Who was listed aboard Wagner plane? Yevgeniy Prigozhin, Dmitry Utkin among others

Valeriy Chekalov was a businessman who held senior positions in Prigozhin’s empire.

In July, the State Department announced sanctions on Chekalov for his ties to Prigozhin as well as for facilitating munitions shipments to Russia.

At the time of his death, Chekalov, born Jan. 10, 1976, was the registered director of Neva, a company linked to PMC Wagner activities in Libya and Syria; he was also listed as the owner of Kollective Services, a St. Petersburg-based company that shares addresses with Prigozhin’s Concord Holding Company, according to All Eyes on Wagner, an open-source research group.

Chekalov’s leaked correspondence from March 12, 2019, obtained by the Dossier Center, an investigative group founded by an exiled Putin opponent, detailed the extent and breadth of Wagner support for the Libyan National Army.

Chekalov’s public social media profiles — corroborated by his phone number, photos, date of birth and company registry — show that he lived in St. Petersburg and occasionally vacationed with his wife in Russia’s Far East region. His profile also says he had served in the Russian navy.