Sergueï Protosenya / FacebookSergueï Protosenya is the last of the six Russian oligarchs found dead in mysterious circumstances since late January (photo Facebook).
WAR IN UKRAINE – They were found dead in Lloret del Mar, Nizhny Novgorod, London or Saint Petersburg. Since the beginning of the year, several Russian oligarchs have been spotted after apparent suicides, often in the company of family members who have also died. A series of mourning that calls into question, especially at the time of the invasion of Ukraine.
The youngest is Sergei Protosenya, a multimillionaire who made his fortune running a private gas giant, Novatek. He was found hanged at his villa on the Costa Brava, Spain, on April 19. Next to him were his wife and 18-year-old daughter, whose bodies were covered with stab wounds. And if blood-stained bladed weapons were found not far from him, the Spanish press reports that there was no trace of blood on his clothes. No need to worry about his employer, who has already swept away all “speculation” about the case.
But is it then a suicide after a family drama or a veiled triple homicide? The local police are interrogating and investigating. Especially since the case is reminiscent of others, as the American magazine Newsweek reported for the first time.
“Mask Murder”
The day before, it was also Vladislav Avayev, former No. 2 of Gazprombank, the financial arm of the Russian energy giant and Russia’s third-largest bank, who was also found dead. In Moscow, his bullet-riddled body was discovered next to those of his pregnant wife Yelena and 13-year-old daughter Maria in a luxury apartment locked from the inside.
A case that was immediately qualified by the Russian state media as a double murder of the fifty-year-old and subsequent suicide, but whose story does not convince everyone. Igor Volobuev, another head of Gazprombank, said after announcing that he would fight alongside the Ukrainians against Russia that he was thinking more of a staging. “Why do I think this is a fabricated murder? Maybe because he knew too much and was threatening someone’s interests.” And to recall that Vladislav Avayev had been a key member of Vladimir Putin’s government in the past.
Several Russian oligarchs have died in suicides since the beginning of the year, police suspect. https://t.co/MQEjKCXr2g
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) April 22, 2022
But Gazprom and its elders were not spared in this series of suspicious deaths. At the end of January, Leonid Shulman, a key executive of the group, reportedly committed suicide at his home near Saint Petersburg by cutting his veins. Then, on February 25, a day after the start of the Russian invasion, another senior manager of the company, Alexander Tyulyakov, was found hanged in his home in the same district near the “Venice of the North”.
Lawyers fired and businesses faltering
For these two cases, the Russian state press assures that suicide notes were discovered near the bodies, the first of which caused unbearable pain in the leg from an injury. But the American medium Fortune also reports that Leonid Shulman was under investigation for fraud related to his employment, and several publications stated that the day before his suicide, Alexander Tyulyakov returned home injured, with marks reminiscent of beatings. The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta adds that the forensic experts were fired by Gazprom’s security service when they started their investigations.
The same scenario on February 28th in London with Mikhail Watford. This entrepreneur, who made his fortune in the gas and oil sectors at the collapse of the USSR before founding a real estate empire in the UK, was actually found in the garage of his mansion in great London. A still unexplained death that the British police are trying to solve.
And in mid-March it was Vasily Melnikov, billionaire boss of a major pharmaceutical company (Medstom), who was found dead, accompanied by his wife and their two sons, the four bodies with stab wounds in their luxury apartment in Nizhny Novgord, western Russia. Once again, the Russian press immediately conjured up a family drama followed by suicide, especially as Medstom was on the brink of economic collapse due to Western sanctions imposed since the invasion of Ukraine.
The mysterious deaths, an old refrain under Putin
Deaths that, individually, could all appear as different facts, but the rapid succession of which inevitably raises doubts, as Sergei Jirnov, a former Russian intelligence service, recently pointed out. to our colleagues from TV5 Monde. It also raises the possibility of a wave of suicides linked to Western sanctions and the fortunes they could wipe out, as most of these six deaths occurred after the Russian invasion began, or even cases specifically linked to family stand situations and jealousies.
But, as Sergei Jirnov reminds us, the trace of the eliminations ordered by the Russian authorities and carried out by the secret services cannot be ruled out. An opinion shared by the “Warsaw Institute” specifies Le Figaro, especially since most of these men all worked in the same energy sector.
“Billionaires rarely commit suicide”
In Brunet Et Cie, @SergeiJirnov comments on the multiple disappearances of oligarchs in Russia 🇷🇺💰🔪With @ericbrunet and @Julie_Hammettpic.twitter.com/jl5eTXiwpA
— LCI (@LCI) April 26, 2022
As early as 2017, the American daily newspaper USA Today published an investigation listing almost forty deaths of leading personalities from Russia’s economy and politics as well as diplomats. With a fairly blatant insinuation from Vladimir Kara-Murza, an opponent of power in Moscow, himself a victim of multiple poisoning attempts: “Since Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, the death rate has clearly increased among people who rely on one or got involved with the Kremlin in other ways.”
And this without even mentioning the cases of poisoning in the media involving Alexei Navalny, a leading opponent, or former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom.
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