Lloret de Mar in Spain, Saint-Petersburg in Russia or Surrey in England, the corpses are piling up without the trouble dissipating. Since January, at least six large Russian fortunes have died in circumstances that police investigations have not yet managed to clarify. A macabre sequence which began in January and has intensified since the start of the war in Ukraine, as revealed by the American magazine Newsweek.
A disastrous Easter holiday
On Monday, April 19, the Easter weekend comes to an end on the streets of Moscow when Vladislav Avaev, former vice president of Russia’s third-largest bank Gazprombank, is found dead in his multimillion-euro apartment on Universitetsky Prospekt , a building in the capital. The police quickly stumble upon the corpses of the oligarch’s wife and daughter. A gun is found in Avaev’s hands. The bodies were reportedly discovered by a relative of Vladislav Avaev after he was unable to contact the family for several days. The apartment appears to have been locked from the inside. Investigators are leaning towards a double homicide followed by a suicide.
The following day, 4,000 kilometers from the Russian capital, the body of Sergey Protosenya was found inert, hanging from a rope in the garden of a villa in the seaside resort of Lloret de Mar, in northeastern Spain. . The former senior executive of the Russian energy giant Novatek had come to enjoy the sun of Catalonia for the Easter holidays, in the company of his family. Quickly, the police discover the extent of the disaster.
Protosenya’s wife and daughter lie in blood, their bodies lacerated by multiple stab wounds. According to local media Telecinco and El Punt Avui, an ax and a knife were found next to Protosenya’s body. The track of the double homicide followed by a suicide is again favored by the investigators. The mimicry of crime scenes and the symmetry of the social identities of the deceased raise questions.
The trail of suicide
Taken by the throat by the Western sanctions which weigh on the greatest fortunes, could the two Russian oligarchs have murdered their family before ending their lives? The two dramas resemble in any case the death of a third oligarch, discovered in identical conditions. On March 24, billionaire Vasily Melnikov and his wife Galina and two sons were found dead in their luxury apartment in Nizhny Novgorod, western Russia.
They each bear stab wounds. The Russian business daily Kommersant reports that investigators concluded Melnikov killed his 41-year-old wife and children, ages 10 and 4, before committing suicide. According to the Ukrainian media Glavred, the billionaire’s company suffered significant losses with Western sanctions.
The conclusion of the authorities, however, does not convince the relatives and neighbors of the oligarch. Could these increasing disappearances have in turn been disguised as suicide? After the revelation of a possible poisoning, in March, of the oligarch Roman Abramovich following an appointment in Ukraine, these sudden deaths are intriguing. Especially in a Russian society where intelligence-sponsored killing operations have been documented for several years. The Skripal affair named after the ex-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, who had been poisoned in Salisbury, in the south-west of England, brought to light the practices of the Kremlin in 2018.
Law of series
These three deaths are in addition to those of three other oligarchs, which have occurred since January. A black series started by the death of two former executives of the gas giant, Gazprom. The company’s general manager, Leonid Schulman, was found unresponsive in his bathroom in the St. Petersburg area in January. Then its deputy director, Alexander Tyulyakov, was discovered hanged a few weeks later. On February 28, the Russian tycoon of Ukrainian origin, Mikhail Watford, was found dead at his home in Surrey in the United Kingdom. And no, it’s not the beginning of a spy novel…