Thursday 4 August 2022 10:07 PM Why have so many Russian tycoons died suspiciously since the war began? trends now
Yuri Voronov’s corpse was found floating in his country house swimming pool early last month. Drowning accidents occur every summer, all over the world. But Mr Voronov, a multi-millionaire Russian tycoon, met his watery end in a manner that was both highly unusual and, no doubt, alarming to some of his peers.
Mr Voronov, 61, did not drown. The normally crystal waters were clouded with blood, thanks to the close-range gunshot wound that killed him.
Then there is the case of Anatoly Chubais. A former deputy prime minister, he oversaw Russia’s transformation from communist to capitalist economy.
He was taken suddenly and seriously ill this week. Until recently President Putin’s special envoy on sustainable energy and climate change, Mr Chubais, 67, was the highest Kremlin official to resign his post and leave the country in protest at the invasion of Ukraine.
It is being reported that the economist is on life support, suffering from a rare neurological disorder. Other sources and opposition activists have speculated that he is the victim of an attempted murder by poisoning, made to look like natural causes. An unnamed European intelligence agency is investigating.
Such suspicion is understandable. The Chubais case is only the latest in a series of mysterious illnesses and violent deaths — more than a dozen — to have befallen Russian businessmen, officials and their close families, since Putin’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine began and Western sanctions were imposed.
Since President Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, more than a dozen Russian businessmen, officials and their families have died in unusual circumstances. Yuri Voronov (pictured above centre) was found dead in his swimming pool
Pictured: The first Kremlin official to quit over the war, Anatoly Chubais, left, in March, and, right, in hospital in Italy in August
The deaths appear to have been caused either by suicide or domestic dispute, albeit amid wild tales of shamans, toad venom, illicit affairs and hearts drawn in blood.
Yet there is another link. Like the unfortunate Voronov and Chubais, a number of these dead men held high-ranking positions at — or had close working ties with — the Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom. This £68 billion leviathan — Russia’s biggest company — is centre stage in the Kremlin’s economic and military confrontation with the West over Ukraine.
As a number of European countries are major users of Russian gas — around a third of Germany’s gas is supplied by Moscow — energy supplies can be weaponised by the Kremlin. And if Putin wants to turn off the tap, Gazprom is the vehicle for this policy.
So what does this have to do with the sudden death of so many multi-millionaires who have prospered in the Putin years? Couldn’t their grisly ends have been prompted by the stress of the strict sanctions imposed by the West on their businesses and personal assets? Or perhaps, more prosaically, by the kind of catastrophic marital disputes that plague the super-rich?
Of course it is just possible that the litany of deaths is a horrible coincidence. But in Russia, such ‘coincidences’ have a sinister history. Some believe the Kremlin is behind the ‘suicides’. Had the victims fallen out of favour, for whatever reason, or did they know too much about Gazprom’s labyrinthine financial secrets, endemic corruption and links to the security services?
In a time of war, a dictator does not pussyfoot. And Putin, the former KGB operative, has indeed torn up the rule book.
Pictured above: Vladimir Putin with Anatoly Chubais - the first Kremlin official to quit over Russia's war in Ukraine
Alexander Tyulakov (left), and Leonid Shulman (right), were found dead in the same St Petersburg suburb from hanging and stabbing respectively
He has invaded a sovereign state. His artillery regiments are launching missiles into residential neighbourhoods. His foot soldiers are raping and executing civilians. And he is holding world food supplies hostage by his blockade of Black Sea grain exports.
Against this backdrop, removing a few troublesome tycoons with a knife, gun or poison must seem no bother at all.
The killing — or culling — began in January as Russian forces massed on the Ukrainian border.
Leonid Shulman, the 60-year-old boss of Gazprom Invest’s transport service, was found dead in a pool of blood on the floor of a bathroom in his house in a wealthy gated development in the district of Leninsky near St Petersburg, where many top Gazprom officials have their country homes.
There were wounds on both his wrists. He had badly broken a leg at New Year and he reportedly left a suicide note stating that he was suffering severe pain. Other reports suggested he was being investigated for fraud. All that was undisputed was his death.
On February 25 — the day after the Ukraine invasion began — and again in the Leninsky estate, Shulman’s Gazprom colleague Alexander Tyulakov, 61, was found dead. His girlfriend apparently discovered his body in the garage.
The ‘senior financial and security official at deputy general director level’ had died by hanging. A ‘suicide note’ was found nearby, the contents of which have not been disclosed. Reports said he had been ‘badly beaten’ before death.
And so it has continued. On April 18, Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former Kremlin official and vice president of Gazprombank, the energy company’s financial affiliate, was found dead by his daughter Anastasia in his family’s £2 million flat on the 14th floor of a Moscow block.
Pictured: Billionaire 43-year-old Alexander Subbotin, a former top executive with Kremlin-friendly energy giant Lukoil, was found dead in May 2022 in the basement of the home, near Moscow, of a ‘shaman’ who specialised in voodoo rituals
Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged in Spain, after apparently killing wife Natalia, 53, and daughter, Maria, with an axe
And not only Avayev — but his wife Elena, 47, and their other daughter Maria, 13. All had been shot and a pistol discovered in the dead man’s hand.
An as yet unsubstantiated story — disputed by friends — suggested he had been driven to madness after his wife told him that she was pregnant by their chauffeur. It had, therefore, gone down officially as a case of murder-suicide.
But a neighbour said: ‘He was a nerd. He was smart and rich. There was no way a man like that could kill.’ Three days later, an even more bloody, family-sized slaying took place, this time in the Spanish resort of Lloret de Mar.
Millionaire Sergei Protosenya, 55, former deputy chairman of Novatek — Russia’s largest private gas company of which Gazprom is a major shareholder — was found hanged in his villa garden. The bodies of his wife Natalia and 18-year-old daughter were also in the house. They had been hacked to death with an axe as they slept.
Spanish police have made no comment to the Mail on their investigation but are believed to be working on the premise that this was another murder-suicide.
The dead man’s son, Fedor, has said he believes it was a triple murder made to
