The Investigative Committee and the Moscow prosecutor's office announced the detention of a man born in 1979, who was tracked down using video surveillance data in the Voronezh region and brought to Moscow. A woman born in 1986 was with him at the time of his arrest. Investigators said they were examining her possible involvement in the killings.
On October 3, bags containing human remains were found in an apartment on Zhulebinsky Boulevard in Moscow. The body of the woman's 19-year-old daughter was later found in a garage in New Moscow. During searches of the apartment and garage, investigators seized weapons and ammunition, including grenades and cartridges.
According to REN TV, Mash, Baza and other outlets, the victims were 53-year-old businesswoman Elena Tsereteli and her daughter Darya. Elena's former husband is Moscow restaurateur Mamuka Tsereteli.
The suspect was identified as Teimuraz Gogiashvili, also known by the call sign Gogi. His name was reported on October 4 by the security-linked Telegram channel Baza and by TASS. Before his detention, Moscow police had placed him on a wanted list.
According to investigators, Gogiashvili said he first shot the young woman in the garage and then killed her mother several hours later. Moskovsky Komsomolets reported that he had picked up Darya after a training session and taken her to a garage complex, allegedly to collect belongings. Investigators also accused him of attempting to conceal evidence. Although initial reports described a confession to both murders, the Investigative Committee subsequently said that Gogiashvili had partially admitted guilt.
Early reports suggested that the killings might have been connected to financial disagreements and the suspect's business difficulties. On October 12, however, defense lawyer Ibragim Marziyev told TASS that Gogiashvili disputed the alleged financial motive and maintained that the first confrontation had been a sudden personal conflict. These are competing accounts of the alleged motive, which has not been established by a court.
On October 5, Moscow's Kuzminsky District Court ordered Gogiashvili held in pretrial detention until December 3, 2026. He faces charges of murdering two people for financial gain and two counts involving unlawful possession or handling of firearms and ammunition. No verdict has been issued.
Important Stories and ASTRA reported that Gogiashvili had fought in Ukraine on the side of pro-Russian separatists since 2014, serving in the Sparta battalion commanded by Arsen Pavlov, better known as Motorola. The Telegram channel 112 reported the same. According to 112, Gogiashvili's former wife served as justice minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in 2014.
Ukrainian open-source investigators identified Gogiashvili as a Sparta member using the call sign Gogi as early as 2015. Although born in Georgia, he had spent many years outside the country. According to accounts of his background, he studied economics in Luhansk and later worked for commercial companies, including transport businesses. Reports concerning an older foreign-currency loan dispute in Georgia have not been independently verified.
From 2019 to 2021, Gogiashvili worked for the state-run Rossiya Segodnya media organization. According to ASTRA, he was involved in work at a warehouse complex in the Moscow region and described himself on his résumé as a senior specialist in a department responsible for routine maintenance and major repairs. One Moscow information system still listed him as an employee in 2023. He reportedly obtained Russian citizenship in 2021. After the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he continued traveling to occupied territories and assisting Russian war correspondents with transportation. Pro-war blogger Alexander Kots mentioned him among his companions and reported that he had participated in the fighting for Donetsk airport.
Gogiashvili was also involved in a business dispute with the defense-industry Shipunov Instrument Design Bureau. In 2026, an arbitration court partially upheld the bureau's claim and ordered the entrepreneur to repay 42.11 million rubles in an unearned contractual advance, along with 570,000 rubles in arbitration fees. The existence of this debt does not establish a connection to the alleged murders.
In October 2016, Gogiashvili was mistakenly reported killed in the explosion that claimed Motorola's life in Donetsk. Subsequent reporting identified the other man killed in the blast as Yevgeny Gadliya, whose call sign was Goga. The similarity between Goga and Gogi appears to have contributed to the confusion. Gogiashvili survived and continued working in Russia.
FACTUM.PRESS has since reconstructed Gogiashvili's biography and the case against him in greater detail. Our investigation into the man known as Gogi examines his years with Sparta, his work in Russian state media, the multimillion-ruble business dispute, the chronology of the killings, the charges and the defense's latest statements.