“Someone who works for the family, who solves everything, asked everything through him”. It is described like this Dmitry Chirakadzethe 54-year-old entrepreneur residing in Swiss and belonging toRussian aristocracy arrested by the Carabinieri of the investigative unit at the airport of Rome Fiumicino on charges of having helped Artem Ussson of a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putinto escape from house arrest who was serving in Basiglio, near Milanto then expatriate along the Balkan route and return by plane to Russia.
To describe him as the man who “solves everything” he is Vladimir Jovancicalias “Vlado the old”, 51 year old Bosnian head of the operational command that took care of the escape of the oligarch’s son, arrested last December along with five other gang members.
There Uss escape dates back to March 2023 and some aspects of the matter are still to be clarified but “the investigation activities have allowed – we read in a note from the Prosecutor’s Office – to identify the subject (Chirakadze, ed) being part of a superordinate level, from an organizational point of view, compared to the members of the group who materially favored the USS escape”. Translated: the aristocrat was there “mind” of the operation. In the next few hours he will be questioned by Italian magistrates.
An international precautionary custody order was also issued for the thirty-three year old wife of Uss, Maria Yagodinawho left Italy during her husband’s escape and who is currently with him Russia. The head of the commando, Jovancicdeclared to the investigators that the entrepreneur’s wife would have given him “7 thousand euros in cash” for the purchase of one of the machines used for the “exfiltration”.
Dmitry Chirakadzesaid “Dima”is part of the Russian nobility as a descendant of a Grand Duke of Georgia and is married to a wealthy Russian woman, Lyubov OrlovaIn 2008 he founded, together with designer Aleksei Pelevin, the group Pravo.rua Russian online media specialized in legal journalism which, in the space of a few years, managed to win the management of the maintenance of the electronic services of the Russian arbitration courts. According to some Russian media, the latter is a notable activity for Chirakadze political capital.
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The fifty-four-year-old is also “shared in numerous Russian companies together with members of the Uss family, also with top management positions” including in the capital of one Russian mining company of which Artem is a partner. Investigations also reveal that the nobleman’s wife owns shares in the company that manages the luxury tourist facility, in Sardiniaattributable to the Uss family and of an imposing hunting lodge in Krasnoyarskin Siberia, a favorite vacation spot of important Russian officials, including the governor Alexander Ussfather of Artem.
This arrest, coordinated by the public prosecutor Giovani Tarzia, is part of the second tranche of theinvestigation into the USS escape which, in recent months, had led to the arrest of 6 people. Last January 20, he was captured in Slovenia Matej Janezic, accused of being one of the five members of the commando that freed Uss. On December 5th they had already ended up in handcuffs Vladimir Jovancicstranded in Croatia, and his twenty-six-year-old son Borisintercepted and stopped in Desenzano.
Dmitry Chirakadze is accused of having monitored the outcome of the decision of the Court of Appeal of Milan on the possible USS extradition to the United Statesactually granted, and to have attended, in the organizational phase, the main meetings with the members of the band guaranteed escape. He would also have maintained constant contact with family members and met members of the gang on several occasions in foreign territory.
The clues of guilt emerged from the analysis of telephone traffic (multiple and from different telephone companies, including from foreign countries) and boarding lists of air flights which made it possible to detect its presence in the various Italian and foreign cities where the attacks took place preparatory meetings for the escape.
There would have been, in particular, several meetings – including in luxury hotels and restaurants – between “Vlad” (i.e. Jovancic), the wife of UssAnd “Duma”Meaning what Chirakadze. In some passages of the minutes that reconstruct the escape, Jovancic (the head of the commando) says, verbatim: “The Russian gentleman who was with us, he had everything proposed, he he directed how the operation moves”.
He also spoke about the presence of the Russian aristocrat in Italy and the meetings with Uss’s wife, Srdan Lolic, one of the eight suspects in total for the “procured escape” of Uss. Lolic himself would have said to Jovancic: “Let’s go to Italy because there is thatrich man who wants us to help him”.
The “operational group and its organizer” Chirakadze are considered by the Italian judicial authority to be a “organized criminal associationengaged in criminal activities in more than one State, with the involvement of people of different nationalities (currently Albanian, Serbian, Bosnian and Slovenian subjects), who, through the use of cars registered in more than one State (Italy, Slovenia and Serbia) and Serbian, Italian, Bosnian and Slovenian users, have adopted a precise and well-defined strategy, also aimed at sidetrack the investigation”.
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The members of the group, the investigators explain, “used a car whose license plate was not cloned and which was made to ‘reappear’ in an area far from the border”, from which “the escaped prisoner left the country”. Furthermore, “fortified by the contacts they had in Slovenia, they crossed the border on the same day as the escape Gorizia borderthey contacted a car rental agency and drove a car in Bosniaanother car in Serbia and a third car in Slovenia”.
According to the reconstructions made by the investigators, the blitz in which Uss was made to escape had been preceded by five inspections, carried out between mid-February and ten days before the action, which took place on March 22: Jovancic was leading the operations. The commando freed Uss from electronic anklet who was supposed to track his location and they took him away in a car.
Artem Uss was arrested at the airport of Milan Malpensa in October 2022 because an arrest warrant issued by the United States Department of Justice for the crimes of criminal association for fraud against the state, criminal association for violation of the International Economic Power Act, criminal association for the commission of bank fraud and money laundering, punishable with sentences of up to 30 years of imprisonment.
