A skinny, emaciated man, shackled, does not at all look like the dignified and self-confident terror of St. Petersburg pensioners and orphans, Nikamagomed Karanaev. He is responsible for 6 corpses and three more have been added. The most terrible black realtor in St. Petersburg today has a “vacation” from the “Black Dolphin”, where he is serving a life sentence. The investigation charges him with three more murders during the wild 2000s.
Nine Lives
The new (old) case contains 20 volumes. It’s not much. The new charge sounds as ominous as in those terrible years – the murder of two or more persons, committed by an organized group, for mercenary reasons, for hire. In the dock, faces already familiar to the investigation: Nikamagomed Karanaev, Rasil Mamedrizaev And Dmitry Blokhin.
According to investigators, from 2004 to 2007, an organized group of “black realtors” created by Karanaev operated in St. Petersburg. Their specialization is taking away apartments and rooms. The gang was mainly interested in real estate whose owners had already died. And if they were alive, but interest remained, the owners were helped to go to another world. Karanaev and his accomplices did not disdain anything: they injected drugs, strangled, burned, killed with an ax. The new charge contains three new episodes that were not included in the 2015 verdict.
The first episode concerns the murder of a 20-year-old guy in 2004, to whom the gang promised to find a good house in Pskov and a good additional payment for a comfortable life. But as soon as he registered his apartment with dummies, he was strangled.
The second episode concerns 2005. The owner of the apartment on the street. Karanaev personally hacked Marshal Tukhachevsky to death with an ax and threw his body into a well. As they say in the investigation, it became possible to establish the identity of the victim only after conducting a whole range of molecular genetic examinations.
The third episode concerns Blokhin, and again dates back to 2005. According to the investigation, he, together with Mamedrizaev, under the leadership of Karavaev, deceived, lured and strangled a St. Petersburg woman. The woman’s body was burned by her accomplices.
In March 2023, the defense began familiarizing itself with the materials of the criminal case. To date, the defendants have not yet finished familiarizing themselves with the case. However, Karanaev, sentenced to life, is in no hurry. Here, after the “Black Dolphin”, in the new Crosses it’s just a resort for him.
The only inconvenience is the shackles on his hands and feet, which cannot be removed, even in the “cage” of the courtroom. But the terrible Karanaev seems to have gotten used to it, and communicates quite calmly with the judge, and is friendly with the convoy. But once the trial was a living hell for him, the lawyers fought for a good verdict with despair.
Investment in death
In 2015, 14 scoundrels sat in the dock at the St. Petersburg City Court, on whose conscience the lives of 6 people were held. In addition to murder, they were charged with 8 counts of fraud and one attempted murder.
It took the investigation more than 5 years to bring the “Karanaev gang” to clean water. The court heard the case for almost a year. In this case, nerves, lawyers and the torments of the residents of the now infamous building 40 on Vosstaniya Street were intertwined like snakes.
The history of this criminal case began in 2007 with the fact that a resident of this house, an elderly pensioner, was found dead in a sewer manhole. Then no one suspected that her death was only part of a series of deaths that enveloped the lonely owners of apartments and rooms on Vosstaniya 40.
In 2009, law enforcement agencies arrested the general director of Development Corporation CJSC Nuriddin Meshcherovathe official investment partner of the administration of the Central District of St. Petersburg, which since the mid-2000s has been actively relocating and overhauling several residential buildings in this area. And before this venerable position, Meshcherov served 12 years in a colony for murder.
After his arrest, an interesting fact emerged – not only operatives were hunting for a clever businessman with a spicy past. He has already been prosecuted for forgery of documents. The deceived homeowners from Uprising 40 managed to prove in court that Meshcherov provided false documents to civil and arbitration processes.
Detectives from the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the North-Western District were simply eager to see him. They were interested in the apartments provided to settlers. The investigators wanted to know why the housing purchased “on the street” turned out to be several dozen times cheaper than the communal apartments being resettled. Then facts were revealed that the former owners of that same “cheap” housing disappeared without a trace, or suddenly unexpectedly became residents of remote villages.
During the operational investigative actions, the attention of law enforcement officers was attracted by Meshcherov’s assistant – Nikamagomed Karanaev. This man was widely known in criminal circles. He and his brother Magomedsalam, with his henchmen, were engaged in eliminating the “intractable” owners of apartments and rooms. Criminal legends attributed them to membership in a certain “association of killers” that specialized in the deaths of lonely, mentally disabled and socially degraded townspeople.
Quiet sentence
The 14 gang members listened to their sentence in silence. The longest sentences received Artyom Sych – 22 years old, Dmitry Tumin – 20 years, Azizjon Farkhodov – 17 years old. A maximum security colony for everyone. Ibragim Magomedovalthough he received 16.6 years in prison, he got off with a light sentence because he betrayed his accomplices by giving evidence. The court accepted.
Ordinary gang members got off with fairly light sentences ranging from 2.6 to 4.6 years. After the verdict was announced, arrests began in the courtroom. Most of those arrested by the court were women. But here Nuriddin Meshcherov amazingly lucky. He got away with 4.5 years of general imprisonment, which cannot be compared with the 12 years he once had to serve for murder. Two gang members received probation. Received the main punishment Nikamagomed Karanaev. He was given a life sentence. He was found guilty of creating an organized group to take the lives of victims in order to seize their property, and many of the murders were classified as “murders of persons known to be in a helpless state. The court also considered it proven that Karanaev directly united all the criminals under his leadership, distributed the proceeds from criminal activities and controlled his accomplices.
There were no emotions on the faces of the criminals. Only Farkhodov’s elderly relatives cried bitterly. After the verdict, an ambulance appeared near the courthouse. Doctors rushed to see one of the defendants’ relatives. The jury, the verdict, and then the sentence, brought Nikamagomed Karanaev one more blow. During the hearings, his brother Magomedsalam died. He died in the hospital from the consequences of HIV infection, which he suffered from.
As the guards quietly said when discussing what happened: “he was called to another trial.” The criminal case against him was dropped as soon as the investigation received a death certificate.
Today Nikamagomed Karanaev is slowly preparing for a new round of the trial. Only this time, this process is more pleasant for him. After all, as they say, it was he who initiated the launch of the colossus of justice, writing a confession to the investigation regarding three more crimes. “Pyzhiki,” as the opera affectionately calls them, love writing. Karanaev had a reason to vent to the investigation. Indeed, in 2019, the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, leaving the sentence in force. In the complaint, by the way, Karanaev placed all the blame for the murders on the owners of the real estate agency, they say, they took possession of the apartment of one of the murdered people, on the agency lawyer who processed the deal, and on the director of the orphanage, who agreed to the illegal deal with his pupil’s apartment. Karanaev is offended that all those specialists involved in the case of black realtors who helped him take away housing from his victims did not go to prison, but entered the trial as witnesses.
In some ways, the old prisoner is right. Today, on Vosstaniya 40, in a pre-revolutionary house, in the very heart of the center of St. Petersburg (it is possible that in those same rooms taken over from pensioners), there are beautiful studios, luxuriously renovated, that can be rented by the day. The ultimate interests of this terrible story ended up winning.
However, even a new sentence will not change anything in his fate. There is nothing to add to a life sentence. Perhaps a lighter regime of detention in pre-trial detention center No. 1 Crosses, compared to the “Black Dolphin”, food, and a piece of sunny St. Petersburg, in the narrow window of a paddy wagon.
