On the night of July 13, the siloviki freed from the gypsy captivity of the stolen three days ago the Orel businessman of Greek origin Sergei Budagov. Criminals who held an entrepreneur in a village in the neighboring Tula region demanded a ransom of 20 million rubles. According to the siloviki, Mr. Budagov is "alive, healthy and very grateful" to the operatives for saving "from the hands of amateurs".
Sergey Budagov was rescued by the soldiers of Rosgvardia together with the FSB, the police and the Investigative Committee of Russia (RKR) of two regions - Orel and Tula oblasts. He was a prisoner of the Gypsies' family in the village of Maloe Skuratovo in the Chern region of the Tula region, about an hour and a half from Orla. "The operation was carefully planned and successfully carried out. Budagov already gives testimony as a victim. Several participants of this story were detained. Among them, women, minors, everyone is already here, in Orel, "Kommersant was told in the regional department of the CKR.
According to the preliminary version of the law enforcers, the Roma demanded that Sergei Budagov buy out 20 million rubles.
Frankly, they were amateurs. They left traces, they were quickly found. Budagov is now safe, unharmed. He understood that we will find him, and he is very grateful to us for this, "- explained the official representative of the Oryol management of the SKR Yulia Dorofeeva.
Oryol Oblast Governor Andrei Klychkov called the crime "a challenge to the entire region," thanked the siloviki and promised every help to Sergei Budagov.
Sergei Budagov was kidnapped in the morning of July 10 in Zavodsky district of Orel, when he was going to go to work in the agroholding "Oryol Niva". Armed criminals threw Lexus driver in the area of Luzhkovsky cemetery on the outskirts of Orel and left with a businessman in his car. The investigation almost immediately reported that, most likely, the cause of the crime should be sought "in the financial and economic activities" of the holding. In Orel itself, many people no longer hoped to see Sergei Budagov alive, claiming that he could have many enemies.
The sharp rise of the businessman began in 2009 under the governor Alexander Kozlov. The regional authorities loyally treated Mr. Budagov and chose him as their partner in the privatization of the controlling state block of shares in the Oryol Niva. Having received this company, Mr. Budagov became the owner of the largest agricultural holding in the region. Soon after Mr. Kozlov's resignation, privatization became the subject of a criminal case, investigated in the TFR, and then the police. Mr. Budagov himself, under the successor of Alexander Kozlov, Vadim Descendant, was in disgrace. The authorities tried to seize the agroholding from him, and the businessman even found himself in jail.
In mid-March 2016, he was detained when transferring 5 million rubles. a bribe to the regional official Andrei Sinyagov. However, the case collapsed in court - Mr. Budagov was recognized as a victim of provocation by law enforcers and acquitted. Due to confrontation with Vadim Descendant he re-registered his business in the Tula region. The last appearance of a businessman in public was due to his meeting with the new head of the Oryol region, Andrei Klychkov. On it, a couple of days before the abduction, he said that he was returning to the Orel region, and his life as a whole is getting better.