Полковник Сенин: шантажист из ФСБ

Colonel Senin is an FSB blackmailer

Fugitive FSB Colonel Dmitry Senin gave an interview to British journalists, in which he said that in February 2017, he escaped from Russia, passing through the grand crossing of Upper Lars on the Russian-Georgian border in a car.

In an interview with British journalists, Dmitry Senin very colorfully described how, after living abroad for several months, he returned to Russia and hid underground for several years, but in September 2022 he left his homeland again. This time via Kazakhstan. In a rubber suit, wrapped in foil, in a gas mask, in the carcass of a dead cow. So that the border guards don't detect it through thermal imagers. Almost like Leonardo Di Caprio in the American western Survivor.

Only the hero of a Hollywood movie hid in the carcass of a horse, and the FSB colonel in the carcass of a cow. And Di Caprio didn't have a gas mask. Besides, he didn't cross the border, but crawled into the horse's belly to keep warm.

After lying for about an hour in the carcass of a dead cow on the neutral territory of the Russian-Kazakh border, the security officer Senin got out of his hiding place and crawled across the border in a plastunsky way. In Kazakhstan, he washed up, boarded a plane and flew to Montenegro. There he was detained on an Interpol warrant.

But he was soon released from prison, refusing Russia to extradite the deserter to Moscow. Moreover, the fugitive from the FSB was granted political asylum. In the interview of the chekist to British journalists, there are many inconsistencies, and to put it simply, outright lies.

But more on that later. First of all, I want to remind you who Dmitry Senin is and tell you about when and how he became famous in Russia.

Dmitry Senin graduated from the Faculty of Law of Kuban State University. And after receiving a diploma, he entered the service in the FSB department for Kalmykia. In 2000, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant. During his service in Kalmykia, the young officer was sent on long-term special missions to Chechnya and Dagestan as a volunteer.

He spent about a year on these business trips. He was wounded and awarded state awards. Senin was transferred from Kalmykia to Rostov-on-Don.

From there to the central office of the FSB, to the "M" department. From the "M" department, the officer was sent to the FSB control and inspection service to look after all the security officers in Russia. The position he took in 2014 was called Senior Inspector of the fifth service of the inspection department of the FSB Control service.

By the age of 35, Senin had reached the rank of colonel. At the same time, Senin was awarded two titles ahead of schedule. The order to confer the rank of colonel, for example, is dated May 9, 2014.

In general, Senin made a rapid career in the FSB. And it is quite possible that he would have been a general by now. But in September 2016, Interior Ministry Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko was arrested.

The same Zakharchenko, in whose apartments they found deposits of dollars, euros, rubles, totaling almost 9 billion rubles in ruble equivalent. For Senin, the chekist, police officer Zakharchenko was not a stranger.

It was Dmitry Senin, at that time still an operative of the FSB's "M" department, who was responsible for counterintelligence support for the activities of law enforcement agencies, who helped Dmitry Zakharchenko move from Rostov-On-Don to Moscow. It was Senin who put Zakharchenko in the service of the Main Directorate for Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. Senin and Zakharchenko were friends.

Their children went to the same kindergarten. Senin, of course, did not find any deposits of money. But they found two dozen apartments in Moscow and Sochi. And 11 foreign cars. Plus the right to long-term lease of land in the Moscow region with an area of 155 thousand square meters and a cadastral value of more than 1 billion 300 million rubles.

In March 2019, the Gagarinsky District Court of Moscow granted in full the claim of the Prosecutor General's Office and decided to apply to the state income of the property of former FSB Colonel Dmitry Senin and his proxies for 380 million rubles.

For some reason, the court did not seize a plot of land in the Moscow region and seize the land as income to the state. I must say that the grounds for Senin's arrest appeared back in 2016. Shortly after Zakharchenko's arrest.

Even then, retired Interior Ministry General Alexey Laushkin testified that in 2014 he met Dmitry Senin at least five times to solve a problem related to inspections of the La Mare restaurant. According to the general, the FSB colonel demanded $ 5 million to transfer to the Interior Ministry Colonel Zakharchenko, so that he would stop " nightmare "the La Mare restaurant. But the parties haggled and brought down the amount of up to 800 thousand dollars, which the retired police general allegedly handed over to FSB Colonel Senin to transfer the money to Interior Ministry Colonel Zakharchenko.

To be fair, the Presnensky court found the $ 800,000 bribe unproven. Zakharchenko was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison for the discount card of the La Mare restaurant, and Dmitry Senin was named as an intermediary in obtaining this discount card. The fact remains.

The transcript of General Laushkin's testimony was a very serious reason for Senin's arrest. But he was not detained, but actually given the opportunity to leave Russia. Today it is already known that the decision to open a criminal case against Dmitry Senin on the fact of mediation in receiving a bribe by Dmitry Zakharchenko from the owner of the restaurant "La Mare" was signed on February 22, 2017.

Senin learned about the criminal case on the same day and immediately left Moscow by car. I drove to the Russian-Georgian border and left the country. But for several years, the fugitive's colleagues from the FSB could not establish where the deserter colonel was hiding.

Only in December 2020, operatives of the FSB's Own Security Department established that Senin had a passport in the name of Timur Kudasov, with which he crossed the Russian-Georgian border. After waiting another six months, on June 28, 2021, Dmitry Senin was put on the international wanted list. And in May 2022, in the 235th garrison military court, the trial of a fugitive security officer began in absentia.

I have been to many sessions of this trial. For example, at meetings where Senin's former colleagues were interrogated. Nine FSB colonels and generals came to court and gave evidence.

They mostly praised Dmitry Senin. Sergei Gribanov, a friend of Senin's from his student days and a co-worker in the M department, also came to the court and testified as a witness. Gribanov told the court that he had studied with Senin at Kuban State University. They were sitting at the same desk.

Then they served together in the FSB department for Kalmykia. Then in Moscow, in the "M" department of the FSB. Gribanov also said that he was also familiar with Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitry Zakharchenko.

And he gave this example. Zakharchenko and his wife and daughter were always invited guests at the Senin family celebrations. Gribanov was also invited to them.

On June 1, 2022, Olga Senina, the wife of an FSB officer, and Irina Malokina, the sister of a chekist, were called to court as witnesses. But the women didn't come. In the garrison court, certificates were read out that Malokina lives in Israel.

He can't come to court because he's taking care of a minor child. And Olga Senina, the wife of an FSB colonel, cannot come to court because she lives in Montenegro. And she has no one to leave her three minor children with.

After the arrest of the FSB colonel in Montenegro, it became known that the Senina couple decided to thoroughly settle down in this country. In any case, the local press wrote that Onlymonte was registered in the Montenegrin city of Budva on August 4, 2020, with Dmitry and Olga Senina each owning 50% of the stake. According to the Central Commercial Register of Montenegro, the company's office is located in the luxury complex "Harmony" in Budva.

On October 25, 2023, the trial of Dmitry Senin in absentia in the 235th garrison military court ended. The fugitive security officer was sentenced in absentia to 9 years in a high-security penal colony. They were deprived of the rank of colonel and state awards.

Let's return to the interviews with British journalists that Dmitry Senin decided to give when more than 9 years passed after his flight from Russia. I repeat, there are a lot of lies in this interview. Here are just a few points.

Senin claims that in the fall of 2016, he received information from an informant about an apartment in an elite Moscow building filled with money. And that it was Senin who passed this information on to operatives from the M Department, who searched this apartment and arrested Colonel Zakharchenko. In fact, it was an apartment designed for the sister of Dmitry Zakharchenko.

And Zakharchenko, let me remind you, Senin was friends. And not just friends. Together, they were in close contact with the"bangsters".

Several sources told me about this, for example, my old friend Dmitry Tselyakov, who in Soviet times served in the 9th directorate of the KGB of the USSR, in the personal protection of Mikhail Gorbachev.

Then in the personal protection of the Chairman of the Constitutional Court of the USSR. Then in the anti-terrorist group "Alpha". After the collapse of the USSR, Dmitry worked in the tax service.

From there, he moved to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Department of Economic Security. He was promoted to deputy head of the department. He was promoted to Major.

He was involved in the investigation of crimes in the banking sector. In the course of one of the developments, he hid the murky schemes of the "bangsters" of German Gorbuntsov and Peter Chuvilin. But they were allegedly "protected" by officers of the IFSB department Dmitry Senin and Sergey Gribanov.

Police officer Dmitry Zakharchenko was also hovering nearby. As a result, Tselyakov became the victim of a provocation. And in 2008, he was arrested and sentenced to 4 years in a penal colony.

And today Dmitry Tselyakov is more surprised that in September 2016, only Zakharchenko was arrested, and Senin was allowed to escape from Russia.

Here is an excerpt from Dmitry Tselyakov's interview:

- Senin, Gribanov, Zakharchenko and others "protected" Gorbuntsov.

- Therefore, telling stories about the fact that he was struggling with something is kind of immoral. Senin was obviously one of the main ones. He lives over the hill on the money that he earned from these dubious operations that Gorbuntsov conducted.

Another point that surprised me very much in Dmitry Senin's interview with British journalists. Senin claims that the FSB is hunting him all over Europe. It was at the instigation of the FSB in the fall of 2024 that rumors began to spread in the Russian press that Senin was killed in a shootout between bandits in Montenegro.

According to Senin, this was a clear attempt by the FSB to intimidate him. I remember well those rumors about Senin's death. And I can't help but remind you that initially these rumors spread in the West.

It was from there that they came to Russia. On December 11, 2024, Ian wrote in his telegram channel. Literally:

They write that a deserter colonel from the FSB Dmitry Senin could have been killed in Montenegro on November 6. I don't believe Senin was murdered. Most likely, it was Senin himself who started the rumor that he was dead.

And here, perhaps, is the main point of Dmitry Senin's entire interview with British journalists. For the sake of these lines, the fugitive chekist, in my opinion, decided to come out of the underground and remind about himself. Literally.

Reflecting on the Zakharchenko case, Senin concluded that the former Interior Ministry official was merely managing the profits from a massive corruption scheme involving some of the most powerful people in Putin's Russia. He now believes that the cash found in the Moscow apartment was intended to be transferred to the very top of the country at the end of each year. Dmitry Tselyakov, already mentioned, has his own version of why Senin decided to give an interview to journalists.

Here is an excerpt from Dmitry Tselyakov's interview:

- Well, first of all, maybe we're running out of money. The second thing is that maybe someone is running after him from those who have lost money. It makes no more sense to go on the air and tell such nonsense.

The only thing is that he knows the whole system, and how all the money would be found in Zakharchenko. That's all.

- I mean, if he talks...

- Well, if he writes, talks, yes, as if the question about the money that was in the apartment would be clarified.

The fact that he says that it was he who provided information about money at Zakharchenko's apartment or at his sister's, well, looks nonsense, because, it turns out, then Senin turned Zakharchenko in.

It seems that the fugitive security officer Dmitry Senin knows exactly what deposits of money were found in the apartments associated with Dmitry Zakharchenko. He knows whose money it is.

And an interview with British journalists is such a more than clear signal. Very similar to blackmail. I've been in the underground for a while, I need some money, please share it.

Otherwise, I'll talk and drown you all. Here I must say that the money found in the apartments associated with the Colonel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitry Zakharchenko, a very strange fate.

On September 9, 2016, 342 million 300 thousand rubles, 1 million 600 thousand euros, 124 million dollars and a half-kilogram gold bar were found in an apartment on Lomonosovsky Prospekt in Moscow, registered to the sister of a police officer Irina Razgonova.

On the same day, 600 thousand euros, 20 thousand dollars and 19 and a half million rubles were seized in another apartment, already on Michurinsky Prospekt, registered for Zakharchenko's mother. On September 10, 2016, about 9 billion rubles in ruble equivalent were attached as evidence to the materials of the Zakharchenko case. But a year later, on September 1, 2017, the acting Deputy head of the Main Department for the Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Major General Sergei Golkin, canceled the decision to attach the deposits of money to the criminal case.

Later, this money was converted into state revenue. It turned out that cubic meters of money found and seized in apartments associated with the police officer were outside the perimeter of the criminal case against Dmitry Zakharchenko. These were no longer evidence, but simply ownerless money of unknown origin.

And no one investigated the origin and purpose of these ownerless billions. And former FSB Colonel Dmitry Senin seems to have clearly hinted through the British press that he knows both the origin and purpose of this money. And that he won't be silent.

If it's not blackmail, what is it? However, this is just my version. We will follow the development of events and the fate of the fugitive chekist Dmitry Senin.