A leading Russian oil tycoon has been found dead in suspicious circumstances after he plunged from a sixth floor window at a Moscow hospital.
Ravil Maganov, 67, chairman of Russian oil giant LUKOIL, died on the spot after falling from a window on the sixth floor of the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow at around 7.30am local time.
Reports suggested the oil executive was in hospital for a routine check-up for a long standing heart problem.
His death is the latest of a number of top Russian officials who have died in suspicious circumstances in recent months – with many mysteriously falling out of windows.
Maganov is also now among a series of Russian energy tycoons killed in suspicious circumstances.
Maganov, who was awarded a medal by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been chairman of LUKOIL since 2020 and was the executive vice president from 2006 to 2020.
Initial reports claimed that Maganov ‘threw himself out of the window’ before being found dead by medical staff. But police are still investigating whether this was a suicide or a suspicious death.
A packet of cigarettes is believed to have been found close to the window from which Maganov fell, leading to the supposition that he may have been smoking before falling.
It was also reported that at the time of his fall his wife was in the next room at the elite hospital.
Reports citing law enforcement sources said there was no suicide note and there were no CCTV cameras on the building in the place where he fell.
Video shows Russian law enforcement including the state’s security services at the scene today.
Maganov, whose brother Nail Maganov is the head of another oil company Tatneft, was awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky – a medal bestowed to civil servants for 20 years or more of highly meritorious service – in 2019 by Putin.
His wife Fania is the head of the English First language school in Almetyevsk while his son Ravil is a racing car driver.
Magonov’s mysterious death comes after an anti-Putin, Latvian-American businessman, was found dead in Washington DC, US, on August 14 after he fell from the window of a luxury apartment building.
Dan Rapoport, 52, was found outside 2400 M Apartments on August 14th shortly before 6pm. His body was discovered in the street along with his cracked cellphone, $2,620 cash, a keyring with a lanyard and a cracked white headphone.
Rapoport, a businessman who ran the iconic Soho Rooms nightclub in Moscow, lived in DC from 2012 until 2016 with his first wife, Irina.
Until this year, he had been living in Kyiv with his second wife, Ukrainian virologist Alena, and their young daughter. When was broke out in February, he sent them to Denmark and he returned to the US, planning to bring them over.
It was initially reported that Rapoport killed himself after setting his dog, Boy, free carrying a suicide note and cash.
His widow, Alena, says he did not kill himself and that Pugacheva’s sources are off.
Three days before his death, Rapoport posted a haunting image on Facebook of Marilyn Brando as Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now with the words: ‘The horror, the horror.’
He had become obsessed with the war in Ukraine and Putin’s Army, and had always been an outspoken critic of the regime.
In December, a Russian nationalist who criticised Putin and predicted civil war also mysteriously fell to his death from a fifth-floor window in Moscow.
Yegor Prosvirnin, 35, from Vladivostok, Russia, was found naked ‘under the windows of a residential building’ on Tverskaya Street in the centre of Moscow.
Mr Prosvirnin allegedly threw a ‘knife and gas canister’ from the fifth floor window, whilst neighbours heard ‘screaming and swearing’ before he fell, according to BBC Russia.
Mr Prosvirnin founded the controversial right-wing blog Sputnik and Pogrom and predicted the Russian Federation would ‘collapse’ while heavily criticising Putin and predicting a civil war.
During the Covid pandemic, there were a series of mysterious deaths were patients were found dead after jumping out of hospital windows in Russia – like in the case Maganov. There was no suggestion the LUKOIL chairman was suffering from Covid.
A top Russian scientist with close links to Edinburgh University who was ‘working on a Covid-19 vaccine’ was found dead in suspicious circumstances in St Petersburg in December 2020.
Biologist Alexander ‘Sasha’ Kagansky, 45, best known for his work on fighting cancer, was reported to have fallen in his underwear from a 14th floor window of a high rise residential building.
He also had a stab wound on his body, according to Moskovsky Komsomolets (MK).
The death follows six Russians plunging to their deaths from hospital windows earlier that year.
Five of the victims were being treated for coronavirus whilst one victim was a doctor who had complained about PPE shortages. Another doctor fell from a hospital window, but he survived.
In the last year, there have been multiple mystery deaths among some of Putin’s closest allies and associates – especially among gas executives like Magonov.
In May, billionaire Alexander Subbotin, 43, a former top executive with energy giant Lukoil, was found dead under mysterious circumstances.
The oligarch, who owned a lucrative shipping company, was reportedly treated with toad venom – put into an incision that had been made in his skin.
Soon afterwards, Subbotin had a heart attack and was given a tranquilliser from the herb valerian.
The mogul had sought the advice of shamans to cure a hangover, according to the official version of events, but his death comes as the deaths of other prominent tycoons are under the spotlight which critics of Putin’s regime say could be murders.
In April, Sergei Protosenya, 55, was found hanged outside a Spanish villa, with his wife Natalia, 33, and their teenage daughter Maria found hacked to death with an axe inside.
Investigators initially assumed that Protosenya, who had a fortune of £330million, had killed himself in the Lloret det Mar villa in the Costa Brava.
But local reports said evidence does not conclusively point towards this explanation, as no suicide note was found in the property and it appeared steps had been taken to ensure there were no fingerprints on the murder weapons.
The businessman had served as deputy chairman of natural gas company Novotek, a company closely linked to the Kremlin.
Just days earlier, the body of Vladislav Avayev, 51, was found in his elite Moscow penthouse alongside his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter, Maria, 13, in another apparent murder-suicide.
Avayev was previously a vice president at Gazprombank – a bank that was created to work for Russian gas giant Gazprom – and had also been a Kremlin official.
On February 25, the day after the Ukraine war started, the body of Alexander Tyulakov, 61, a senior Gazprom financial and security official at deputy general director level, was discovered by his lover.
His neck was in a noose in his £500,000 home.
Yet reports say he had been badly beaten shortly before he ‘took his own life’, leading to speculation he was under intense pressure.
In the same elite Leninsky gated housing development in Leningrad region three weeks earlier, Leonid Shulman, 60, head of transport at Gazprom Invest, was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor.
A note was found, the contents of which have not been disclosed, and the Russian Investigative Committee reportedly refused to discuss the deaths.
A knife was found on the bathtub, seemingly out of reach.
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