Mihail Rogachev, former deputy director of “Norilsk Nickel” and former vice president for corporate management of Yukos, died after falling from a window. The body of the 64-year-old top manager was found under the windows of his house in Protopopovsky Pereulok. His apartment is located on the 10th floor of the residential complex next to the house of the Office for the Management of the President’s Property, the “Moscow Times” reported.
According to the law enforcement authorities, suicide is the main version of the incident, the Russian state news agency TASS reported. The investigators believe that Rogachev “suffered from an oncological disease”. Similar information is quoted by the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Mash. He also writes that the top manager left a suicide note.
At the same time, the sources of the journalistic “VChK-OGPU” in Rogachev’s immediate environment categorically deny the presence of a serious oncological disease in the deceased. According to them, he had had health problems in recent years due to failed surgery on his cervical spine and jaw, but they were not critical. His relatives believe that Rogachev did not have any prerequisites for suicide: in the morning he had breakfast with his relatives, he was in a normal mood, he was going to disassemble the garage, and then he disappeared.
According to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, the body of the top manager was found under the windows by an employee of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia – a personal driver and assistant to the former first deputy director of this service, former head of the presidential department for foreign relations Sergey Vinokurov.
Rogachev’s wife, in turn, finds messy documents on the floor. One part was pre-typed – the man described the history of the disease and blamed the doctor for the wrong operation, and the other was written by hand. “VCHK-OGPU” publishes its contents. In the text, Rogachev says goodbye to his wife and says that he cannot do anything else because of the “wild pain” and that only the “instinct for self-preservation” has kept him here.
From 1996 to 2007, Rogachev held various senior positions at Yukos, in 2008 he joined Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group, and three years later became deputy general director of the mining and metallurgical company Norilsk Nickel. From 2011 to 2015, Rogachev was the head of the Russian Fund for Technological Development.
In the autumn of 2022, under similar circumstances, 67-year-old Ravil Maganov, chairman of the board of directors of Lukoil, died. He fell from the window of the Central Clinical Hospital of the Presidential Administration of the Presidency in Moscow. The company’s official press release said that Maganov died “after a serious illness”.
Vladimir Nekrasov, 66, who took his place, died a year later of “acute heart failure.” Then Vitaly Robertus, Lukoil’s vice president and model aircraft champion, died at the age of 54. The reasons and circumstances of the senior manager’s death have not been disclosed in the company.
In May 2022, Alexander Subotin, former vice president and head of the main supply and sales department of Lukoil, died in Mytishti. According to Mash, the death occurred during a failed séance with shamans who tried to cure the man of a hangover with frog poison.
In all, the wave of mysterious deaths that has engulfed Russia’s oil and gas industry since the start of the war with Ukraine has claimed the lives of at least 12 high-ranking company executives, Mediapool reports.