Key Points
- Several Russian businessmen have recently died in apparent suicides or accidental and, at times, unclear circumstances
This story contains references to suicide.
Several Russian businessmen have recently died in apparent suicides or accidental and, at times, unclear circumstances, including cases since the country's invasion of Ukraine.
According to local reports, a number of those who have died had links to oil and gas companies, with deaths occurring both inside Russia and abroad.
US-born British businessman Bill Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005 when his efforts to expose corruption in Russian state-owned companies saw him denied entry to the country and declared a "threat to national security".
Bill Browder was the largest foreign investor in Russia until 2005, when he was denied entry to the country for exposing corruption in Russian state-owned companies. Source: AFP / BERTRAND GUAY
Other experts say such instances are not new in Russia, and have warned against leaping to "conspiratorial conclusions".
What is happening?
Since early this year, multiple deaths of Russian-connected businessmen have been reported, both inside Russia and abroad. Many of those have occurred since Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Mr Browder said the one common denominator among most of the deaths is that the men worked in the oil and gas business - including for Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom and privately-owned oil company Lukoil.
Last month, Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow, two sources familiar with the situation told Reuters, confirming reports by several Russian media. But circumstances surrounding his fall were unclear.
Russian state news agency TASS reported the death as a suicide, citing a law enforcement source.
In a statement, the company said he died "following a severe illness".
Fuel tanks of Russian multinational energy corporation Lukoil in Brussels, Belgium. Source: AAP / STEPHANIE LECOCQ/EPA
A former board member of Lukoil, Alexander Subbotin, was also found dead in Moscow this May after reportedly visiting a shaman, TASS reported.
Several deaths have been reported among those tied to Gazprom, including Leonid Shulman, who served as its head of its transport. He was found dead in a cottage north of Saint Petersburg in January, local news reported.
A source told RIA news agency his death was believed to be a suicide.
Another Gazprom executive, Alexander Tyulakov, was found dead in his St Petersburg home on 25 February, the morning after Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian media reported.
In a separate case, Ivan Pechorin, Aviation Director of the Russian Far East and Arctic Development Corporation (KRDV), was found dead in the Russian port city of Vladivostok in September. The company confirmed his death in a statement but provided no further details.
Local media cited a source who said he had died after falling overboard from a boat.
The reported deaths were all in Russia apart from that of Sergei Protosenya, a former top manager of Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer Novatek, who was found with the bodies of his wife and daughter at a villa in Spain.
Catalan regional police, investigating the case, have said they believe the deaths were a murder-suicide.
Mikhail Watford, a Ukrainian-born businessman, was found dead at a property in southeast England in February, local media reported, citing police.
'A feature of Russian politics'
Stephen Fortescue, an honorary professor in Russian politics at the University of NSW, said similar cases also occurred before the country's invasion of Ukraine - and are a feature of Russian politics.
"People dying in apparently suspicious circumstances in Russia - or Russians, or people associated with Russia, dying outside Russia - is not unusual. And it's certainly not something that started since the invasion of Ukraine," he told SBS News.
Professor Fortescue cited prominent cases, such as the fatal poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, and that more recently of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who survived. The Kremlin has dismissed Mr Navalny's assertion that Russia poisoned him.
"Before the invasion, there were lots of cases that haven't reached Western news sources with that degree of prominence," he said.
"It's a standard feature of Russian politics and business."
Why are Russian businessmen dying?
Professor Fortescue said he prefers not to leap to "great conspiratorial conclusions" too quickly.
"The thing you can say about these cases is that quite often, if you look at them in isolation, you could say, 'maybe we don't have to leap to conclusions'," he said.
"That's not to say that when there's a lot of them, knowing what we know about the way Russia operates, maybe we should be looking a bit more closely."
Professor Fortescue said a lot of the deaths that have happened in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union have been over property assets.
"A lot of these recent deaths have been in the oil industry, which is where there's a fair bit of money," he said. "So you might hypothesise that their deaths were related to an effort by somebody who wants to get hold of the assets of [a] particular company."
But while division of property assets might be an "immediate" hypothesis, he argues this does not fit with the actual cases, for example the death of Lukoil chairman, Mr Maganov.
"There have been no visible signs of anyone who is out to seize Lukoil," he said.
'A fight over money'
Professor Fortescue said such a hypothesis could extend to possession of money or information, particularly for those whose deaths occurred abroad.
Mr Browder also said he "suspects these murder are simply a fight over money".
"My theory on the deaths of these people is that there is a much smaller economic pie to divide up in Russia post sanctions," he told SBS News.
"These people sit in front of oil and gas, one of the last areas of the economy where the sanctions haven't hit, and someone wants the money they control."
Mr Browder said the businessmen who died "were not threatening in any way to the Kremlin".
"They were all relatively unknown businessmen who didn't wield any power or have any known views that were critical of the government," he said.
Professor Fortescue agreed there are alternative explanations which are more likely to suggest it is "something lower-level" than that of President Vladimir Putin.
What does this have to do with the war in Ukraine?
Eight months into Russia's war, Mr Browder said the deaths are a telling sign that "sanctions are working if the cash situation is so tight that they're killing each other over money".
But Professor Fortescue is less convinced, and questioned drawing a connection.
"I don't think that what's going on with these deaths is telling us something fundamentally important about the invasion or Putin's situation," he said.
"There are clearly conflicts going on at the top elite .. about how this war should be conducted, and how the economic policy should be made as a result.
"But it's hard to tie that debate with these particular cases that we're talking about."
With Reuters
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