Ravil Maganov had recently suffered a heart attack and police are treating the case as a suicide, leaving seven Russian billionaires linked to oil or Putin to commit suicide 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 director had recently suffered a heart attack and was being treated with antidepressants. The events took place around 7 a.m. (early morning in Spain) and have been described as a “death by suicide,” police sources reported to the Tass agency.
Maganov has held senior management positions in the oil consortium for the past 29 years. He was the company’s first executive vice president and became president in 2020 following the death of his previous manager, Valeri Greifer. Coincidentally, Lukoil last March called for an end to the invasion of Ukraine “as soon as possible” and for the conflict to be redirected to “diplomatic channels”. The board expressed its “concern at the tragic events” in the former Soviet Republic and expressed its “deep condolences to all those affected by this tragedy”. It was therefore one of the first Russian companies to disagree with the “special operation” ordered by President Vladimir Putin. The oil company closed its statement with a commitment to “strengthen peace” and “humanitarian relations”
The consortium was established in 1991 by the government of the former Soviet Union as a result of the merger of some of the major companies in the country engaged in the extraction of crude oil. Its importance was only matched by the state-owned Rosneft after it took over the assets expropriated by the Yukos government. Under the chairmanship of Greifer, Maganov’s predecessor, the company received a huge boost. In 2006, it achieved large revenues 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, which is mainly extracted in the North Sea. At the time, it was estimated that Lukoil had reserves of one billion tons.
Born in Tatarstan, Maganov graduated from Gubkin Russian State University of Oil and Gas in 1977. He worked as an engineer in several 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 to his position as the first executive vice president in this company in recent months.
Police have launched 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 inpatient 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-term cardiovascular disease. Russian media reported that he suffered from depression and was under drug treatment.
His death is a reminder of other tragic deaths this year that have rocked Russia’s economic sector and sparked multiple speculation in the West, especially as a result of the invasion of Ukraine. In July, 61-year-old Yury Voronov, the head of the Astra shipping company, was found dead. His body floated in the pool and he was shot in the head. The discovery occurred at his mansion in St. Petersburg. Voronov’s company had a relationship with the gas company Gazprom, as he had worked under him on several arctic prospections. Apparently he had financial problems. And before Voronov, in January and February of this year, the bodies of Leonid Shulman, head of the transport service Gazprom Invest, 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. At his side were two suicide notes.
The series of mysterious suicides continued on March 24. Billionaire Vasily Melnikov, his wife and two children, ages 10 and 4, were stabbed to death in their apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. The investigation again pointed to a triple homicide followed by suicide. Melnikov’s medical equipment company suffered heavy financial losses. In a similar case, former deputy chairman of the Gazprombank, Vladislav Avaev, was found dead by a relative at his home in Moscow along with his wife and 13-year-old daughter. Apparently they all had injuries caused by the gun Avaev had in his hand. Again, some deaths are characterized by their 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. committed suicide after the murder of his wife and daughter in a rented house in Lloret de Mar. Unsurprisingly, then, Maganov’s death this morning has revived conspiracy theories about a dirty war in the Russian energy company sector or a spate of crimes against millionaires associated with Vladimir Putin. The police have already closed most cases like suicides.
Source: La Verdad
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