A Russian billionaire who invested in cryptocurrencies and his wife were kidnapped and dismembered after they were lured to meet investors at a mountain resort in the United Arab Emirates.
Roman Novak and his wife Anna were last seen alive a month ago. The couple, who permanently lived in Dubai, showed their life full of fast cars (e.g. the British AC Cobra) and private jets on social media. The millionaire also boasted about his connections, including: with Pavel Durov, owner of the Telegram social media empire.
The media opened the last known steps of the marriage. The couple was taken to the Hatta resort by their driver. At the lake, they changed to another vehicle to continue their journey. Novak then sent a message to his friends saying he was “stuck in the mountains on the border with Oman,” according to the Daily Mail. Additionally, he asked for PLN 200,000. dollars. Then the contact broke off. Concerned relatives notified the police.
The phones were tracked for the next two days. They logged in in Hatta, Oman and Cape Town. The signals went out in early October. According to the Russian investigative commission, which is participating in the investigation, the killers took special care of the victims' smartphones to confuse clues.
The dismembered bodies of the couple were found in shallow piles near the Dubai Desert Reserve. Three suspects were detained in Saint Petersburg and in the vicinity of Sevastopol and Krasnodar. Two of them are soldiers who previously fought in Ukraine and a former homicide investigator turned drug smuggler. The officers found, among others: a T-shirt of one of them with traces of Anna's blood.
Unconfirmed information suggests that they could have been “investors”. During the kidnapping, they allegedly demanded the password to Novak's cryptocurrency. “The wallet was empty,” local media reported. At the time of his disappearance, he was under investigation for stealing approximately USD 50 million from investors under the pretext of business development. According to the Russian report, the alleged victims included: businessmen from China and Middle Eastern countries.
According to “Komsomolskaya Pravda”, Novak “had a talent for presenting himself as a person who operated on the same level as Pavel Durov and Arab sheikhs.”[[
In reality, he was simply a talented manipulator who managed to convince people to give him hundreds of millions of dollars.
He ran a “fast and reliable cryptocurrency network” using an application developed “by Ukrainian developers.” Novak was previously scheduled to serve a prison sentence for embezzlement.
“Recently, Russian law enforcement authorities conducted inspections of cryptocurrency exchanges in Moscow, looking for traces of his investments,” KP reported.
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