Oil chief who criticised Ukraine war falls to his death

Oil chief who criticised Ukraine war falls to his death

The chairman of Russia’s largest private oil company has died after falling from a Moscow hospital window, it is being reported.

Ravil Maganov, 67, fell from the sixth-floor window of the Central Clinical Hospital, the business website RBC cited police sources as saying.

Reuters also spoke to a source who said that Mr Maganov had fallen from the window.

The hospital, which is known locally as “The Kremlin Clinic” for its popularity with the Russian elite, has confirmed Mr Maganov’s death to the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti.

It did not, however, confirm the cause of death.

A state-owned news agency, Tass, claimed that Mr Maganov had taken his own life, citing an unidentified law enforcement official.

Mr Maganov was chairman of Lukoil, which was one of the few Russian companies to publicly criticise Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Early in March, the Lukoil board called for an end to the conflict, and expressed its “deepest concerns about the tragic events in Ukraine”.

The company said only that Mr Maganov had passed away following a “serious illness”.

He is the second Lukoil executive who has died in unexplained circumstances.

In May, the death of a former senior manager at the company, Alexander Subbotin, prompted a criminal investigation by Russian police.

Mr Maganov had worked in Lukoil since 1993, shortly after the company’s inception, and had overseen its refining, production and exploration, becoming chairman in 2020.

Sudden, unexplained deaths

There have been many other businessmen who have died in mysterious circumstances in Russia. Here are seven from this year alone.

Leonid Shulman was the head of the transport service at Gazprom Invest, which handles investment projects for the state-owned gas giant Gazprom. The 60-year-old’s body was found on 30 January in the bathroom of a cottage in Vyborgsky district, north of Saint Petersburg.

As with Maganov’s death, an unnamed source told a state-owned news agency (this time RIA) that his death was believed to be a suicide. Again, he was also reported to have been ill at the time of his death.

Alexander Tyulakov was an executive at Gazprom. The 61-year-old was found dead in the garage of his St Petersburg home on 25 February, the morning after Russia invaded Ukraine.

His death was also claimed to be an apparent suicide, with the independent outlet Novaya Gazeta reporting that people describing themselves as members of Gazprom’s security services cordoned off the scene. The company, however, made no public comment on Tyulakov’s death.

Yury Voronov was the CEO and founder of Astra-Shipping, a company which worked on Arctic contracts for Gazprom. His is the third death linked to the oil giant. He had been shot in the head, and was found in a swimming pool at a cottage complex in Leningrad Region.

Vladislav Avayev is the fourth recent and unexplained death linked to Gazprom. The 51-year-old ex-vice president at Gazprombank was found dead in a Moscow apartment in April. The bodies of his wife and daughter were also found.

Again, it was reported that he took his own life, along with that of his wife and child. This was reported by Kommersant newspaper, which is owned by billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who is currently under Western sanctions.

On 19 April, Sergei Protosenya, a former executive at Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer Novatek was found dead, also with his wife and daughter. Their bodies were discovered at a villa in Spain. Catalan police said they believed he killed them and then took his own life.

Vladimir Lyakishev, the 45 year-old former co-owner of the Bratya Karavayevi restaurant chain, was found shot in the head on the 16th floor balcony of the building where he lived, in May.

66-year-old Mikhail Watford, a Ukrainian-born businessman, was found dead at a property in southeast England on 28 February. Surrey Police were quoted as saying that officers were not treating his death as suspicious, but that an investigation was under way.