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: He died of heart failure, died of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Speaker 2: How 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 Sergey Slipchenkov. This is a
Speaker 1: H eleven Studio and Coolso Media production. September twenty fifth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. The region of Krishnodor Kray sits on
Speaker 1: the shores of the Black Sea in the south of Russia.
Speaker 1: It's the North Caucus region where men of fought tooth
Speaker 1: and nail throughout history, bloodshed for the mountains and the soil.
Speaker 1: It's here in a village called navarozdesk Venskaya. The municipal
Speaker 1: lawmaker Vitali Kapustin is waiting. He's a local politician for
Speaker 1: United Russia Putin's party.
Speaker 2: He's pulled up.
Speaker 1: To the side of the road near a forest, tall
Speaker 1: oak trees, dense foliage. Kapustin is forty three years old.
Speaker 1: He won't see forty four. He exits the car with
Speaker 1: a cable in hand, likely a wound metal tyrope. He
Speaker 1: attaches one end of it to the car itself, a
Speaker 1: large suv. It's the end of the summer. There's a
Speaker 1: cool breeze and the leaves are starting to change. An
Speaker 1: otherwise peaceful final scene with a disintegrating hairline and a
Speaker 1: somewhat bloated face. Kapussedin looks older than he is. He
Speaker 1: could be late forties, maybe even fifties. He's broad, though,
Speaker 1: and otherwise in decent shape. Not exactly athletic, but he's
Speaker 1: no slob. This is handy because he heads a little
Speaker 1: way into the forested area begins to.
Speaker 2: Climb a large tree.
Speaker 1: Some of them in this area are one hundred feet tall.
Speaker 1: With the other end of the car cable in hand,
Speaker 1: coapussed in, climbs up and up, so high, in fact,
Speaker 1: that if he falls from this height he'll break his legs.
Speaker 1: It still, copussed In manages climb, locking his feet into
Speaker 1: the bend between.
Speaker 2: Branch and tree trunk.
Speaker 1: He grips hold of the oak and manages to pull
Speaker 1: himself up with no external equipment, all whilst carrying a
Speaker 1: thick cable that he's careful not to snack. From this
Speaker 1: vantage point, he can see the forest sprawling out to
Speaker 1: the more built up areas of novarodest Venskaya. Perhaps he
Speaker 1: wants one last look at the region he governs from
Speaker 1: up high to this point, many meters up in the
Speaker 1: tree that Kapustin wraps the car cable around a branch
Speaker 1: and forms a makeshift noose. He attaches one end to
Speaker 1: the tree, pulls the other over his head, and braces
Speaker 1: himself one last look at the trees. Then he jumps.
Speaker 1: The cable snaps to Kapustin's neck is choked. His body
Speaker 1: hangs dangling from a tree. His life slowly eeks away
Speaker 1: into the nether as he dies asphyxiation. Another depressed politician
Speaker 1: in Russia. This is the strange series of events of
Speaker 1: Kapustin's suicide, if we're to believe the official narrative offered
Speaker 1: up by the Russian State. If you think it sounds
Speaker 1: a bit suspicious that a man would climb high up
Speaker 1: into a tree to hang himself with a car cable,
Speaker 1: wait till you hear what an eyewitness has to say
Speaker 1: about Kapustin's body. A news agency close to the area
Speaker 1: reported what eyewitnesses told their reporters people who are at
Speaker 1: the scene. They saw Kapustin's body hanging from a tree.
Speaker 1: They said, quote, his hands were tied behind his back.
Speaker 1: You can't just climb those trees like that. Another said,
Speaker 1: I saw how high it was. As far as I
Speaker 1: could tell, his hands seemed to be bound behind him.
Speaker 1: A person couldn't climb up there easily. The trees are
Speaker 1: very tall. So somehow Capusstin climbed high up into a
Speaker 1: hard tree to scale with a long cable that was
Speaker 1: already attached to his suv, hanged himself, all with his
Speaker 1: hands tied behind his back.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: The police deemed this at first and already open and
Speaker 1: shut case. They concluded it was a suicide. They said
Speaker 1: that the death is quote not criminal. To reiterate, they've claimed,
Speaker 1: quote no suspicion of criminal involvement. Now unless pushed in
Speaker 1: was the next Houdini. I think it is highly unlikely
Speaker 1: that the police have got this one right. How does
Speaker 1: a man climb up a tree with his hands tied
Speaker 1: behind his back? In general, it will be hard enough
Speaker 1: if they were tied at the front, let alone with
Speaker 1: a long cable in his hand. Now, the cable itself
Speaker 1: is interesting to me. Reports suggests that it was quote
Speaker 1: anchored to the suv. If that's why, my assumption is
Speaker 1: that it's some kind of undercar tow cable.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So I looked up all the car dealerships in the
Speaker 1: local area. This took a minute, as there are almost
Speaker 1: four hundred of them. Almost all of them sell SUVs
Speaker 1: like the one could pushed him drave to his grim end.
Speaker 1: Across all of the dealerships, as is the norm in Russia, generally,
Speaker 1: they sell mostly Chinese cuts, Chiri, Giely, Haval or Moda.
Speaker 1: Oh and of course they all sell the Russian make ladder,
Speaker 1: the famous Soviet Iraka produced by state owned Autovas. Side note,
Speaker 1: I absolutely love ladders. I once saw an old ladder
Speaker 1: truck with snow chains on the tires in the mountains
Speaker 1: of Armenia. An incredibly good looking machine. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the engines are like, but it looked great anyway.
Speaker 1: If we look at the sales of these three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty plus car dealerships, it seems the majority of
Speaker 1: SUVs sold across all of them is the Chinese Haval
Speaker 1: Jollian that's the most popular. It's a pretty standard suv
Speaker 1: all in all, a petrol one point five leads to
Speaker 1: turbo seven speed, dual clutch three and forty eliter boot
Speaker 1: or trunk. If you're American, front will drive you get
Speaker 1: the idea. In Russia they cost around two million roubles.
Speaker 1: That's around twenty five thousand dollars US. Not a problem
Speaker 1: for kapusting. So why do I give a fuck about
Speaker 1: the car? Well, I want to know if any of
Speaker 1: these come with a tow cable for obvious reasons copussed
Speaker 1: in hanged metal cable car nearby anchored you get it.
Speaker 1: I did some digging and I couldn't find a single
Speaker 1: Haval Jollian in the region that has the cable as standard,
Speaker 1: even the ones that are built in Russia, which do
Speaker 1: sometimes have different specifications. The kresnaldor Kryer region of Russia
Speaker 1: is actually a pretty mild one. If we're talking about
Speaker 1: the weather, even in winter, you wouldn't need a tow cable,
Speaker 1: perhaps as much as you might need one in Siberia,
Speaker 1: for example, we're pulling cars out of the thick snow
Speaker 1: is needed often. In fact, I had a look and
Speaker 1: none of the top selling SUVs in the area come
Speaker 1: with the tow cable. So by now you might be thinking, Jake,
Speaker 1: why do you have a heart on for the tow cable. Well,
Speaker 1: considering Kapustin's bizarre death, it adds another strange element to
Speaker 1: all of this without one. To me at least, there's
Speaker 1: a very little information on this one. So I've been
Speaker 1: digging like a mole, as has Sergei Slipchenko, my partner
Speaker 1: on this project, as well as Victor Mihaiel who's helping
Speaker 1: us with research. Sergi found a video from the scene
Speaker 1: of the death. It's only ten seconds long and it's
Speaker 1: filmed by a passerby whilst driving, but it's something. It's
Speaker 1: actually the first real glimpse we've got of a murder
Speaker 1: scene or unusual death scene from any case in the
Speaker 1: whole of season two of sad Oligarch so far. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, now it's time for a quick ad break.
Speaker 1: All right, enough for that, Now back.
Speaker 2: To the show.
Speaker 1: If you listen to the previous episode, number six, you
Speaker 1: will have heard me in surgery talking about how difficult
Speaker 1: this season has been. Very little information is out there.
Speaker 1: There are next to note breadcrumbs to follow, and almost
Speaker 1: nobody is talking. So of course we were surprised that
Speaker 1: there was actually a video for this one. As vague
Speaker 1: as it is now, the video there's maybe three full
Speaker 1: seconds on the footage that actually shows the full scene.
Speaker 1: It's shot from a distance whilst moving, and the video
Speaker 1: quality is potato tier. But we do see something. It's
Speaker 1: a bright day, blue sky, no clouds. We see the
Speaker 1: side road next to the forested area. It's a bit
Speaker 1: hard to tell, but next to the trees there are
Speaker 1: around nine to ten vehicles parked up on the side road,
Speaker 1: a mix of SUVs, saloons, trucks, and what looks like
Speaker 1: an ambulance. Strangely, none of the cars look like actual
Speaker 1: police carts, no sirens on the roof, no checkered luminous
Speaker 1: livery on the sides. The vehicles are a mix of
Speaker 1: all black or all white. There's one white suv turned
Speaker 1: in a different direction to the others. It's facing the trees.
Speaker 1: At first glance, it looks like it could be a
Speaker 1: haval Jollian, but on closer inspection, to me at least,
Speaker 1: it looks like it could be a Ladder Neva, another
Speaker 1: popular four x four urban suv. There's speculation online that
Speaker 1: this white suv was Capustin's cat. We don't know, though
Speaker 1: it's mostly assumption. What we do know is that the
Speaker 1: ladder Neva doesn't come with a tow cable attached either.
Speaker 1: A look at the driver's handbook shows that the vehicle does, however,
Speaker 1: come with front and rear toelux. If the suv in
Speaker 1: the video is a Ladder Neva and that was Kapustin's car,
Speaker 1: it makes a bit more sense. But who brought the
Speaker 1: tow cable and why did they kill Kapustin. If this
Speaker 1: project is anything to go by, it quite possibly had
Speaker 1: something to do with Kapustin's connection to Putin's United Russia
Speaker 1: and Kapustin's previous businesses. Let's talk to sergery. So before
Speaker 1: we go into Kapustin's venture into politics, maybe let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about his business. I understand it was
Speaker 1: quite weird, right, like not exactly conventional. He did construction,
Speaker 1: and then he ended up with a snail farm. Like,
Speaker 1: maybe let's start at the beginning. What happened with this
Speaker 1: guy his business ventures?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's kind of interesting that in a sense,
Speaker 3: there's not that much information.
Speaker 2: About his youth.
Speaker 3: It's like he grew up, he went to high school,
Speaker 3: he went to university, got an engineering degree.
Speaker 1: Have you noticed how many of these guys went to
Speaker 1: university for engineering and ended up doing something completely different.
Speaker 1: It's almost like, I don't know, is it like just
Speaker 1: a standard thing to do out there in Russia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty common. There's a lot of like polytechnic
Speaker 3: universities I see. I see from the Soviet Union days, right,
Speaker 3: a lot of universities were very focused on like engineering,
Speaker 3: and you know across everything agriculture like tractors, tanks, everything.
Speaker 2: So it's pretty common. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, So he does the engineering degree and then it's
Speaker 1: kind of a black hole, right, Like there's not much there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of been focused trying to look at
Speaker 3: it's kind of the more boring, kind of quieter details, right,
Speaker 3: And I don't really see any kind of you know,
Speaker 3: him starting anywhere or maybe getting like some kind of
Speaker 3: first job. The first thing I see is that he
Speaker 3: created a construction company, Kuban Spitztroyer, So it's for the
Speaker 3: region of Kuban where he is. And yeah, it says
Speaker 3: that like the company is doing pretty well. I mean, like,
Speaker 3: I don't know there's the thing I can really find
Speaker 3: when he started it or how long it's been around,
Speaker 3: but several articles said that in twenty twenty four, so
Speaker 3: kind of like the last reported revenue from the company
Speaker 3: was like one billion rubles. Apparently he got quite a
Speaker 3: lot of contracts with the state to build infrastructure and buildings.
Speaker 3: So I imagine roads, et cetera, some roads, some buildings for
Speaker 3: the state. I guess that's the thing. They don't really specify.
Speaker 3: They just kind of say contracts.
Speaker 2: Right, That's where he's kind of as far as I
Speaker 2: can see.
Speaker 1: I mean, again, we do not know fuck all about
Speaker 1: these guy, which is quite interesting because of all the
Speaker 1: cases of season two, there's kind of more about his
Speaker 1: death than any of the others in this sense that
Speaker 1: we got an eyewitness quote, I think at least two
Speaker 1: eyewitness quotes saying what the fuck lake is? His hands
Speaker 1: were bound. There's no way he could have climbed up
Speaker 1: in that tree.
Speaker 2: We've got the video that you.
Speaker 1: Found where the person's driving past and they kind of
Speaker 1: very briefly filmed the scene, and then we've got an
Speaker 1: official police statement saying there's nothing criminal involved.
Speaker 2: So in a way, there's like more about the.
Speaker 1: Murder or suicide, but there's very little about his life,
Speaker 1: whereas I feel like it's usually the other way around.
Speaker 2: It's a weird one.
Speaker 1: But as far as I can see, the construction business
Speaker 1: and then the contracts with the government is kind of
Speaker 1: his first major interaction with you know, working with the
Speaker 1: state as it were.
Speaker 2: That's the thing.
Speaker 3: He became a deputy in twenty nineteen. They don't really
Speaker 3: specify when he got the state contracts, but the point
Speaker 3: is he is making a lot of money from these
Speaker 3: state contracts right again, infrastructure, various buildings, and that sounds
Speaker 3: like that's his kind of first and like main job.
Speaker 3: The other things you mentioned sound like a bit more
Speaker 3: of like maybe like a side hustle kind of thing,
Speaker 3: or like a passion project. Especially with the snail farm.
Speaker 3: It sounds like he has a couple of it says
Speaker 3: like stores selling tobacco and food. I think they're referring
Speaker 3: to like convenience stores basically. Again, the construction company sounds
Speaker 3: like his kind of main endeavor and like his biggest
Speaker 3: money maker again, like one billion in revenue it says
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty four, so it sounds like he's doing
Speaker 3: pretty well. Again, he's a deputy, so he also has
Speaker 3: that going on. As you mentioned, the snail farm was
Speaker 3: pretty recent. It sounds like maybe in the last.
Speaker 2: Year or two.
Speaker 3: He's kind of working on this for some reason. He's
Speaker 3: very passionate. Like one article went into detail how he
Speaker 3: has two types of snails, like one from Africa one
Speaker 3: from Europe. He like apparently took time kind of learning
Speaker 3: from farmers in Russia and like some other areas. So
Speaker 3: it sounds pretty kind of devoted to the whole snail thing.
Speaker 3: His other project was looking to develop like agritourism, so
Speaker 3: kind of opening farms, petting farms. You know, you come
Speaker 3: like feed some animals, maybe write them if that's the thing.
Speaker 3: And I guess he was kind of trying to like
Speaker 3: open multiple businesses.
Speaker 2: He's a bit of an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's kind of he has like his
Speaker 3: hand on a lot of things, but even for the
Speaker 3: snail farm, he got five million rubles, which isn't a
Speaker 3: whole lot, but I mean even that they're considering like
Speaker 3: a snail farm for context, like it's not very common
Speaker 3: to kind of pretty weird for Eastern Europe.
Speaker 1: So this guy I had this idea, right, like you know,
Speaker 1: snail farm. As far as we know, it was fairly successful.
Speaker 2: Right it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I've not seen any kind of indication that it totally failed.
Speaker 3: I think it was Again, it's I think it was
Speaker 3: a twenty twenty two that he got funding for it,
Speaker 3: So it sounds like he's kind of like was in
Speaker 3: the process of making it work. Yeah, I didn't see
Speaker 3: that it was you know, booming, nor did I see
Speaker 3: that it failed. I think he was just kind of
Speaker 3: in the process of like setting it up. Same thing
Speaker 3: with his like agriturism idea of like opening petting zoos
Speaker 3: and having like farm tours. It kind of sounds like
Speaker 3: these were things he was working on. It sounds like
Speaker 3: the construction company is quite like established, and same with
Speaker 3: his stores, and then the other things were more like
Speaker 3: like projects he was starting.
Speaker 2: So how did he end up in politics?
Speaker 3: Yeah, That's the thing. I don't really see much before that.
Speaker 3: I just like, in twenty nineteen, he became a deputy
Speaker 3: and that's it. I was trying to find like his
Speaker 3: kind of rise or if he did anything before that.
Speaker 3: I think you've seen like a lot of these folks
Speaker 3: will join like a local committee or some kind of council,
Speaker 3: you know, something more kind of lower level. But this guy,
Speaker 3: I'm not really seeing much of that. It sounds like
Speaker 3: he kind of had the construction company, then he just
Speaker 3: became a deputy. Really don't see anything where he's he Like,
Speaker 3: it kind of seems like this whole deputy thing is
Speaker 3: his first step into politics. I mean it's not uncommon.
Speaker 3: It's not like unseen, you know, not everybody starts off
Speaker 3: in like some kind of smaller government and then moves up.
Speaker 3: Something he decided to do and it worked. I mean,
Speaker 3: becoming a deputy definitely has its financial benefits. I'm sure
Speaker 3: a lot of these contracts work after he became a deputy.
Speaker 3: You know, if if he's making one billion rubles in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four, sounds like he has enough contracts to
Speaker 3: go around to kind of pay that much. It could
Speaker 3: have been could have been a business decision as much
Speaker 3: as it was some kind of passion to be a politician.
Speaker 2: That was my thought.
Speaker 1: I thought, like, probably business decisions. So I've got the notere.
Speaker 1: It says he was elected to the public office in
Speaker 1: the village of Otra Denskoya in twenty nineteen. Came in
Speaker 1: as a municipal deputy for the t t Choresque district
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, So essentially he kind of came
Speaker 1: in as like a council member.
Speaker 2: Is that is that right?
Speaker 1: Like he was elected to the council as such in
Speaker 1: the area. Okay, all right, now it's time for a
Speaker 1: quick outbreak, all right, not for that.
Speaker 2: Now back to the shore.
Speaker 3: In Russia, how it works is like you can be
Speaker 3: a part of United Russia, like Putin's party can be
Speaker 3: at different levels, but kind of support the party and
Speaker 3: be part of that party. The tekhotskis it sounds like
Speaker 3: that's where he grew up and spent most of his life.
Speaker 3: I don't really see him doing much outside of this,
Speaker 3: of this Kuban area. From what I can see, he's
Speaker 3: done everything there, Like all his businesses are set up there,
Speaker 3: all his stores are within that region. It's it's kind
Speaker 3: of like his hometown and he doesn't really go out
Speaker 3: of there much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I read it.
Speaker 1: It said he was like really well known in the
Speaker 1: area and he tried a district commission on agriculture and
Speaker 1: land management, utilities, transport, communications, public communities. Basically his businesses.
Speaker 1: He's a bit of an entrepreneur. From what I'm getting, right,
Speaker 1: it seems like his fingers in many different pies. To me,
Speaker 1: it seems like, yeah, this is a bit of a hustler.
Speaker 1: He's a bit of an entrepreneur. You know, the Snell Farm.
Speaker 1: I ready, his mother has the Snell Farm. Now it's
Speaker 1: uncertain if she had one before or if she took
Speaker 1: it over or whatever. It's just in her name maybe
Speaker 1: who knows. But basically it's the thing I'm getting is,
Speaker 1: I feel like he was a bit of an entrepreneur
Speaker 1: and he's saw by getting involved with politics, specifically Putin's party.
Speaker 1: Obviously you're not going to try and go into another
Speaker 1: party that's kind of opposing him to move your business empire.
Speaker 1: It feels like he looked at Putin's party, he ran
Speaker 1: for it. He's well known in the area, seems pretty
Speaker 1: well liked. From what I've found, and basically that would
Speaker 1: have allowed him, I think, to really build up his business.
Speaker 1: Even if we look here, he was the chair of
Speaker 1: the District Commission on Agriculture and Land Management. We've seen
Speaker 1: time and time again guys that get involved in this
Speaker 1: politically tend to make money, but they also tend to
Speaker 1: come a cropper. Like this is not an unusual pattern
Speaker 1: for us, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you said, you know, he's getting into politics,
Speaker 3: he's overseeing stuff that he's kind of already working on, right,
Speaker 3: Like you said, agriculture, he's looking to develop essentially businesses,
Speaker 3: right Like he's it doesn't really talk about like these
Speaker 3: are his businesses kind of that he just almost like
Speaker 3: working on.
Speaker 2: The idea of agritourism.
Speaker 3: But like he's on the agricultural board. He has all
Speaker 3: these different companies that are, if not you know, straight
Speaker 3: up and agricultural, it's just kind of adjacent to it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, like I think they see it as like,
Speaker 3: you know, I can make some like kind of like
Speaker 3: a make an easy path to make his businesses work,
Speaker 3: to kind of fund his businesses and profit from it
Speaker 3: in that way. And yeah, it's pretty common. You know,
Speaker 3: you're in charge of the funding. You're in charge of
Speaker 3: what the policies are, so you just kind of do
Speaker 3: as you please, and you're an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: On the side.
Speaker 3: It is that simple, So why not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really weird this guy.
Speaker 1: From what we've seen obviously what's available, there's just nothing
Speaker 1: that indicates, Ah, that might be what happened, as in,
Speaker 1: there's no clear sign of corruption. Not to say it
Speaker 1: wasn't happening, It very much could have been. He was,
Speaker 1: you know, as soon as he gets involved with politics.
Speaker 1: It's only a couple years really later, and he's dead.
Speaker 1: To me, this is one of the weirdest ones possible.
Speaker 1: Like his hands were allegedly bounds. And I say allegedly
Speaker 1: because you know it's an eyewitness statement.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 1: But I really think there's a lot of merit in that.
Speaker 1: If you're in Russia and someone dies in a weird
Speaker 1: way like this, it's very easy to just shut your mouth.
Speaker 1: The fact that someone was like Noah, I saw that
Speaker 1: his hands were bound. He was way too high up
Speaker 1: in the tree. To some degree, you're taking a little
Speaker 1: bit of a risk really putting that out there. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that the government is going to come for
Speaker 1: everybody and kick down the door immediately. You know, Russia
Speaker 1: is bad enough, but it's not North Korea. But it
Speaker 1: seems to me like someone wouldn't put themselves out there
Speaker 1: to say that in the media direct lead to from
Speaker 1: what I've got two different news agencies now locally, it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel to me like they would just say that
Speaker 1: for no reason.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, I think I think part of it
Speaker 3: is what you said, like he was liked, he was
Speaker 3: kind of well known, like for his parents are apparently
Speaker 3: well known, if not in the entire like Coupon region,
Speaker 3: definitely in the Tikhotski district. I think you saw that
Speaker 3: they kind of adopted thirty eight I think it was
Speaker 3: thirty eight teenagers.
Speaker 2: Big foster parents.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like foster parents. Yeah, it sounds like over like
Speaker 3: their lifetime kind of thing, like they've they kind of
Speaker 3: constantly always adopted to care of these teenagers. And then
Speaker 3: apparently Capustin was like involved in that, helping with it
Speaker 3: when he grew up. So I can imagine you know
Speaker 3: a lot of people in the in the at least
Speaker 3: the district, you know, knew them and knew of them positively.
Speaker 3: That could have played a part in it right, if
Speaker 3: you kind of don't care or don't like the person
Speaker 3: you don't care to kind of, you know, put your
Speaker 3: head out there and, like you said, kind of say something.
Speaker 2: You know. I think what said you just is a
Speaker 2: great point.
Speaker 1: It's unlikely someone would potentially put their neck on the
Speaker 1: line by giving the hanged with bound hand statement if
Speaker 1: they didn't really see it. It's even more unlikely they
Speaker 1: would do this. If Kapustin was truly hated.
Speaker 2: In the area.
Speaker 1: There could well be some secret deviancies were yet to discover,
Speaker 1: but generally, so far, it seems as if Kapustin was
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. He made money businesses, side hustles, politics, nothing
Speaker 1: that unusual all things considered. What is unusual, though, is
Speaker 1: the police statement after Kapustin's body was found remember as
Speaker 1: he hanged from a high branch in a big tree,
Speaker 1: hands bound, neck attached to a cable attached to an suv.
Speaker 1: The cops said there was no suspicion of criminal involvement. Later,
Speaker 1: when the eyewitness statement was released in local media, they
Speaker 1: changed their tune and said they're still investigating. We've looked
Speaker 1: far and wide, and there's been absolutely no follow up
Speaker 1: since Kapustin's corpse was found dangling. No indication locally that
Speaker 1: they're investigating anything. As I trooled through the Krasnodor cry
Speaker 1: police communications and associated documents, I learned a bit about them.
Speaker 1: They've been very vocal in recent years about their anti
Speaker 1: corruption efforts under closer scrutiny, though those efforts seem to
Speaker 1: be completely useless if they existed at all. When it
Speaker 1: comes to police bribery, Krasnodor Kry is the second worst
Speaker 1: region in the whole of Russia. They trailed closely behind Moscow.
Speaker 1: The cops in Kapustin's region are on the take big time. Actually,
Speaker 1: it seems like the whole region is giving and taking
Speaker 1: bribes is a normal occurrence. Municipal workers, local politicians, business owners,
Speaker 1: customs officers, even traffic cops have been involved in bribery
Speaker 1: and Krasnodor Kry it's a big problem there. There is
Speaker 1: absolutely no way that Kapustin didn't know about this. In fact,
Speaker 1: it seems to have gotten worse in the region since
Speaker 1: he started up in local politics. Now get this, The
Speaker 1: stats that this is all based on are calculated only
Speaker 1: from people who got care.
Speaker 2: These are prosecution.
Speaker 1: Stats that means it's just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 2: It's not just bribery thot.
Speaker 1: Corrupt officers are also reported as having protected large scale
Speaker 1: smuggling schemes in the area, go in as far as
Speaker 1: to block their own transport police from properly inspecting cargo,
Speaker 1: ensuring smuggling goes smoothie.
Speaker 2: Of course they get a fat kickback.
Speaker 1: It's not just money that oils the palms of the
Speaker 1: police in Krasnodor Krydle, it's also blood. They assert their
Speaker 1: power through torture. Human Riots Group Caucasian Not describes a
Speaker 1: pattern of police brutality in the region. They say, quote
Speaker 1: the situation with torture of detainees in Krasnodor territory stands
Speaker 1: out from many other Russian regions. In other words, it's
Speaker 1: one of the worst. There are dozens of cases where
Speaker 1: people in custodies say that they were beaten by the
Speaker 1: police to force false confessions. There is statement of people
Speaker 1: having their teeth punched out by officers, being electric shocked
Speaker 1: in one case where a man was allegedly sodomized with
Speaker 1: a crowbat. As you can probably imagine, these police act
Speaker 1: with total impunity. They are almost never brought to justice.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year, the website rue criminal dot info investigated
Speaker 1: the Krasnodata Police. Rue Criminal publishers leaked dossier's and reports
Speaker 1: of organized crime and corruption within the Russian elite. Their
Speaker 1: investigation describes a quote power mafia inside the Krasnodarta Criminal
Speaker 1: Investigation Department. According to their sources, there exists a parallel
Speaker 1: power structure in the police, built up by a senior officer.
Speaker 1: It completely sidelines the formal chain of command and acts
Speaker 1: as a criminal enterprise.
Speaker 2: Notably, it's said that for.
Speaker 1: Around fifteen million rubles one hundred and eighty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars US, corrupt investig gators in this syndicate will either
Speaker 1: open or close a criminal case for business rivals. Essentially,
Speaker 1: one businessman can go to these corrupt police officers give
Speaker 1: them fifteen million rubles in exchange for the police launching
Speaker 1: an investigation into a business rival with their aims of
Speaker 1: shutting it down. They set up surveillance and plant fake
Speaker 1: evidence if needs be, and everything gets shut down. Remember,
Speaker 1: Kapustin was a businessman, an entrepreneur with his fingers in
Speaker 1: many different pies. He was also a municipal politician in
Speaker 1: the area. With all this in mind, is it possible
Speaker 1: he had dealings with what is basically a regional police
Speaker 1: deep state.
Speaker 2: If he did, perhaps.
Speaker 1: Something went wrong and he was made an example of
Speaker 1: by these Bandit costs. Considering the insane level of corruption
Speaker 1: within the Kreisno Dark Police, their documented use of extreme violence,
Speaker 1: and their rapid claims of no criminal involvement in his death,
Speaker 1: I think is not too crazy to say that maybe
Speaker 1: the police killed Baitali Pustin. You've been listening to sad
Speaker 1: Oliga season two, produced by H eleven Studios for call
Speaker 1: Zone Media. Writing, editing, producing, concept and recording by myself
Speaker 1: Jake Hanrahan. Research and reporting by Sergei Slichenko, Me and
Speaker 1: Victim Mihail. Executive reducing by Sophie Lichtman. Music by Sam Black,
Speaker 1: artwork by George Zutpaul, sound mixed by Splicing Block. See
Speaker 1: my other projects at Hanrahan dot tv. Get me on
Speaker 1: social media at Jake Underscore Hanrahan. That's h A N
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