Shocking details have emerged about the brutal murder of Russian crypto millionaire Roman Novak and his wife, Ana, who were found dismembered in a desert in Dubai last month. Roman and Ana were reportedly made to watch each other being tortured before they were finally murdered after a ransom plot went wrong.
A report quoting Russian media newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said the duo were “dismembered and poured into concrete” before being buried in a desert in Dubai. The couple had gone missing in early October while driving to meet “unidentified investors” by a lake in Dubai’s mountain resort of Hatta. Their remains were found by the UAE police a few days later.
The investigation report hints that Novak and Ana were lured into a rented villa by Russian men who posed as potential investors. The accused have been identified as Russian citizens Konstantin Shakht, a former police officer, along with Yury Sharypov and Vladimir Dalekin. They have since been arrested.
“The couple was tortured, forced to hand over the keys to their cryptocurrency wallets. Interestingly, the extortion trio ended up without any money—law enforcement officers found no treasure on them. Besides, they understand nothing about cryptocurrency. It’s likely that all of Novak’s wealth, if any, was transferred to the account of the mastermind behind the crime,” Komsomolskaya Pravda quoted an unnamed source.
The couple was then stabbed and made to watch each other as they were tortured. They then dismembered their body and packed the pieces into strong polyethene bags before using industrial-strength solvents to speed up decomposition in order to get rid of DNA traces, according to the report.
It’s likely that all of Novak’s wealth, if any, was transferred to the account of the mastermind behind the crime. All three kidnappers are currently in pretrial detention.
Novak, a resident of St. Petersburg, is a convicted fraudster. Before 2020, he embarked on a life of luxury, vacationing at expensive resorts, driving luxury cars, and living in country houses. It was later proved that he had made his fortune through fraud, defrauding investors in two business projects of 7 million rubles. Novak was sentenced to six years in prison, but was released early. Novak and his wife fled to the Emirates, where he posed as a friend of Pavel Durov and created apps for instant cryptocurrency exchange. Rumour has it that he scammed his developers and investors out of approximately $500 million.
