CNN have linked at least five, maybe six, deaths, which they believe have several common features.
- They are all Russian or have a Russian background.
- They were rich in stone.
- Four of them are connected to the state-owned Russian gas company Gazprom or to subsidiaries.
- Three of them must have taken the life of their family before they took their own lives.
Two of the men were found dead in or near their homes in Russia in January and February. Local authorities concluded with suicide.
Leonid Shulman was head of transportation at Gazprom Invest. He was found dead in the country house in Leninsky outside St. Petersburg on January 30, according to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. It is said that a suicide note was found in the city.
One month later, another director of Gazprom was found dead in the same village. Alexander Tyulakov was found dead in his garage on February 25, according to Novaya Gazeta, which states the cause of death as suicide.
Thought agents killed friend
Three days later, Mikhail Watford, a Ukrainian-born Russian billionaire, was found dead at his home in Surrey, England. The cause of death is not yet known, but a body code was announced in July. Watford is said to have been a friend of the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who was found dead at his home in Berkshire in 2013.
At the time, the conclusion was suicide. Watford is said to have stated that he believed the friend was killed by intelligence agents.
On March 23, Vasily Melnikov, another Russian businessman, was found dead with his family in Nizhny Novgorod, a city east of Moscow. CNN writes that the Russian newspaper Kommersant has covered the death.
Must have killed his wife and children
Melnikov owned MedStorm, a company that supplies medical equipment. The 43-year-old was found dead together with his wife of 41, and also two children aged four and 10. All four were stabbed. According to local investigators, no signs of burglary were found in the apartment. Investigators will have murder and suicide as one of their hypotheses.
In April, another rich businessman, his wife and daughter were found dead in Moscow. Vladislav Avayev, a former vice-president of Gazprombank, was found dead with his wife and daughter in the family’s apartment on April 18.
According to the state news agency Tass, investigators believe that it may be about murder and suicide.
Do not believe in suicide
Igor Volobuev, a former vice president of Gazprombank, told the news agency Nexta that he does not believe that Avayev took his own life, and that it is about organized killings.
He points out that Avayev handled VIP customers and large sums of money, and rather that he may have known something that could have posed a threat to some others.
PUTIN CRITIC: Igor Volobuev does not believe that Vladislav Avayev took his own life. Here he is photographed by Reuters in Kyiv on April 2.
Photo: GLEB GARANICH / Reuters
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The next day, April 19, another Russian was found dead, also with his wife and daughter, near the Spanish city of Barcelona.
55-year-old Sergei Protosenya, a former director of Gazprom’s gas producer Novatek, was found dead in the garden outside the family’s holiday home in Lloret del Mar. The wife and daughter were found dead inside the house.
Speculation
Drapa is being investigated by local police who are said to have classified it as domestic violence with subsequent suicide.
The son Fedor Protosenya wins for the British newspaper Daily Mail that he does not believe his father killed his mother and sister. He was himself in the home of the family in France when the murder happened and is not suspected of having anything to do with the death.
Speculations in the Spanish press that it will be about triple murder, are rejected by local police. They are also said to have rejected the possibility that the Russian mafia is behind it.
Protosenya’s former employer states that they are convinced that there is no basis for the speculation and says they have confidence that the Spanish police are conducting a thorough and objective investigation.
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