Speaker 1: Media.
Speaker 2: Something strange is going on. Another member of the Russian
Speaker 2: elite has been found dead.
Speaker 3: Reports suggests that he fell out of a window, poisoned
Speaker 3: with mushrooms.
Speaker 2: Died of heart failure, died of carbon monoxide poisoning. How
Speaker 2: comesy are they?
Speaker 1: Dozens of Russian oligachs, politically motivated millionaires have died in
Speaker 1: the space for three years, most of them in suspicious circumstances.
Speaker 1: Many have hidden links to the Kremlin. This is sad
Speaker 1: Oligach Season two, an ongoing investigation into these recently dead
Speaker 1: Russian power brokers. Sad Oligach is created by me jake
Speaker 1: Hanrahan and my Ukrainian colleague Sergei Slipchenkov. This is a
Speaker 1: H eleven studio and Coolso Media production. December seventeenth, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three. Fifty year old senior accountant Evgeny Postragan is
Speaker 1: in the garage of his private home in the closed
Speaker 1: city of jelen Nogorsk, hidden away in central Siberia. This
Speaker 1: is a place unlike any other, its secret clandestine. Postragan
Speaker 1: works for a state satellite development company. Postragan is tying
Speaker 1: a knot.
Speaker 2: In a thick rope.
Speaker 1: He pulls the ends toward test the slack. He's making
Speaker 1: a noose. Even in the garage. His breath catches in
Speaker 1: the cold. Small wisps of white eke from his lips
Speaker 1: as he fixes the rope. At this time of year,
Speaker 1: it's deadly freezing outside. Jelein Agause hits lows of around
Speaker 1: a minus twenty in the winter. A few feet beyond
Speaker 1: the garage walls, everything is snow and ice. This is
Speaker 1: the Siberia Agent after all. Postragan has finished his noose.
Speaker 1: He pulls off a stool, stands on it, and ties
Speaker 1: it to the rafters. Above a tear drop loop of
Speaker 1: ropes weayhs inches from his face, the vast unknown expanse
Speaker 1: of the afterlife just moments away. Posture Gan pulls the
Speaker 1: noose over his head and kicks away the stool. He drops,
Speaker 1: his body weight slowly chokes him. The rope tightens stiff
Speaker 1: around his neck, his legs dangling and kicking in the air.
Speaker 1: Everything goes dark. Eventually he stops struggling ef Guinea, Postragan
Speaker 1: chokes to death by his own hand. Sadly, Postragan's wife
Speaker 1: found him hanging from the rafters, his feet dangling his
Speaker 1: heart still, his life gone. This is the official story
Speaker 1: from the Russian State of how Evgeny Postragan died. Of course,
Speaker 1: the Russian State is most definitely not a reliable source.
Speaker 1: Before we get into what kind of a man Evgeny
Speaker 1: Postragan was, let's have a look at the kind of
Speaker 1: place Zeleno Gorsk is. In short, it's a clandestine city
Speaker 1: in Russia built up to produce nuclear weapons for the government.
Speaker 1: Serious location with a shadowy mo. I speak to journalist
Speaker 1: Matthew Gault. He runs the publication Angry Planet and is
Speaker 1: extremely knowledgeable on all things nuclear. So I think maybe
Speaker 1: the first thing would be maybe to kind of explain
Speaker 1: why these closed ease happened, why would they started up,
Speaker 1: and what was their purpose.
Speaker 3: They predate nuclear weapons because there were like some there
Speaker 3: were some planned cities that they were making kind of
Speaker 3: east of the Ural mountains before nukes because they needed
Speaker 3: like an industrial base kind of overnight to produce weapons.
Speaker 3: But then like it really gets going in nineteen fifty
Speaker 3: when the Soviets go real big on nukes and they
Speaker 3: kind of adopt this model that they'd seen the Americans use.
Speaker 3: The Americans when they were doing the Manhattan Project set
Speaker 3: up these secret cities Oakridge, Los Alamos, where they brought
Speaker 3: in all of the scientists and the scientists' families and
Speaker 3: all of the labors that they needed and kind of
Speaker 3: built these closed cities almost overnight. And the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: does the same thing at like a massive scale. And
Speaker 3: they need them because, like, nuclear weapons are very secretive
Speaker 3: and you don't want people to know where your stuff is,
Speaker 3: and that's why they get started, and like why there's
Speaker 3: so many of them, like in the Siberian area in
Speaker 3: like in eastern Russia in general.
Speaker 1: This place was from what I understand, primarily made for
Speaker 1: the production of nuclear weapons. Right, there's plutonium. How does
Speaker 1: that all work? Is that something they would mine? Is
Speaker 1: that something they would produce? It's going over my head
Speaker 1: a little bit, I'll be honest.
Speaker 3: So it's pretty fascinating the project that happens in this
Speaker 3: city specifically. Have you seen the Have you seen like
Speaker 3: the city's flag or it's cut of arms.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's one of the coolest flags of the bear right
Speaker 1: in the atom. Believe it or not, this clandestine closed
Speaker 1: city actually has one of the coolest, most eye catching
Speaker 1: flags I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: The background is bright red.
Speaker 1: On top of that, there's a yellow bear inside an
Speaker 1: atom symbol at the center. The bear, with an angry face,
Speaker 1: is trying to break apart the atomic core. It's cracking
Speaker 1: in two, literally split in the atom. Now this isn't
Speaker 1: some relic from the Soviet era either. Back in those days,
Speaker 1: jelener Gorsk was actually called Krasnoyask twenty six. Its flag
Speaker 1: back then was a blue and orange checkered background with
Speaker 1: a red and yellow lion's crest in the center. The
Speaker 1: lion is holding a shovel and of course a sickle.
Speaker 1: The current flag, though for Jelen a goorsk with the
Speaker 1: bear and the atom symbol, was approved and put into
Speaker 1: use in twenty twelve. The closed city's description of it,
Speaker 1: which varies quite differently from mine, shows just.
Speaker 2: How proud they are of it all. Quote.
Speaker 1: In a scarlet field, there is a silver sign of
Speaker 1: an atom with three intertwined orbits, and inside the orbits
Speaker 1: there is a golden bear threaded through them with silver
Speaker 1: fangs and claws, rising straight and turning to the right,
Speaker 1: tearing the silver core on the sign of the atom
Speaker 1: with its front paws and resting its hind paws on
Speaker 1: two of the three orbits end the quote Jellen and
Speaker 1: Gorsk might be private and closed off, but Russia is
Speaker 1: most definitely proud of its current utility and history. To
Speaker 1: be fair, the way they built the place is a
Speaker 1: serious feat of engineering.
Speaker 3: So the city, you think it got up to about
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand people like in its heyday. And what
Speaker 3: they do is they bring in a bunch of goolag labor.
Speaker 3: They hollow out a nearby mountain and they build three
Speaker 3: nuclear reactors in there. And the nuclear reactors are dual use,
Speaker 3: so they produce they like heat and cool the city.
Speaker 3: They do like they power the whole city, but they
Speaker 3: also produce plutonium that is used in the manufacture of
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons. I think like at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: something like a third of all of the plutonium that
Speaker 3: was used in the Soviet nuclear weapons is produced in
Speaker 3: this mountain.
Speaker 2: It's hard to explain.
Speaker 1: It's it's like almost a warehouse setting, but it's actually
Speaker 1: hollowed out in the mountain.
Speaker 2: Is that what you mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's almost like they it's almost like some supervillain stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it sounds very James Bond, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, they have this huge mountain, they hollow it out,
Speaker 3: they build these nuclear reactors under there, and they ferry.
Speaker 3: The mountain is like a I think it's like twenty
Speaker 3: thirty kilometers away from the city itself, and people live
Speaker 3: in the city and take shuttles back and forth, and
Speaker 3: they're the whole city is kind of based around this,
Speaker 3: like producing plutonium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program. And
Speaker 3: it's really interesting because at a time when it's not
Speaker 3: great to live in Soviet society, this is the place
Speaker 3: to be.
Speaker 1: The thing with the society of the USSA is that
Speaker 1: it was, of course communist ostensibly anyway of communist friends
Speaker 1: who tell me real.
Speaker 2: Communism has never been.
Speaker 1: Tried, and I tell them they've never tried real life.
Speaker 1: But anyway, in the Soviet Union, private ownership was highly restricted.
Speaker 1: What you got would often depend on class status, which
Speaker 1: was often linked to someone's employment. Really not much different
Speaker 1: from the systems we have now. Similarly, the elite of
Speaker 1: the USSR group fat and had whatever they wanted, but
Speaker 1: the workers were not so lucky. Jelly n Gorsk, though,
Speaker 1: was a rare place in Siberia that gave employees a
Speaker 1: lot more access to otherwise restricted goods.
Speaker 2: It was not just a job.
Speaker 3: For like forty years. These are probably some of the
Speaker 3: best treated citizens in the Soviet Union. They've got the
Speaker 3: best foods, they've got the best clothing, they've got the
Speaker 3: best you know, the best housing. It is good. Do
Speaker 3: they have chocolate, which like other places don't have. Some
Speaker 3: of the stories are about how much chocolate they got
Speaker 3: to eat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I read it was one of the few places
Speaker 1: where you could have a car as well. Okay, now
Speaker 1: it's time for a quick outbreak, all.
Speaker 2: Right, not for that. Now back to the shore.
Speaker 3: Now. The downside is that it's sealed. There are there
Speaker 3: are guards at the entrances and exits of the entire city,
Speaker 3: and it's monitored by Soviets secret police. Like the whole
Speaker 3: place is watched over. So like it's it's a gilded cage,
Speaker 3: but it's still a cage.
Speaker 1: Say you were living there, obviously, you work there, you
Speaker 1: live there. It's how it works. It's kind of feudal
Speaker 1: in a way. But if you're living there, can you
Speaker 1: just freely go in and out? Like it's not just
Speaker 1: to stop people getting in, from what I understand, it
Speaker 1: also kind of stops people getting out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, No, they don't want you to leave because
Speaker 3: there's like if you work in the plutonium and if
Speaker 3: you work in the plutonium factories, like you have secret
Speaker 3: knowledge of how the Soviet unit is producing the fuel
Speaker 3: that makes its nukes. And this is a It's also
Speaker 3: interesting because like Los Alamos are like Oak Ridge, the
Speaker 3: culture is very mixed, meaning that you've got people that
Speaker 3: are laborers and like working class people, but then you
Speaker 3: also have nuclear scientists, like some of the smartest people
Speaker 3: that are in the country live in this live and
Speaker 3: work in the city and are doing like fringe science
Speaker 3: and so and they you don't want those people leaving either.
Speaker 3: So that's why you build it like in Siberia, which
Speaker 3: is an easier place to like keep people in and yeah,
Speaker 3: you aren't getting in or out of there.
Speaker 2: That is crazy.
Speaker 1: So the proximity to the plutonium production, how how does
Speaker 1: one produce plutonium?
Speaker 3: The would do is they would bring in the minerals
Speaker 3: from outside and they would put them in these reactors,
Speaker 3: and these reactors would they would both power the city
Speaker 3: and then they would also spit out plutonium plutonium. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna screw up the designation. It's like two thirty six,
Speaker 3: I think, which is what they would use in their
Speaker 3: weapons program. And the way they would this is kind
Speaker 3: of wild. They would cool the reactors with the nearby river,
Speaker 3: which also flows downstream and has a bunch of other
Speaker 3: cities that are feeding off of it. Especially this time,
Speaker 3: nuclear reactors are not they're pumping the waste into the ground,
Speaker 3: but also like it's backsplashing into that river that they're
Speaker 3: using to cool everything, and if kind of irradiating all
Speaker 3: of the citizens and everybody that lives downstream from them,
Speaker 3: so like incidents of breast cancer and birth defects in
Speaker 3: that city and then like everybody that lives downstream from
Speaker 3: the city are pretty high. They keep producing plutonium there
Speaker 3: for a while. So at the end of like when
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union collapses, they shut down two of the reactors,
Speaker 3: and the way the reactors work, they can't keep going
Speaker 3: and not make It's like always going to be outputting
Speaker 3: plutonium that you can only kind of use in weapons,
Speaker 3: and so it becomes this weird problem. Like in the
Speaker 3: early nineties, when they shut the reactors down, Russia is
Speaker 3: like dismantling nuclear weapons. They're left with this one reactor
Speaker 3: that is like spitting out plutoni like weapons grade plutonium
Speaker 3: constantly and like piling up, and they don't know what
Speaker 3: to do with but they can't turn it off because
Speaker 3: then the city, like the city doesn't have power.
Speaker 1: Basically, eventually, in twenty ten, with international help, Russia managed
Speaker 1: to shut down all the old reactors. In that time,
Speaker 1: though serious pollution had damaged the area, still business had
Speaker 1: to keep on moving weapons to build profit to make
Speaker 1: new state companies of the New Russia took over when
Speaker 1: the Postagon ended up working for We'll hear more about
Speaker 1: that in a bit, but for now, just understand that
Speaker 1: we live in a time where nukes are very much
Speaker 1: back on the table. This could be relevant. This place
Speaker 1: is jelen Agusk. It's potentially a lot more significant, especially
Speaker 1: considering the war in Ukraine, which a lot of this
Speaker 1: points to that. You know, they were talking about tactical
Speaker 1: nukes and now you've got Trump talking about nukes. If
Speaker 1: there's ever a time when the uptick of production or
Speaker 1: watchful eyes on the region of this closed platonium place
Speaker 1: in jelen a Gausk, I feel like it will be now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. But unfortunately it's really wild. What's
Speaker 3: happened like in the past ten years. It's like after
Speaker 3: the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had this nice
Speaker 3: twenty year period where we have some really great treaties.
Speaker 3: People were kind of drawing down their nukes. America was
Speaker 3: in the Soviet Union a whole lot helped with a
Speaker 3: lot of the cleanup and a lot of the study
Speaker 3: and a lot of the shutting down of the reactors
Speaker 3: in that mountain. Now, post Trump won, post COVID, like
Speaker 3: all the old treaties are on hold. Russia's not coming
Speaker 3: into American inspecting anything. America is not going over to
Speaker 3: Russian inspecting anything. If you were doing something in that
Speaker 3: mountain you didn't want anyone in the international community to see,
Speaker 3: now would be a great time to do it, because
Speaker 3: no one's watching anyone in the way that they used
Speaker 3: to be watching anyone.
Speaker 1: It turns out that there is plenty going on in
Speaker 1: Jelling of Gauze that shouldn't be. We've dug deep and
Speaker 1: eventually we found some payda. First, though, let's take a
Speaker 1: closer look at Postragan. December seventeenth, back on the night
Speaker 1: of his death, Evgenny Postragan headed out of the house
Speaker 1: before he hanged himself, where too no one seems to know,
Speaker 1: came back and did the d Perhaps he went out
Speaker 1: for a walk just to clear his head and decided
Speaker 1: that he was definitely going to take his own life
Speaker 1: when he got back.
Speaker 2: It's more than likely.
Speaker 1: Another possibility he went out to meet an undisclosed person
Speaker 1: who gave him some very bad news, so bad that
Speaker 1: Postragan could see only one way out. The cloak and
Speaker 1: dagger nature of a closed nuclear city in the heart
Speaker 1: of Siberia means there's very little to go on. But
Speaker 1: what we have found out is that Postragan was largely
Speaker 1: liked by his peers and the local community. One person
Speaker 1: anonymously describes him as a quote kind and decent man.
Speaker 1: Locals say they don't feel he would have committed suicide.
Speaker 1: It would have been his fifty first birthday, four days.
Speaker 2: After his death.
Speaker 1: Apparently he didn't seem depressed or preoccupied. No, not to them,
Speaker 1: who knows what's going on in someone's head. According to
Speaker 1: state media, Postragand had actually been posting depressive messages on
Speaker 1: his VK page. He allegedly posted up pessimistic Japanese poems
Speaker 1: hayakus of melancholy. Perhaps the works of the famous Japanese
Speaker 1: poet Matsuo bashoal sick on a journey my dreams, wonder
Speaker 1: the withered fields over still fields of snow, or winter
Speaker 1: solitude in a world of one color, the sound of wind,
Speaker 1: or weather beaten skeleton. That is all the remains of
Speaker 1: a once gallant samurai who knows. We didn't get a
Speaker 1: chance to see which depressive Japanese poems Postragan posted. His
Speaker 1: VK page was disabled shortly after his death. In fact,
Speaker 1: all of Postragan's social media was wiped as soon as
Speaker 1: he died. It was all gone disabled with haste. What
Speaker 1: we do know, however, is that he was last online
Speaker 1: on VK at six thirty three pm on December sixteenth,
Speaker 1: one day before he died. It's also this day that
Speaker 1: he went out on his own again, with nobody knowing.
Speaker 2: Where he went.
Speaker 1: Could just be a walk to clear his head, or
Speaker 1: it could be something else. If Postragan's suicide was actually
Speaker 1: just a suicide, why did he do it? Why take
Speaker 1: his own life? Well, according to state controlled Russian media,
Speaker 1: it was maybe because of quote a lot of funds
Speaker 1: from the company he worked for, reshet Nev Information Satellite
Speaker 1: systems really rolls off the tongue. This company is a
Speaker 1: subsidiary of the Russian space agency ros Cosmos. We know
Speaker 1: from two episodes back that you do not mess with
Speaker 1: ross Cosmos. As we heard earlier from Matthew Gault Zellner,
Speaker 1: Gorsk is a closed area with multiple defense manufacturing facilities.
Speaker 1: They produce weapons grade plutonium. The line of work Postragan
Speaker 1: was involved in, though, was to do with the satellite systems.
Speaker 1: Russia's satellite network is supposed to arrival the GPS system
Speaker 1: we have in the West. It's also used by Russian
Speaker 1: military to assist with Putin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Okay,
Speaker 1: now it's time for a quick outbreak. All right, enough
Speaker 1: of that, Now back.
Speaker 2: To the shot.
Speaker 1: As you've probably noticed through series one and two of
Speaker 1: sad Oligarch, feels as if all roads lead to Ukraine.
Speaker 1: It's through the prism of Putin's disastrous invasion in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two that oligarchs and the power brokers in their
Speaker 1: orbit began dropping like flights. However, Postragan was not an oligach,
Speaker 1: but he was most definitely in the sad Oligarch sphere
Speaker 1: of influence.
Speaker 2: And disaster.
Speaker 1: His role as a senior accountant at reshat Nev possibly
Speaker 1: put him in the crosshairs when the company's coffers began
Speaker 1: to run dry.
Speaker 3: Where is the money going to come from?
Speaker 1: The lost fun the Russian media spoke about in the
Speaker 1: report on Postragans suicide begins at about eighty billion rubles,
Speaker 1: that's almost a billion US dollars in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: This was the amount of money rashat Nev lost. They
Speaker 1: lost almost one billion dollars. That's a hell of a problem.
Speaker 1: We've been chipping away at this case, and whilst on
Speaker 1: the surface it might seem like a cut and dryer suicide,
Speaker 1: there is obviously a lot more going on, specifically with
Speaker 1: postra Gans place of employment.
Speaker 2: Let's talk to sergery.
Speaker 1: It's funny, I think we see this connection with basically
Speaker 1: almost every single suspected or suspect death in this series,
Speaker 1: especially where it all seems to tie back to Ukraine,
Speaker 1: especially with this company the same as Ross Cosmos, like rockets,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It's all the same technology, and
Speaker 1: this again it's a it's a company that's directly tied
Speaker 1: to the state, like the Kremlin owns this company.
Speaker 2: Essentially, right, yeah.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. So again, ros Cosmos, the state like
Speaker 4: space agency, essentially owned this company one hundred percent. Ros
Speaker 4: Costmos is the parent company and they basically own it,
Speaker 4: they oversee it ros Cosmos, But more so the government
Speaker 4: kind of decides the leadership and stuff like that. Right,
Speaker 4: So if there's a change in the CEO or whoever,
Speaker 4: like the director general, it's going to come from Moscow,
Speaker 4: even though this this thing is like, you know, thousands
Speaker 4: kilometers away from Moscow in Siberia. Yeah, Like ros Cosmos
Speaker 4: is the main owner of this company.
Speaker 1: And as is with pretty much every company that we've
Speaker 1: come across, there's there's a lot.
Speaker 2: Of corruption at this place. Right.
Speaker 1: So again it seems to be this pattern at the
Speaker 1: minute of very little information out there. But then and
Speaker 1: when we dig in and have a look, there's embezzlement
Speaker 1: seems to be at the center of all these cases.
Speaker 1: Post Gan he himself was let's say, attached by a
Speaker 1: proxy at best and completely involved in the embezzlement at worst.
Speaker 4: Right, Postergen was the CFO, I guess we would call
Speaker 4: him right in the West, chief financial officer. I think
Speaker 4: they called him the head accountant of the place, so
Speaker 4: he was leading the financial department. From by understanding, he
Speaker 4: started as just an accountant of the company, like back
Speaker 4: in two thousands, and over the years he ended up
Speaker 4: leading the place. The person that was in charge of
Speaker 4: the actual company was Nikolai Destodov. I don't know if
Speaker 4: he's officially under an investigation, but he was definitely involved
Speaker 4: with the comms directors fraud investigation, who has been criminally,
Speaker 4: if not charged, definitely investigated for fraud and embezzlement.
Speaker 1: It's here we start to understand where the missing billions
Speaker 1: might have gone. Everyone from the communication officers to the
Speaker 1: boardroom execs seems to be some way involved in mass
Speaker 1: embezzlement at rishat Nev. As the head of financial management
Speaker 1: at this company, how could Postugan not have known.
Speaker 4: It would be hard to deny that, you know, the
Speaker 4: head of the financial department had no idea about any
Speaker 4: fraud or embezzlement. It would kind of seem like the
Speaker 4: thing that he should, if you know, if not at
Speaker 4: least be involved, be aware of or understand that money
Speaker 4: is going somewhere where it's not supposed to. But there's yeah,
Speaker 4: the company was corrupt. The Sutlan and Bashkova. She was
Speaker 4: in charge of the direct communications and she basically had
Speaker 4: a company that it looks like it was a fake company,
Speaker 4: but she created Prometheus Medium and she would get like
Speaker 4: contracts for the company to create like in the in
Speaker 4: the court filing, it was like media products, so I
Speaker 4: think like videos, maybe like advertisements, things like that. And
Speaker 4: despite the act company like Rashnatiev actually having their only
Speaker 4: press corp press service or whatever, like basically media people
Speaker 4: who could do this already, and she would sign contracts.
Speaker 4: It says that like over I think it was like
Speaker 4: six years, she basically gave this fake company that she
Speaker 4: created over one hundred contracts totaling like forty three million
Speaker 4: rules when all the work was actually just done by
Speaker 4: the team that they already had.
Speaker 1: This is some next level brazen theft of company funds.
Speaker 1: The communications officer made a fake company, gave said fake
Speaker 1: company media contracts from her own job, and then just
Speaker 1: got her staff to do the media work she was
Speaker 1: meant to hire out to a creative third party. The
Speaker 1: audacity of this scheme, coupled with the higher up embezzlement,
Speaker 1: will have no doubt enraged Moscow when it was discovered it.
Speaker 4: Was supposed to be like a third party contractor that
Speaker 4: she claimed had like equipment that they didn't, when apparently
Speaker 4: the company is like a balanced it or whatever listed
Speaker 4: all this equipment that was used in the end. So
Speaker 4: it seems like she just kind of used it as
Speaker 4: like a way to funnel money out of the company.
Speaker 1: So it's the sort of thing where, especially the department
Speaker 1: that he's in, I'm gonna say, it's very unlikely he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have seen this happening, right, especially if it's embezzlement,
Speaker 1: it's money, He surely would have seen this. He's got
Speaker 1: to deal with the accounts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like this money isn't just appearing out of nowhere, right.
Speaker 4: This is a state sponsored or state owned company, so
Speaker 4: this money is coming from Moscow, probably being approved by
Speaker 4: in the budget. Like this should be accounted for. He
Speaker 4: should know where things are going, what's happening. And again
Speaker 4: it's kind of hard to imagine that he just is
Speaker 4: blind to over like what five years, six years, almost
Speaker 4: fifty million rubles just disappearing. There must have been kind
Speaker 4: of an understanding of like, okay, something is not right,
Speaker 4: And it sounds like, again the CEO hasn't been charged
Speaker 4: from what I could see, but it seems like at
Speaker 4: least the CEO knew, and then if the CEO was
Speaker 4: in on it, it wasn't like just Bashkova, not just
Speaker 4: the comms director doing all this stuff. I find it
Speaker 4: hard to believe that the guy in charge of all
Speaker 4: the finances for the entire company had no idea that
Speaker 4: something was wrong. If not, you know, be directly involved.
Speaker 1: Once again, it comes back to this thing of stealing
Speaker 1: from the state. Do you think it's possible that he
Speaker 1: realized he was going to get caught, he was going
Speaker 1: to be in some hot water, and he said, you
Speaker 1: know what, the pressure of this, I might as well
Speaker 1: just kill myself again, another kind of murder by proxy
Speaker 1: via suicide, if that makes sense.
Speaker 4: I think this is one of the more clear cut
Speaker 4: cases for that. So in twenty twenty two is when
Speaker 4: the previous CEO Testodov. I don't know if resigns or
Speaker 4: I think one thing I saw was somebody said basically replaced.
Speaker 4: Like I said, like Moscow is kind of in charge
Speaker 4: of right, whether it's at Roskosmos, whether it's somebody closer
Speaker 4: to putin or even putin himself, a person from Moscow
Speaker 4: comes in. His name is if Ganianisterov. He's he's much
Speaker 4: younger for reference, like the previous CEO's like a seventy
Speaker 4: three year old academic, kind of Soviet era person who
Speaker 4: actually like worked on some satellites and you know that tech.
Speaker 4: I guess he like works his way up to be
Speaker 4: the CEO. He again either quits, you know, maybe forcefully
Speaker 4: retires or whatever. He's not at the company anymore. Twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two, a young guy forties, but you know, compared
Speaker 4: to these other people, he's pretty young. He comes in.
Speaker 4: He ran some startups in Moscow. He I think he
Speaker 4: taught at a university or something like that related to
Speaker 4: kind of like the space and satellites. And he comes
Speaker 4: over in twenty twenty two, and it kind of looks
Speaker 4: like he's there to clear house because shortly after he joins,
Speaker 4: Boshkowa quickly retires or quits, like she kind of gives
Speaker 4: in her resignation from what I understand, and then soon
Speaker 4: after she's you know, undergoing these criminal charges. Very soon
Speaker 4: after Pastriking kills himself. And then there was I think
Speaker 4: I mentioned to you the smaller cases where like employees
Speaker 4: receive like a bonus of like it wasn't too big.
Speaker 4: It was like a million rubles, which is like I
Speaker 4: think a couple thousand dollars. But three people get arrested
Speaker 4: for giving out these bonuses and then keeping them for themselves.
Speaker 4: So clearly like it sounds like this new person nested
Speaker 4: of came in to kind of get rid of this
Speaker 4: corruption and figure out what's happening, because I mean, there's
Speaker 4: sanctions and things like that on this company that's making
Speaker 4: you lose money, but it's losing a ton of money,
Speaker 4: you know, money going down the train when this is
Speaker 4: supposed to be a big like defense company.
Speaker 1: So with all this knowledge of posture, guns, corrupt employment,
Speaker 1: does this look like an actual suicide?
Speaker 2: Still?
Speaker 1: I think it's still quite likely. All the embezzlement pressure
Speaker 1: and the huge one of Harry losses at the state
Speaker 1: company Postragan worked at would have no doubt caused serious stress,
Speaker 1: stress that does not go away. I don't for a
Speaker 1: second believe Postragan didn't know all this was happening. He
Speaker 1: lived in the closed state run city where secrecy and
Speaker 1: stepping in line are paramount. He then killed himself shortly
Speaker 1: after a new government appointed boss is brought in to
Speaker 1: fix the leaky ship. He would have known full well
Speaker 1: that the Kremlin's shadowy operatives set examples and punish people
Speaker 1: who steal from the state. Ultimately, Postragan was in charge
Speaker 1: of the money. As the money went missing, where is
Speaker 1: the money? As the sad Oligach pattern shows in Putin's Russia,
Speaker 1: the head must roll. As I said, suicide to avoid
Speaker 1: worse fate at the hands of the government is quite likely.
Speaker 1: There are, though, a few other things about this case
Speaker 1: that have me curious still. For example, I would be
Speaker 1: interested to know if Postragan met with anyone in the
Speaker 1: moments when he went for a long walk alone in
Speaker 1: the deadly cold of the Siberian winter twice in two
Speaker 1: days before his death. Will probably never know. And there
Speaker 1: is the other possibility that Postugan was got rid of
Speaker 1: when the shit hit the fan for what was effectively
Speaker 1: a Zelenegorusk embezzlement ring. Get this, Exactly one week after
Speaker 1: Postragan's death, a deputy head at rashatnv's parent company, ross
Speaker 1: Cosmos was arrested for fraud, large scale fraud. It's alleged
Speaker 1: by the state that he stole of four hundred million rubles.
Speaker 1: That's over four million dollars. This guy's name is Oleg Frolov.
Speaker 1: Along with two other accomplices, he stole money from budgets
Speaker 1: that were allocated to purchase equipment. This is similar to
Speaker 1: the brazen embezzlement of Reshetv's fake media contracts. At the
Speaker 1: same time as all of this, another man named Yevgeny
Speaker 1: Formachief was arrested for a different case of fraud roz Cosmos.
Speaker 1: They're all at it. And then prior to this, there
Speaker 1: were even more claims of corruption. Remember the Russian satellite
Speaker 1: navigation system we mentioned earlier. The people running that accused
Speaker 1: reshet Nev of purposely delayed joint operations in order to
Speaker 1: quote suck in more money from the funding. Remember, the
Speaker 1: satellite work has direct implications on the battlefield in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: a very touchy subject for the Kremlin. So with all
Speaker 1: these mounting issues, all fingers are pointed at the senior
Speaker 1: accountant at the center of the scandal, Evgeny Postrogan. As
Speaker 1: this house of Kurds falls apart, many elite Kremlin adjacent
Speaker 1: professionals are headed for their day in court. It's fair
Speaker 1: to assume, considering his role the Postragan would have had
Speaker 1: a stack of evidence to maybe dig himself out of
Speaker 1: this hole and cooperate with the case. But I guess
Speaker 1: we'll never actually know. The man with his eyes on
Speaker 1: the accounts as all of this fraud happened, is now
Speaker 1: dead and dead men tell no tales. How incredibly convenient
Speaker 1: for the acute us. You've been listening to sad Oliga
Speaker 1: season two, produced by H eleven Studios for Cool Zone Media. Writing, editing, producing,
Speaker 1: concept and recording by myself, Jake Hanrahan. Research and reporting
Speaker 1: by Sergei Slipchenko, me and Victim Mihail. Executive producing by
Speaker 1: Sophie Lichtman. Music by Sam Black, artwork by George Juteful,
Speaker 1: sound mixed by Splicing Bloc. See my other projects at
Speaker 1: Hanrahan dot tv. Get me on social media at Jake
Speaker 1: under School Hanrahan.
Speaker 2: That's h A n R A h A.
Speaker 3: A cat like cot Ca canty
Speaker 4: Ca ca cas Catholic, Catholic