The leap into the void by Ravil Maganov
1er September, the chairman of the board of directors and founder, in 1991, of the oil group Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, dies in the Central Hospital of Moscow. The versions concerning his death contradict each other. According to the Tass and Interfax agencies, this 67-year-old man committed suicide by defending himself from the sixth floor of the institution where he was being treated. The company, she says in a press release that he died “following a serious illness”. When questioned, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment. Lukoil was among the few companies to speak out against the war in Ukraine.
Yuri Voronov, a bullet in the head
On Monday July 4, it was in the swimming pool of his mansion, located in the upscale suburbs of Saint Petersburg, that the lifeless body of Yuri Voronov was discovered. He has a bullet in the head. The weapon is at the bottom of the water. This 61-year-old oligarch worked with Gazprom, the Russian gas giant, of which the state is the majority shareholder. Suicide or assassination? The local commission of inquiry favors the lead of a “dispute with business partners”.
The poisoning of Alexander Subbotin
On May 8, a former managing director of Lukoil, Alexander Subbotin, died in a shaman’s cellar on the outskirts of Moscow. He was poisoned with toad venom. According to the British newspaper The Independent, the 43-year-old man would have gone, under the influence of alcohol and drugs, to the shaman Magua Flores, who would have incised his skin to pour the venom into it. Alexander Subbotin would then have suffered a heart attack.
Vladislav Avayev, death in the family
On April 18, the former vice-president of Gazprombank, the Russian gas bank, died in his Moscow apartment, which was closed from the inside. Vladislav Avayev, who was close to Putin in the Kremlin, is found with a gun in his hand. His wife, pregnant, and his daughter lie at his side, shot dead. A family dispute would have prompted Avayev to kill them before killing himself. The next day, Sergey Protosenya, former manager of Novatek, Russia’s second-largest gas producer, was found hanged in the garden of his villa in Lloret de Mar, Spain. The police find the stabbed bodies of his wife and daughter.
Alexander Tulyakov hanged in his garage
On February 25, 2022, the day after the outbreak of war against Ukraine, Alexander Tulyakov, 61, a senior Gazprom executive, was found hanged in the garage of his house near Saint Petersburg. According to various testimonies, the police officers dispatched to the scene were asked to leave by the Gazprom security services. On February 28, Mikhail Watford, a Ukrainian-born Russian oligarch, was also found hanged in the garage of his home in Surrey County by his gardener. At 66, he had made his fortune in the energy sector after the fall of the Soviet Union.