarian shitthle ran by Russian commanders and local organized criminals. Now,
Speaker 3: even though Russia was then pretending they were actually nothing
Speaker 3: to do with the DNR, I was subsequently not granted
Speaker 3: permission to enter Kiliningrad or any other Russian territory at
Speaker 3: that time. All of this is relevant to understanding the
Speaker 3: psyche of the Kremlin. In practical terms, when it comes
Speaker 3: to on the ground manipulation, they have no qualms. I mean,
Speaker 3: just quickly take the DNR for example. Again, all of
Speaker 3: the leaders who run place when I was there in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen have since died in targeted assassinations right there
Speaker 3: in the DNA. The Russians of course blame Ukraine, but
Speaker 3: trust me, there is a stack of evidence which suggests
Speaker 3: it was the Kremlin who took out their own useful
Speaker 3: idiots when they were no longer needed.
Speaker 4: So with all this in mind, I'm.
Speaker 3: Sat here thinking to myself, is it possible that this
Speaker 3: kind of behavior is also happening in Kaliningrad. Honestly I
Speaker 3: don't know, but I do want to speak to someone
Speaker 3: who's actually been there.
Speaker 4: As I said, I didn't make it there.
Speaker 3: So I reached out to journalist Sam Farley, who went
Speaker 3: to Kaliningrad in twenty eighteen. I guess, firstly, just if
Speaker 3: you can't explain why you went to Cliningrad.
Speaker 2: The World Cup that Russia held in twenty eighteen, England
Speaker 2: played there against Belgium. This is weird atmosphere that, like,
Speaker 2: the place is quite weird itself.
Speaker 1: We went drove into the.
Speaker 2: Country and drove out again from Poland, and that border
Speaker 2: took hours to get over. And I think whenever I
Speaker 2: think about it now and think how difficult it must be. Now,
Speaker 2: every place I've ever been to has like some positives.
Speaker 1: It's not the It's not the nicest place.
Speaker 3: I understand, Like people keep saying, it's this kind of
Speaker 3: brutallest place. Is it as bad as it sounds? Like
Speaker 3: gray concrete and all that.
Speaker 2: Gray concrete is just the perfect scrypted words for it.
Speaker 2: The only nice splash of color I can remember was
Speaker 2: like there there was like a McDonald's that was really
Speaker 2: lit up well, and it's just red and yellow, and like,
Speaker 2: genuinely that's the only color in the whole place, Like
Speaker 2: it's it's incredibly depressing. It almost felt the other kind
Speaker 2: of moment I kind of remember really well in terms
Speaker 2: of colors. We were staying at the top of a
Speaker 2: sort of tower block and at the bottom was a
Speaker 2: shisha bar and kind of walking back to the place,
Speaker 2: walking to and from the place every day.
Speaker 1: The place was gray. It was the weather wasn't particularly
Speaker 1: good either, which didn't help.
Speaker 2: The sky was gray, the buildings are gray, and there
Speaker 2: was just this sort of like luminous green kind of
Speaker 2: light emanating from the shisha bar, and that's all you
Speaker 2: really saw was was lights from shop fronts.
Speaker 1: It's very depressing, and it's not in a.
Speaker 2: It's not kind of Russian or Soviet in like a
Speaker 2: kind of fun interesting way like Transnistria.
Speaker 1: It's so weird but.
Speaker 2: Really fun kind of kitchen like it's that's really interesting place.
Speaker 1: Whereas this just felt depressing.
Speaker 3: Okay, now it's time for a quick outbreak, all right.
Speaker 3: Not for that, now back to the short.
Speaker 2: It felt like every bad part of Russia combined, and
Speaker 2: it lacked the vibrancy of any of the other Russian
Speaker 2: cities I've visited at that tournament or I've been too
Speaker 2: for that, and.
Speaker 1: Even the people just they just well kind of very.
Speaker 2: Wire not particularly friendly, like keeping themselves themselves.
Speaker 3: Did you feel at all that there was this kind
Speaker 3: of Russian military presence?
Speaker 2: To be honest, I didn't feel that on the street
Speaker 2: at all. Anytime I would say I did think like shit,
Speaker 2: this is this is a bit unusually. It's kind of
Speaker 2: when we did go through that border. Crossing it was
Speaker 2: stacked with soldiers and all sorts of sort of military
Speaker 2: now or security or whatever, and I did kind of
Speaker 2: think this is obviously. I know they had invaded playing
Speaker 2: like four years prior to that.
Speaker 1: He didn't feel like Europe was on like a war
Speaker 1: setting at that point. Going through that border, I was
Speaker 1: genuinely quite surprised.
Speaker 2: Every other kind of route I'd gone into Russia, I'd
Speaker 2: done it through air and then it just felt like
Speaker 2: every every airport was the same as any other airport
Speaker 2: in the world. Yeah, crossing did feel very, very kind
Speaker 2: of defined, and a lot are if I'm honest.
Speaker 3: So that's the backdrop for where this horrific death took place,
Speaker 3: decapitated amongst the concrete and brutalism. Before his untimely death,
Speaker 3: Alexi Sanitsin was the CEO of k Potash, the company
Speaker 3: that dealt with different types of natural minerals in the region.
Speaker 3: It's a bit confusing what Sannitzin was in charge of where,
Speaker 3: so let's speak to surgery to clarify. He's most definitely
Speaker 3: smart than I am. One thing that is confusing me, right,
Speaker 3: So some media, and this is both Russian media or
Speaker 3: at least like Russian focused. One says that he was
Speaker 3: the CEO of a salt mine, and another says he
Speaker 3: was the CEO of a fertilizer company. Have you worked
Speaker 3: out what's what there is that like the same company
Speaker 3: with different parts and people are getting the wrong end
Speaker 3: of the stick. I can't work it out.
Speaker 5: It's like a company and then has a subsidiary. From
Speaker 5: my understanding, he's kind of in charge of both, and
Speaker 5: the both things are kind of true because so potash
Speaker 5: is what he's like the project that's supposed to mine potash,
Speaker 5: which is essentially salt. I mean it's more complex than that,
Speaker 5: but basically just minerals on the ground and they're used
Speaker 5: for fertilizer. So essentially potash is extremely vital to agriculture.
Speaker 5: Back in I think it was twenty twenty three to
Speaker 5: twenty four, the war in Ukraine kind of affected a
Speaker 5: lot of export of potash and attackted a lot of countries.
Speaker 5: I believe it was in Africa and some other southern countries.
Speaker 5: They were near like famine just because they couldn't get
Speaker 5: this fertilizer and the basically messed up all the crop.
Speaker 5: So it's a big deal. It's it's a big industry
Speaker 5: and Russia was actually, i believe the biggest or the
Speaker 5: second biggest exporter in the world before the war started,
Speaker 5: and they had a major kind of collapse because you know,
Speaker 5: they a lot of their customers were the West, and
Speaker 5: they all got sent they all started sentioning Russia, So
Speaker 5: that industry had took a big hit.
Speaker 3: So let's work out what could have got Sinitsin into
Speaker 3: hot water. The first lea there is what Sergey just mentioned.
Speaker 3: Russia's potash industry nose dive in after it was hit
Speaker 3: with war related sanctions. That is obviously going to affect
Speaker 3: a man who's the CEO of the biggest potash company
Speaker 3: in Kaliningrad. But even by Krimlin standards, they could hardly
Speaker 3: blame sinits In for this. They're the ones that decided
Speaker 3: to invade Ukraine. Either way, the issue resolved itself. After
Speaker 3: the initial dip, the potash trade stabilized. Actually in some
Speaker 3: regions it became even more profitable due to scarcity. Russia
Speaker 3: worked around the sanctions and for them everything was fine.
Speaker 3: For some reason, though the profits of k potash did
Speaker 3: not reflect this. Sinitsin's company was losing money hand over fist.
Speaker 4: K Potash, who.
Speaker 3: Sinitsen worked for, was the head of with both companies
Speaker 3: since October twenty twenty two. He was not exactly helping
Speaker 3: the company's financial situation, right, Like from the nodes we
Speaker 3: have here, like he was in a very dire financial situation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so what kind of happened is it sounds like
Speaker 5: there's basically a plan to.
Speaker 1: Create a factory.
Speaker 5: From my understanding, it's not fully operational yet and he's
Speaker 5: basically going around from the city, so from Kalingrad to
Speaker 5: the locals and kind of trying to make this thing work.
Speaker 3: Now, this is interesting. Sanitsen was getting pushed back locally.
Speaker 3: He needed to rapidly expand the operations of K Potash,
Speaker 3: but the people did not want the new factories on
Speaker 3: their land. K Potash went on a pr offensive to
Speaker 3: try and win over the residents, to let everyone know
Speaker 3: how many new jobs that would provide, how lucrative it
Speaker 3: would be for the town, and even paid for a
Speaker 3: big mural to be painted. They paid homage to a
Speaker 3: Soviet era fighter pilot. None of it worked. The people
Speaker 3: weren't having it. They could not be swayed this easy.
Speaker 3: This wasn't just some town hall meeting either. Locals actually
Speaker 3: took to the streets to protest k potash.
Speaker 4: They were very angry.
Speaker 5: There was an incident where the residents basically, the residents
Speaker 5: don't want any like construction, mining, et cetera kind of
Speaker 5: going on around them. It can be pretty destructive you
Speaker 5: have to like dig up, you know, like one of
Speaker 5: those giant like mining holes. It would be like a
Speaker 5: pretty large effect.
Speaker 1: In the community.
Speaker 5: And they actually stood up against it. They kind of
Speaker 5: the local said we don't want this year putin ended
Speaker 5: up stepping in. Well, you know, the government stepped in.
Speaker 5: They always kind of referred that like this issue got
Speaker 5: risen to putin and he stepped in, and they basically
Speaker 5: did like assessment. The residents wanted like canceled. They wanted
Speaker 5: the project completely canceled. But what ended up happening is
Speaker 5: they basically moved it a few I think it was
Speaker 5: just like a few kilometers down from the initial location.
Speaker 5: So they were like, Okay, this is still happening, but
Speaker 5: I guess we'll just move it over a bit.
Speaker 4: I believe it was the.
Speaker 5: Mine itself and the processing plant. So it was supposed
Speaker 5: to be kind of like the entire operation in one
Speaker 5: place they got slightly moved down, which you know was
Speaker 5: kind of like a victory for those residents, but it
Speaker 5: also didn't really address like it's still happening just a
Speaker 5: little further off.
Speaker 3: So, Surge, you just mentioned, it's at this stage that
Speaker 3: the Russian government on the mainland became made away of
Speaker 3: the issue so much so that they got involved directly.
Speaker 3: Could this potentially be the turning point that led to
Speaker 3: Sinitsyn's death. We don't know, but there was a lot
Speaker 3: more scandal to come. Remember that, mind, we were just
Speaker 3: talking about. Well, it's still not being finished. Even with
Speaker 3: the new construction location. It's actually still in the design stage.
Speaker 3: K Potash didn't manage to fully sway the locals even
Speaker 3: after the Kremlin got involved.
Speaker 4: They're still angry.
Speaker 3: The estimated date for the project's completion is now over
Speaker 3: a decade delayed from when it was originally meant to
Speaker 3: be finished. It won't be done, they say until maybe
Speaker 3: twenty thirty two.
Speaker 4: And how long it.
Speaker 3: Will take them to recoup the losses is anyone's guess.
Speaker 4: God knows.
Speaker 3: Kay Potash needs the money right now. The company's bottom
Speaker 3: line is in the toilet they're working at a negative
Speaker 3: of three point four billion rubles that's around forty two
Speaker 3: million dollars. Their assets are a loss of fifteen billion
Speaker 3: rubles one hundred and eighty five million dollars. K Potash,
Speaker 3: which Sinitsen was running until his untimely death, has more
Speaker 3: debt than it has assets, and it is not making money.
Speaker 3: If that wasn't bad enough, k Potash has investors at
Speaker 3: the door.
Speaker 4: They want their money.
Speaker 7: There are at.
Speaker 4: Least thirty three legal cases.
Speaker 3: Against the company because of course they can't afford to pay.
Speaker 3: If Sad the Oligarch has taught us anything is that
Speaker 3: you probably don't want to owe money to anything involved
Speaker 3: with Russian state agricultural projects. Trust me on this. Along
Speaker 3: with all this, there will been several other strange issues
Speaker 3: attached to k Potash. For example, a water supply company
Speaker 3: tried to extort them out of around two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty thousand dollars, claiming the company it was using more
Speaker 3: water than what they did. Seems like everybody in that
Speaker 3: region is on the take. Then there's the case of
Speaker 3: a journalist K Potash actually got.
Speaker 4: Sent to prison.
Speaker 3: He was writing negative articles about them because well, they
Speaker 3: were doing a lot of negative stuff. In a strange
Speaker 3: turn of events, k Potash claims the reporter blackmailed the company,
Speaker 3: saying he'd stop the articles if they gave him one
Speaker 3: million rubles around twelve grand. This journalist was sent to
Speaker 3: prison for three years over this and his publication was
Speaker 3: shut down. To this day, he says he's innocent and
Speaker 3: was quote framed for his crime.
Speaker 4: Very dodgy situation.
Speaker 3: Now, none of this points in any one direction other
Speaker 3: than total chaos. It seems as if Ka Potash is
Speaker 3: an absolute disaster from the ground up.
Speaker 4: They even got.
Speaker 3: Fined in twenty twenty one for filing documents to the
Speaker 3: wrong government body. Alex Knitzin did not have his ship
Speaker 3: in order whatsoever. With a company like Kay Potash in
Speaker 3: a place like Kleningrads, I think it's safe to say
Speaker 3: that it's no stretch to imagine there might have been
Speaker 3: unsavory characters involved who are owed.
Speaker 4: Money, a lot of money. Could this be wise?
Speaker 3: And Knitsin had his head cut off and was dumped
Speaker 3: under a bridge, after all, he was the CEO. Not
Speaker 3: saying he should ever come to harm, but if there's
Speaker 3: anyone to blame for the catastrophic financial losses.
Speaker 7: It's obviously him.
Speaker 3: Still, the police of the region are leaning publicly into
Speaker 3: the claims of a suicide, but at the same time
Speaker 3: they have opened up a potential murder case. Whilst confusing,
Speaker 3: at least they are doing their jobs properly, or at
Speaker 3: least it looks like that. It's all very closed off still.
Speaker 3: But what we have found out though, is that they've
Speaker 3: used this investigation to confiscate documents from the offices.
Speaker 7: Of k Potash.
Speaker 3: We also know that examinations have been ordered and colleagues
Speaker 3: and relatives of Sinitsin are being interviewed. Naturally, the police
Speaker 3: no more than they're letting on. In another report talking
Speaker 3: about Sinitsin, we found the following statement quote The enterprise
Speaker 3: itself is quite closed, non public in nature, and its
Speaker 3: general director was not present in any way in the
Speaker 3: Killiningrad public space. He did not give any interviews. Most
Speaker 3: heads of enterprises of this level are visible. I can't
Speaker 3: say the same about Senitsin end quote. As I said
Speaker 3: at the start, he was a very private man. Whilst
Speaker 3: this case is puzzling, we still don't know one quite
Speaker 3: crucial detail. Where was Sinitsin's head found In all of
Speaker 3: the reports from the police and the media. They just
Speaker 3: state that the head was found in another place. Was
Speaker 3: that next to the body in the river or twenty
Speaker 3: meters down the road?
Speaker 4: We just don't know.
Speaker 3: I think that detail would tell us a lot. There
Speaker 3: are also still no real images of the crime scene,
Speaker 3: no further reports from the press, and no quotes from eyewitnesses.
Speaker 3: This to me shocking from such a brutal and unusual death.
Speaker 3: Because opaik as all of this is, I've come to
Speaker 3: think that whatever happened to Alexi Sinitsin is one of
Speaker 3: two scenarios. There was a brutally violent murder. The victim's
Speaker 3: head was cut from the body and then dumped in
Speaker 3: a public place to send a message, likely connected to
Speaker 3: some kind of organized crime, the state, or both. Or
Speaker 3: it was the most unlikely suicide in Kliningrad's history.
Speaker 7: You decide.
Speaker 3: You've been listening to sad Oliga season two. Produced by
Speaker 3: H eleven Studios for Cool Zone Media. Writing, editing, producing,
Speaker 3: concept and recording by myself Jake Hanrahan, Research and reporting
Speaker 3: by Sergei Slipchenko, me and victim Mihail. Executive producing by
Speaker 3: Sophie Lichtman, Music by Sam Black, artwork by George Jutful
Speaker 3: sound mixed by splicing Block. See my other projects at
Speaker 3: Hanrahan dot tv. Get me on social media at jake
Speaker 3: Underscore Hanrahan, that's h A N R A H A M.
Speaker 3: Can't Castolic CATHOLICSIC Catholic