In 2024, at a congress in Grozny, the “refugee” Agaev appeared on official Chechen television as the “representative of the Chechen diaspora in Germany” — evidently, after the sanctions imposed on Dugazaev, the authorities removed the risky “representative of Kadyrov” from their emissary’s unofficial title. At the congress, Agaev stressed that Chechens should be proud of Kadyrov.
According to flight database records, Agaev visits Chechnya every year, as does his son Selim, who is registered at an address on Putin Avenue in Grozny. Like Dugazaev, the younger Agaev is a mixed martial arts fighter, albeit on a lower level — not a European champion, but only the champion of Northern Germany.
Selim Agaev represents the Hamburg-based Roland club, where many other members of the Chechen diaspora train and compete. This club is part of a network of Chechen MMA clubs across Europe, with many fighters working in various branches of the security industry. Some of these well-trained combat athletes are involved in providing protection for criminal enterprises, a source in the German police told The Insider. According to him, their exceptional cohesion and readiness for violence make members of the Chechen diaspora especially prominent in the criminal underworld.
Hussein and Selim Agaev have themselves already appeared in police reports: according to a Der Spiegel source, in early May in Schleswig-Holstein the Agaevs beat up their business partner right in a lawyer’s office (the partner allegedly owed them tens of thousands of euros). According to the source, the victim unsuccessfully tried to jump out of a window but was ultimately forced to hand over the money. Agaev’s lawyer claims that the source’s description “does not even remotely correspond” to what happened, but German authorities are nevertheless conducting several other investigations involving Agaev, including on the suspicion of aggravated robbery and the alleged fencing of stolen goods as part of criminal group activity.
But more importantly, alongside standard crime, since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine Germany has increasingly been troubled by a new problem: Russia-directed sabotage and espionage. Today this often takes the form of recruitment through anonymous Telegram accounts that offer small payments to participants on the ground. Recruits are asked, for example, to covertly photograph the movement of trains and ships. But in the case of Saikhan Agaev, there is no need to do anything covertly — he openly and legally heads a logistics company that has access to all the information the Kremlin is after.
The mob’s presence at the logistical heart of Europe
Hussein (Saikhan) Agaev heads RIM-Group, a company founded in 2012 and specializing in logistics and security. On its Instagram account, the company showcased examples of its work at the Port of Hamburg.