Vladimir Putin and Ravil Maganov pose at an official ceremony held in November 2019 in the Kremlin /
Ravil Maganov had recently suffered a heart attack and the Police treat the case as a suicide, which brings to seven the Russian billionaires linked to oil or Putin who would have taken their own lives this year
The head of Russia’s largest oil company, Ravil Maganov, died this Thursday after “falling out the window” from the sixth floor of the Moscow Central Clinical Hospital. The 67-year-old executive had recently suffered a heart attack and was under treatment with antidepressants. The events occurred around seven in the morning (early morning in Spain) and have been described as a “death by suicide”, police sources have reported to the Tass agency.
Maganov held senior management positions in the oil consortium for the last 29 years. He was the first executive vice president of the company and in 2020 he became president after the death of his previous manager, Valeri Greifer. It so happens that Lukoil requested last March the cessation “as soon as possible” of the invasion of Ukraine and redirect the conflict towards “diplomatic channels”. The board of directors expressed its “concern regarding the tragic events” in the former Soviet republic and communicated its “deep condolences to all those affected by this tragedy.” It was, therefore, one of the first Russian companies to show its disagreement with the “special operation” ordered by President Vladimir Putin. The oil company closed its statement with a commitment to “strengthening peace” and “humanitarian relations”
The consortium was created by the Government of the former Soviet Union in 1991 as a result of the merger of some of the main companies in the country dedicated to the extraction of crude oil. Its importance has only been rivaled by the state-owned Rosneft after it acquired the assets expropriated by the Government from Yukos. Under the presidency of Greifer, Maganov’s predecessor, the company received a huge boost. In 2006 it obtained great returns from the exploitation of a series of deposits discovered in the north of Russia, in the Kholym region, whose crude oil was more expensive and of higher quality than the Brent extracted mainly in the North Sea. At that time, it was estimated that Lukoil had reserves of one billion tons.
open investigation
Born in Tatarstan, Maganov graduated in 1977 from Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas. He worked as an engineer in various oil fields and was appointed director of Langepasneftegaz, one of the energy companies that later became part of the Lukoil consortium. Some Russian media explained this morning that Maganov could have returned in recent months to his position as first executive vice president in this corporation.
Police have opened an investigation into his death. The businessman’s body was discovered shortly after dawn on the sidewalk at the foot of the window of his room, located on the sixth floor of the Clinical Hospital. Police have confirmed that the fall occurred from the window of his room. According to Russian media, Maganov suffered from a serious and long cardiovascular disease. Russian media indicated that he suffered from depression and was under drug treatment.
His death recalls other tragic deaths that this year have convulsed the Russian economic sector and generated multiple speculations in the West, especially as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. In July, Yury Voronov, 61, the head of the Astra shipping company, was found dead. His body was floating in the pool and he had been shot in the head. The discovery occurred in his mansion in St. Petersburg. Voronov’s company had a relationship with the Gazprom gas company, since he had worked under him on several Arctic prospecting. Apparently he was having financial problems. And before Voronov, in January and February of this year, the bodies of Leonid Shulman, head of the Gazprom Invest transport service, and Alexandr Tiukiakov, deputy director general of the Gazprom Single Accounts Center, appeared. Both died within weeks of each other; the first with a bullet in the temple and the second hanging from a beam. Next to him were located two farewell letters.
The series of mysterious suicides continued on March 24. Billionaire Vasily Melnikov, his wife and his two sons, ages 10 and 4, were stabbed to death in their Nizhny Novgorod apartment. The investigation again pointed to a triple murder followed by suicide. Melnikov’s medical equipment company was suffering heavy financial losses. In a similar case, former Gazprombank deputy chairman Vladislav Avaev was found dead by a relative at his Moscow home, along with his wife and his 13-year-old daughter. Apparently, all of them had injuries caused by the gun that Avaev had in his hand. Again, some deaths marked by his relationship with senior officials of the gas giant Gazprom.
Twenty-four hours after this event, Sergey Protosenya, former director of Novatek, the largest independent gas-producing company in Russia. took his own life after murdering his wife and daughter in a rented house in Lloret de Mar. It is not surprising, therefore, that Maganov’s death this morning has renewed conspiracy theories about a dirty war in the sector Russian energy company or a wave of crimes against millionaires linked to Vladimir Putin. Police have already closed most of the cases as suicides.