Posted on 09/02/2022 10:05:40 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s a dangerous time to be a Russian oil executive lately, as eight have died since January under suspicious circumstances. Six of them were linked to state-owned giant Gazprom, while the other two were with Lukoil, the second-largest oil company in the country.
The most recent oligarch to meet an untimely end was Ravil Maganov, the (now former) chair of the board of directors of Lukoil who apparently fell from a 6-story window at a Moscow hospital on September 1. His company had criticized Russia’s invasion in Ukraine in March. Hmm.
This morning Ravil Maganov, head of Lukoil board of directors, fell out of a 6th floor window in Moscow Central clinical hospital and died.
This is at least a 6th such suicide among Russian top-managers recently.
Do you think these are accidents?
pic.twitter.com/puQzypKatP— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) September 1, 2022
Lukoil initially tried to pass off his death as the result of “severe illness.” However, Russian state media stepped in to clarify that story.
Baza, a Russian news site with close ties to the police, suggested he may have slipped from a balcony while smoking and that no CCTV was available because cameras had been turned off for repairs.
Meanwhile, the state-run news agency Tass claimed on Thursday that Maganov had taken his own life, citing a source in Russia’s security services who called Maganov’s death a “suicide”. That version of events could not immediately be verified by the Guardian.
Looks like we may never know what exactly happened. How convenient, though, that the security cameras had been turned off.
What the heck is going on in the former Soviet Union? John Lough, an associate fellow at London’s Chatham House think tank and an expert in Russian affairs, told NBC:
It is reminiscent of the banditry of the 1990s in Russia during the first phase of privatization after the collapse of the USSR…
This suggests there is some serious infighting taking place in the sector connected to access to financial flows.
To me, it suggests Vladimir Putin is systematically having his enemies offed, but maybe it’s a coincidence—times eight. Interestingly, Maganov’s death occurred on the same day that Vlad visited the hospital to pay his respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, who died on August 30 after a long illness. I know that proves nothing, but it’s intriguing nevertheless.
My colleague streiff wrote back in March about some of the other mysterious deaths:
The body of Sergey Protosenya, former top manager of Russia’s energy giant Novatek, was found together with those of his wife and daughter on Tuesday in a rented villa in Spain… The 55-year-old millionaire was found hanged in the garden of the villa in Lloret de Mar by Catalonian police, Spanish media reported, while his wife and daughter were found in their beds with stab wounds on their bodies.
Just a day before the body of Protosenya was found in Spain, on April 18, former vice-president of Gazprombank Vladislav Avaev was found dead… in his multi-million apartment on Universitetsky Prospekt in Moscow, together with his wife and daughter…The apartment was locked from the inside and a pistol was found in Avaev’s hands, leading investigators to explore the theory that Avaev shot his wife and his 13-year-old daughter before killing himself.
On March 24, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported the death of billionaire Vasily Melnikov in his luxury apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, the sixth-largest city in the country… Kommersant reported that investigators concluded that Melnikov killed his 41-year-old wife and 10-year-old and 4-year-old children before killing himself…
Ukrainian-born Russian tycoon Mikhail Watford was found dead in his home in Surrey in the U.K. on February 28… Watford, 66, was found hanged in the garage of his home by a gardener…
On February 25, Gazprom’s Deputy General Director of the Unified Settlement Center (UCC) for Corporate Security, Alexander Tyulyakov, was found dead in a cottage near St. Petersburg, as reported by the Russian newspaper Gazeta.
Tyulyakov’s body was reportedly found hanged in the apartment’s garage. Police found a note next to his body that led investigators to believe the oligarch had died by suicide.
At that time [In January], 60-year-old Gazprom’s top manager Leonid Shulman was found dead in the bathroom of a cottage in the Leningrad region, next to a note that led police to believe he died by suicide, according to Gazeta and Russian media group RBC.
Since streiff’s article was published, we can add Maganov and Alexander Subbotin, former top manager of Lukoil, to the list; he reportedly went into “in a state of severe alcoholic and drug intoxication” the day before his death in May.
Financier Bill Browder, who has a large portfolio in Russia, told Newsweek after Subbotin’s death that you should assume the worst:
…any time you see a wealthy Russian dying in suspicious circumstances.
There has been enough empirical evidence of assassinations organized by the Kremlin or business rivals in Russia, to make it likely that these were murders and not suicides and other explanations that have been bandied about by the Russian authorities.
If that’s not enough to convince you that dark things are going on under Putin, on August 29 a car bomb killed the daughter of ultra-nationalist political theorist and Putin ally Aleksandr Dugin. Theories are flying over whether the Ukrainians did it, Putin’s enemies, or maybe even Vlad himself ordered it as an excuse to escalate attacks against Ukraine. The Ukrainian woman who the Russians accuse of the assassination can’t tell us:
Natalya Vovk, whom Russia considers as the main suspect in murder of Daria Dugina has been reportedly killed in a hotel with 17 stab wounds.
Daria Dugina was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, adviser of Vladimir Putin.
pic.twitter.com/iYLaoOuFTT— G219_Lost (@in20im) August 28, 2022
A week earlier in Washington, D.C. a Putin and Ukraine war critic who lived in the U.S. named Dan Rapoport jumped from a high-rise to his death. As the NY Post writes, “Both deaths sound like something out of a Tom Clancy novel. But the world of Russian espionage is even more bizarre than fiction.”
All I know is I wouldn’t want to be a Russian oil oligarch or Putin critic right now.
Curiouser and curiouser
No, but I don’t know how to say Arkancide in Russian.
A typical Democrat Party inside struggle purge?
Periods of good republican government and rule of law have been rare in human history. America used to be in such a period, but is fast devolving into normalcy.
Being to close to Putin is like being to close to Hitlery or Bill.
Few realize there are two levels of Oligarch status. There is the original group, who were there before Putin arrived, and there is the second group...created after Putin arrived, and mostly former FSB/KGB members (this group holds status with Putin...the original crew is less so). I would make an assumption that a factional war has started up with one crew taking apart the second crew.
Seems like it
I listened to a Kremlin watcher analyst. He said that Russia is a kleptocracy. Putin decides who gets the money. He bases that on whose loyalty he must buy. The statement put out by the company wasn’t anti invasion, it was an attempt to avoid sanctions and wasn’t critical of the Kremlin in any way. It said, “War is bad. Violence is bad.
We hope this is over soon.”
The idea that anyone would murder these men without clearance directly from Putin is absurd. (According to the analyst.) The probability is that Putin has decided that the money needs to be redistributed to newer and better allies.
It is rather like the top guy in the Mafia deciding to redistribute the pie to new capos.
And this russia is what putards think is superior to the west....spit...
I really thought the the USA could have done more to invest in Russia after the USSR fell, getting companies, universities, business schools, etc. to help them develop into a free-market system.
I was probably too naive - the mobsters were already active under the Soviets, and with the fall could come out in the open.
I met an oil guy from the USA that worked in Russia. He was with a major firm like Exxon or something. He said he would always offer a fair price, but wouldn’t bribe or anything to get the lease. I asked him how was he able to do any business then?
“The guys that offer the bribes are all mob. And lots of people don’t like to deal with the mob. They might get a bribe up front, but then they are stuck with all the other crap the mob will bring.”
He did say how he kept his head down and did things quietly. He met another guy from the USA and the main hotel where the Americans stayed in Moscow. The other guy was big into buying properties and was real loud, bragged a lot about how he was buying up all the property, etc. He told the guy to shut up and be quiet about it and just do business, but the guy didn’t listen.
The real estate guy was found dead in some park in Moscow.
Yea, I know. Who does he think he is, Hillary?
Many Soviet immigrants that came to America in the 1970s were members of these gangs. The Russian mafia competed with Hispanic and Italian gangsters in New York. The collapse of the USSR was to Russian (and Ukrainian) organized crime what Prohibition was to American organized crime: a boon.
The KGB was aware of the criminal syndicates and infiltrated them. When the USSR collapsed, many KGB and Communist Party higher-ups took advantage of the chaos to enrich themselves. Putin was among them. The combination of gangsters and ex-KGB agents were well versed in ruthless tactics.
The comparison of Putin with the Clintons is appropriate. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton grew up in families with connections with organized crime. Bill's birth father and grandfather were bootleggers. His stepfather was connected with gambling and other rackets in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Chicago and New York gangsters "retired". Hillary Clinton's father was from notoriously corrupt Scranton, Pennsylvania (BTW, Biden's home town), where Hillary's grandmother ran a brothel. Her father was in the drapery business in Chicago and was a business partner with corrupt Chicago Congressman Dan Rostenkowski in a bank involved inoney laundering. It is probable that Hillary's father was on good terms with the Chicago "Outfit", which was multiethnic, unlike New York's Five Families.
So if Putin's enemies die of Arkancide, consider that both he and the Clintons come from corrupt and criminal backgrounds.
Darth Putin @DarthPutinKGB
List of people who’ve annoyed Kremlin & been poisoned:
Anna Politkovskaya
Vladimir Kara Murza (twice)
Petr Verzilov
Alexander Litvinenko
Sergei Skripal
Alexander Perepilichny
Yuri Shchekochikhin
Emilian Gebrev
Viktor Yushchenko
Alexey Navalny
Pro Kremlin figures poisoned:
...
Eight isn’t a “pile”. The Russians have demonstrated what piles of bodies look like, mountains really.
The oligarchy was in cahoots with our deep state, washing money through Ukraine.
I was probably too naive - the mobsters were already active under the Soviets, and with the fall could come out in the open.
America's "economic advisors" helped the oligarchs financially rape the Russian people.
The U.S. had sent Ivy League experts to Russia to help them privatize their economy. Russian citizens all received stock shares in newly privatized state properties (e.g., oil & gas fields, farmlands, media, factories, etc.).
But these private citizens were financially naive and desperately poor. Russia's first batch of oligarchs (working with America's advisers) bought up these shares for far less than they were worth.
What we should have done was ban people from selling their shares for a least 10 years. You don't give valuables to an inexperienced child, then shove him out into the "free market" and expect him to show any financial savvy.
Funny how it's ok when Democrats interfere in other country's elections.
Well, to be fair, Republicans also interfere in other country's elections. Especially Neocons.
Meddling in other countries' politics is a long American tradition, going back to the heyday of the Banana Republics over a century ago.
We helped Panama secede from Columbia in 1903 so we could build the canal. (Ironic, that we wouldn't let the Confederacy secede, but within a generation helped Panama secede.)
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