Russian couple ‘watched each other being tortured to death’ over £380,000,000 in crypto | News World
A convicted Russian cryptocurrency fraudster and his wife were tortured to death in a UAE desert after their captors failed to extract £380 million from their accounts, it has been reported.
Roman Novak and his wife Anna were last seen on October 2 after being lured to the resort town of Hatta, 130 kilometers from Dubai, by criminals posing as potential investors.
Police dug a 500 meter by 500 meter stretch of desert in the Hajar Mountains near the border with Oman – where their cellphones were last detected – to recover their remains more than a month later.
Since then, further details about the couple’s fate have been reported by Russian media.
Before their murders, Roman and Anna were tortured into giving up access codes to their cryptocurrency wallets – but they were empty.
Metro decided not to share details surrounding the torture methods due to their gruesome nature.
Their bodies were then wrapped in thick polythene bags and doused with chemicals – powerful solvents to speed up the decomposition process and destroy DNA evidence.
An investigation was launched after the two men’s family alerted Dubai Police that they were missing and believed to have been kidnapped.
Roman was sentenced to six years in prison in Russia for large-scale fraud in 2020.
After being granted parole, he left for the United Arab Emirates, where he launched a crypto app called Fintopio, for which he allegedly raised an investment worth £380 million, before allegedly defrauding investors.
Svetlana Petrenko, of the Russian Investigative Committee, said: “The investigation established that the killers had accomplices who helped organize the kidnapping.
“They rented cars and premises where the two victims were forcibly held.
“After the murder, the perpetrators got rid of the victims’ knives and personal belongings, leaving them in different emirates.”
Three men have since been arrested in St. Petersburg and charged while returning from the United Arab Emirates.
They were named Russian citizens Konstantin Shakht, a former police officer, as well as Yury Sharypov and Vladimir Dalekin.
Sharypov and Dalekin have both pleaded guilty, while Shakht denies the charges.
All accused were remanded in custody until December 28.
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