Scam, fake front line, and a trip to Jerusalem: how Pavel Astakhov unsuccessfully tried to keep his son Anton Astakhov out of prison in a second criminal case

Scam, fake front line, and a trip to Jerusalem: how Pavel Astakhov unsuccessfully tried to keep his son Anton Astakhov out of prison in a second criminal case

18 апреля 2026 г.

Oleg Krapivin

A pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Holy Fire did not help former Children’s Rights Commissioner Pavel Astakhov protect his son Anton Astakhov from arrest.

Yesterday, the court ordered his detention as a preventive measure. Below is a chronology of events showing how Astakhov Sr. tried to prevent his son from being sent back to pre-trial detention.

When, on April 11, our project reported on the delegation traveling for the Holy Fire, we noted that it mostly consisted of disgraced figures seeking to regain favor with Vladimir Putin. He usually attends the Easter service at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in person, bringing the Holy Fire. Pavel Astakhov was also part of this delegation.

A source at the time stated that Pavel’s son had been convicted of embezzlement from NVC Bank, but that “the father managed to arrange for him to serve his sentence in a non-dangerous place within the Special Military Operation (SVO) zone. At the same time, he was also hiding there from a second criminal case — the embezzlement of funds from APA Bank. Astakhov is part of the delegation from the Spas TV channel of Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.”

However, the trip turned out to be unsuccessful: today, the Tverskoy District Court ordered the arrest of Anton Astakhov in the “APA Bank case.” Pavel made considerable efforts to prevent this outcome.

After the sentence in the NVC Bank embezzlement case, Astakhov Sr. quickly arranged for his son Anton to be sent from prison to the SVO zone. In the APA Bank case (where Anton bought the bank and immediately “burned it down” by siphoning off funds), partly due to efforts by the former leadership of the Deposit Insurance Agency (АСВ), only Armen Simonyan, previously a beneficiary of the bank, was initially made the main target. He was sent to Butyrka prison, where he spent two years, until efforts finally succeeded in bringing charges against Anton.

However, investigator Chebotarev behaved very strangely. He issued a decision in absentia to charge Anton but did not even bother to order his questioning. He never mentioned Astakhov Jr. at all. Anton was only brought up again during the court hearings in the APA Bank case, but once more a certificate appeared stating he was at the SVO. Incidentally, no verdict was ever issued for Simonyan either. He also left for the SVO during the proceedings. Everyone, of course, knew that Anton was not actually at the front, but for a long time this was ignored. Recently, however, it was noticed, and Pavel Astakhov, via Konstantin Malofeev, went on a pilgrimage for the Holy Fire.