Why are so many rich Russians the victims of violent deaths...?
WHEN Russian billionaire Alexander Subbotin was found dead in bizarre circumstances in May it appeared to be a strange case of misadventure.
The former executive with energy giant Lukoil reportedly died after suffering complications from an “alternative cure for a hangover” provided by two shamans.
The oligarch, 43, who owned a transport company, was allegedly given toad venom after arriving at the shamans’ property in a drug and alcohol-addled state.
He was then given natural valerian herb tranquilliser, instead of an ambulance being called to their home in Mytishchi, north east of Moscow. Reports suggest he laid down to recover and was found dead the following morning on May 8 by the shamans. There is an investigation underway into the death, which while unusual, may on the surface not appear suspicious.
Yet Subbotin is the eighth strange or suspicious death of a Russian oligarch since the start of the year, and the seventh since the Kremlin invaded Ukraine.
Seven of the deceased were current or former high players in the energy industry and five had connections to Gazprom, a majority state-owned multi-national energy corporation, or its subsidiaries.
Six days before Subbotin died, Andrei Krukovsky, 37, general director of the Gazprom-owned Krasnaya Polyana ski resort, in Sochi, reportedly fell while descending a mountain and later died in hospital. Russia’s Investigative Committee has launched a preliminary investigation.
Although, apparently accidental, there are those who view the spate of oligarchs deaths as suspicious.
American born Bill Browder, once the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia, is believed to be on Putin’s “hit list” after exposing Kremlin sanctioned multi-million
US dollar tax fraud involving his company Hermitage Capital Management.
He has investigated a number of suspicious deaths of Russians, including that of his tax adviser Sergei Magnitsky, 37. He was arrested after he identified the fraud and later died in prison in Moscow in 2009, after being denied medical treatment.
Mr Browder said: “When rich Russians die in suspicious ways you should always assume the worst first.
“There have been so many murders that are covered up to try to look like suicide.
“If these were eight people from a different country then you would not necessarily have to think like that.”
Former KGB double agent Boris Karpichkov, 63, who has sought refuge in the UK since 1998, also believes he remains on a Kremlin hit list, after being warned several times by a Russian security source as recently as this year.
In a message he says was sent to him on April 22, the source warned of several further eliminations on foreign soil on orders of Vladimir Putin, “which are planned to be staged under the pretext of ‘suicides’ or looking like ‘accidents’.”
That was three days after the death of multi-millionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55, a former director of Gazprom’s gas producer Novatek. He was found hanged outside a Spanish villa on the Catalonian coastline.
The bodies of his wife Natalya and daughter Maria, 18, were found axed to death in their beds. Spanish Police are treating it as murder-suicide, but news reports said there were no fingerprints on the weapon and no blood on Protosenya’s body. Sergey’s son Fedor said: “He could never do anything to harm them. I don’t know what happened that night but I know my dad did not hurt them.”
Just a day earlier on April 18, Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former vice-president of Gazprombank and a Kremlin official previously close to Vladimir Putin, was found dead in his Moscow apartment with the bodies of his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter Maria, 13.
Initial reports were Avayev shot his family then turned the gun on himself. But a neighbour described him as a nerd incapable of killing. On March 23 billionaire Vasily Melnikov, 43, owner of medical company Medstom, and his family were found dead in their luxury apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, with knife wounds. Investigators concluded Melnikov killed his wife, 41, and children, ten and four, before slashing an artery. Mr Browder said: “As most of these are in the gas business, it is extremely suspicious.”
On February 28, four days after the invasion, Ukrainian-born energy tycoon Mikhail Watford, 66, was found apparently hanged in the garage of his Virginia Water mansion. A neighbour said Watford feared that he was on “Putin’s hit list” and told her Boris Bertesovsky, 67, found hanged at his Berkshire mansion in 2013, had been murdered by Russian security services.
On February 25, Alexander Tyulyakov, 61, from Gazprom, was found hanged in
‘When rich Russians die assume the worst’ ‘Most are in the gas business’
the garage of his home in a luxury complex in Lenisky, near St Petersburg.
Gazprom security reportedly arrived and kept police from the scene.
As Russian troops massed near the border, on January 30, another Gazprom executive was found dead in the same complex. Leonid Shulman, 60, head of Gazprom’s Invest Transport Service, was found dead with wrist wounds.
And just last week another mystery death was added to the list after multi-millionaire Yevgeny Palant, 47, was found stabbed to death in his Moscow home.
Palant and wife Olga, 50, both Ukrainianborn, were found with multiple knife wounds by daughter Polina, 20, on June 27, with reports suggesting she may have butchered him after discovering the telecoms tycoon “cheated on her” before killing herself. Yet close friend Mikhail suspects they were both murdered as they were a “true example of a loving family” and always “so harmonious”.