Something strange is going on. Who is killing Russian billionaires?
Another Russian oligarch has been found dead. Reports suggests that he hanged himself, fell out of a window.
Slashed his wrists, was poisoned, murdered his whole family.
Last year, more than a dozen Russian oligarchs died in the space of nine months. Many of the deaths are suspicious with links to the Kremlin. This is sad Oligach, an investigation into these recently dead Russian billionaires. It's created by me jake Hanrahan and my colleague Sergey Slipchenkov. Sad Oligach is a h eleven production for Kulso Media and iHeartRadio. In the first episode of this series, we looked into one of three family annihilations in the Russian tycoon community,
three within the of one year. Whole families, including children, murdered by their own father. That this happened three times in a year within such a similar demographic is very unusual, to say the least. One of these family killings that's particularly gruesome and suspicious is the killing of the Proto Sena family. This happened less than a month after the
Melnikov killings that we spoke about in episode one. On April nineteenth, twenty twenty two, Russian businessman Serge proto Zenya, fifty five, was found hanging from a railing inside his Spanish holiday villa in the affluent town of Loret del Mar. His wife, Natalia and teenage daughter Maria were also found dead. They'd been beaten with a blunt object and hacked to death with an axe. The room they were found in was a bloodbath. The Spanish police ruled the incident as
a murder suicide. According to them, Sergo proto Sena had beaten his wife and daughter in their head, killed them with the axe, and then hanged himself afterwards. The only surviving member of the immediate family is Sergio Protozenya's adult son Fedl Now cursed your mind back to episode one, when Professor Elizabeth Yadley said that it was unusual that a family annihilation would spare any of the children.
The very fact that biological children of the alleged perpetrator have survived tells me that this is very different from any family annihilation I've come across before, because when the perpetrator takes their family out, they take everybody out. They make sure that those children are home for the weekend, or that they're all together as a family. They don't leave leave anybody behind.
Luckily for Fedor, he decided to stay in France instead of joining his family at the villa in Spain. This likely saved his life. Federer has since spoken out about the killings, saying that he doesn't believe the official story. He thinks someone else killed his family and then staged it to make it look as if his father had committed the awful murders. The local Spanish police have said that they still think it's likely to be a murder suicide.
The investigations are still ongoing until the case is closed. The police aren't releasing the autopsy reports of the deceased. So why would Sergio Protosenya, a man worth half a billion dollars, murder his wife and daughter with an ax before taking his own life To try and maybe understand that, we need to understand who this guy actually was. Let's go back to when he made his money. The nineties a wild time in Russia.
The red flag came down over the Kremlin tonight as President Kovatrov resigned and brought to an end seven decades of Communist ruled in the Soviet Union.
Russia saw the collapse of the Soviet Union in December nineteen ninety one. After that, for the following decade, Russia had its first free elections, formed a new constitution, privatized state assets, endured bombings in Moscow, saw the rise of violent mafias, and fought two brutal wards in Chechnya. In the midst of this turmoil, oligaks really got their start.
They thrived amongst the lawlessness and newfound freedoms. The frantic privatization of previously government owned companies after the fall of the Soviet Union turned into a businessman's wild West. This was preceded by an economic program that then Russian President Boris Yeltsin introduced in nineteen ninety one. It was known as shock therapy. The idea was to rapidly flood Russia with hard and fast kept list systems to jolt the country into a fully functional free market in a short
space of time. Shock therapy quickly removed subsidies for the people and redistributed profits to the top taken from the working class to make the elites fatter. Your average worker got poorer, and the rich folks got richer. Yeltsin did this to battle Soviet hardliners who wanted to keep the old authoritarian communist system resisting the new wave of capitalism that the president had introduced to Russia. This transition from one system to the other needed to be handled carefully
and slowly, but Yeltsin didn't want to wait. Encouraged by the UN's International Monetary Fund, who were surprised a big advocates of shock therapy for Russia, Yeltsin lent full force into it. It was a complete disaster. The value of Russia's currency, the ruble plummet, people lost their savings due to high inflation rates, and the social welfare system was gutted. But hey, at least they could import levis now. Shock therapy in Russia paid the way for the madness of
the oligarchs when the USSR collapsed. Was like giving loaded guns to an already blood thirsty militia. After the collapse, shock therapy led to further hyperinflation. By nineteen ninety four, prices for your average consumer had risen almost two thousandfold. As writer Greg Rosselski puts it, a candy bar that had cost one dollar now cost two thousand dollars. In the midst of this economic nightmare, the new Russian state
issued what was known as privatization checks. These were essentially vouchers that could be used to buy shares of state business at public auctions, which were taking.
Place all across Russia.
Around one hundred and forty eight million of these vouchers were issued to Russian citizens built up money amidst the chaos, often via criminal enterprises, could now exploit this vulture system and take over a big infrastructure. Rossolski wrote about this, saying, quote the people on their way to become in Russia's first class of oligaks scoured the nation trying to buy as many privatization checks as they could. Many of the
oligarchs had come from nothing. They'd initially gotten rich, but not mega rich, by hustling in the black market or through legitimate businesses. When the Soviet Union first allowed a private entrepreneurship in the late nineteen eighties, the oligarks went on a buying spree, purchasing hundreds of thousands of voltures, each of which were were ten thousand rubles or about
forty dollars or less. Back in the nineties end quote. Now, back then, your average Russian, who barely had a pot to piss in due to hyperinflation, had little use for these vultures. They had no money, so they couldn't use them to buy shares in anything, and so they were eager to sell the privatization so that they could scrape some money together to try and provide for their families. People who had money brought them from the poor at
a low price. Oligaks in the making stacked huge amounts of these checks up, exploiting the poor people of Russia to then buy undervalued stocks in new private businesses that were previously held by the USSR. Soon those stocks rose, oligarchs were laughing all the way to the bank. Often the same working class people who sold their vouchers to the oligachs would eventually end up taking low paid jobs at the companies brought out by the oligarchs with the
help of the vouchers. The privatization checks ended in nineteen ninety four. By then, though around seventy percent of the new Russian economy was already privatized. It's with this chaotic backdrop that now deceased and accused family murderer Sergei Protozenya worked as a deputy director for taco Cell Neft Gas. This oil and gas company was founded in nineteen ninety four. Years later, Protosenya stayed within the industry but moved jobs, working as the head accountant for taco Cell Neft gas
linked firm Novotech. Novotech is Russia's second largest natural gas company. Protosena was admitted to the prestigious position as a board member of Novotech, of which he owned a zero point five steak with around two point three million shares. This steak alone was worth around two hundred and thirty five million dollars. Novotech makes around ten billion dollars a year and has around seventeen billion barrels of proved oil reserves.
Their extraction operations are mostly in Western Siberia, which accounts for eighty percent of Russia's national gas and around fifteen percent of global natural gas. Needless to say, Novotech is a serious company that makes the Kremlin a lot of money in tax. Novotech's chairman is Leonid Michelson, a Russian Israeli oligarch worth around twenty billion dollars. He holds almost thirty percent of the shares of Novatech in the same year that Sergei proto Zenja was admitted to the board
of Novatech. Twenty fifteen, he resigned. Why, we don't really know. He did have a lucrative side hustle though. He was the co founder of Russian banking firm Full Bank. Now not a lot is publicly known about Full Bank, neither in Russia or in English language reports. What we have found out is interesting. Goal proto Sena co founded this bank with a businessman named Andre Makalov. He owned two other banks, sibzots Bank and pro Banker. In twenty twenty four,
bank bought another bank named Pochto Bank. As you can see, the names for these banks are not very adventurous. Full Bank was doing well. By the looks of it. Protosenya and Makalov were buying up other banks, absorbing them, increasing their business and making profit. A year later, though, in twenty twenty one, Full Bank had its financial license revot. There's very little information out there about why this actually happened, but surgery managed to find out Full Bank they lost
their license. It's quite hard to find out what actually happened.
What have you found A lot of information on Russian sides kind of unreliable I found so far. I don't know if they're plagiarizing or or if they get some kind of state message, but a lot of articles will have the same mistakes, like across different publications. A lot of times they'll be saying the same things. For this one is kind of hard to find because I think everybody's been focusing on as death right, so it was
kind of hard to find the reason for it. They would just be like, lost his license, that's it, and I'm like, okay, why, and it's completely they don't talk about it at all. Had to look a bit a bit further back. It was twenty twenty one, and basically what I could find was that the state government conducted investigation. The official I guess the official reason is money laundering.
Also I saw some other reasons of being like giving somebody a bank account when they're not supposed to get it because their past critic is either expired or they don't have a passport. Just kind of small things like that that I feel like you could even just miss.
They didn't say that this is being done like maliciously, but I guess there was reason enough but there was speculation that the Russian government is China reduced the number of like institutions that are open inside or like financial institutions. I guess that datan't control and that allegedly that's why they kind of gave the reason of money laundering and all the other little reasons that kind of seem almost random, but that they just wanted to shut it down again.
The official reason is money laundering and that they could find that they found a bunch of like other illegal activity at the bank which caused it to lose the license.
Interesting.
You would think if this bank was money loan during that there would then be some kind of criminal charges, right if you found anything like that. I didn't see anything about that.
No, that's the thing that That's why I was kind of like, it's weird because like, if an entire bank loses its license over money laundering, I assume it's not an issue with a single case or something you know, or a single bank teller or some small person doing something. To me, it seems like the entire bank was kind of in on it, and you would think that you know, there would be follow up by either resting or figuring
out who's responsible. I mean, maybe there's still an investigation that we don't know about, but from what I can tell, it kind of just lost his license and that's where I was left off.
Yeah, that is odd. It seems odd to me. I'm no expert on banking matters, but the guy Andre Makalov, who also he's like the co founder of full Bank with Protesena, he has several other banks, and from what I've seen, they haven't had their licenses revoked. I would imagine if it was real serious on the scale of right, like money laundering for example, like I don't know HSBC in the West were laundry money for literal cartels, saying that nothing happened to them. They had to pay a
fine and nobody went to prison. I guess that's how the banks are. But I didn't see any other evidence that any of Macalov's other banks were shut down.
The jew No.
It seems like this is the only one specifically, and from what understood, this is the only one. Patsena is kind of like related to.
Right and when.
This is why I'm kind of struggling to understand a little bit. Are these actual physical banks or are they just banking firms that deal with stuff, or they have like actual banks, they have employees as a teller, what have you. Or is it some kind of firm that operates I guess mostly online.
I've heard of it before. It's a pretty well known bank. It had physical locations for sure. It's not like some new just kind of like purely online bank. I mean, I'm sure expanded to online banking, but it's definitely not like one of these random bigs that pop up and kind of offer online services.
In terms of the relation that this might have to the killings, do you think there's something there or not? I mean, I asked because if if you look at for example, Professor Elizabeth Yadley was saying, she was saying, like, well, these family annihilations will often happen when someone that's rich and influential at least in their circles finds that their life is about to kind of fall apart. Do you think that this bank situation in twenty twenty one has any any implications towards Prozena.
We don't know.
Maybe it really affected him, but I don't know, what do you think.
I really don't think so, I mean, okay, like if he lost his bank, and then all of a sudden, he has no income, he's living below his means, he's living in France, going vacation in Spain. I think he's fine. I don't know his you know, entire like portfolio of businesses, et cetera. But to me, it seems like nothing changed after the bank closed. It's like one of his incomes, you know, one of his many, many, many incomes, was closed.
And maybe he lost access to some bank accounts at most, But to me, it seemed like he was living just fine, living in France, going to Spain for like a couple months for vacation. He didn't seem to be struggling in any way. I want to say it was irrelevant. I mean, who knows, maybe it was bigger than that, But the bank lost its license in twenty twenty one, and he was living fine well into twenty twenty two. I can't say that like this was such a messive loss that will led him to this.
I really don't think.
So, right, And I mean, the guy was worth the most I think five hundred million dollars.
It's like, eh, oh, well.
It seems like a drop of the bucket, right, it does? Sure, he didn't put all his eggs in one basket. I think he's aware how Russia operates and that like you can kind of lose these things at a drop of a hat.
So I highly doubt.
He put everything into this one bank and lost it when the license went.
That's true, and if you look at his history, he definitely wasn't the guy that put his egg into one basket, because he'still it off in the gas and oil industry in various different roles, ended up being an accountant.
Then went on, you know, a member of the board.
Then he's also on the side he's got this bank like he Yeah, he seems to be a guy diversifying his funds.
Yeah, he was around, you know, like he's he's spread as wealth like in a way of securing his own future funds. I think he was fine. Honestly, again, I can't exactly say what his entire portfolio is, but it clearly isn't just four bank.
That said, there's still a possibility Protozenya was having money problems. This is a recurring theme when it comes to people who kill their clothes family. But remember Serge Protozenya's surviving son Fedor he doesn't believe, or maybe doesn't want to believe, that his father killed his mother and his sister. We reached out to Fedor but got no response, which is fair enough. He probably didn't want to talk about how
his whole family were murdered recently. When the killings happened. Initially, though he did briefly speak out in the media, Fedor said quote, my father is not a killer. He loved my mother and especially Maria, my sister. He would never do anything to harm them. I don't know what happened that night, but I know that my dad did not hurt them.
End quote.
Strangely enough, Novtech, the company where Sergei Protozenja was formerly an executive of the board, seemed to share a similar view to Fedor. In his statement released April twenty first, twenty twenty two, just three days after the proto Senja killings, Novtech said, quote, in relation to the tragic death of a former member of Novtech's management board, Sergei Protozenja, and members of his family, we extend our deepest sympathies to
all those affected by this tragic situation. Sergio Protozenja worked in the Novtech group from nineteen ninety seven to twenty fifteen. He established himself as a an outstanding person and a wonderful family man, a strong professional who made a considerable contribution to the formation and development of the company. Unfortunately, speculations have emerged in the media about this topic, but we are convinced that these speculations bear no relation to reality.
We hope that this Spanish law enforcement authorities will conduct a thorough and impartial investigation to determine what happened ends quote. So even Novertek feels so strongly that the conclusion that Protozenya murdered his own family and then killed himself is unlikely that they put out an official statement and so soon after the killings. Now, with this case specifically, we've found many different reports that tend to contradict each other.
The details are very confusing. To get a clear idea of what's going on, we spoke to a local reporter in Spain who covered the case. Sergei spoke to journalist Victor Ricatcha.
Reading Western news and reading Russian news, I think gives you one perspective, but I think the best is kind of local. You have more details and kind of more insight into it, so I kind of want to talk to you about that.
The Catalan police started an investigation just after his death.
It's its secret.
This investigation is secret, so it's very hard to really know what's going on and what did the police find out. But what they did say at the beginning was that it looked like it might be murdered his wife and his daughter, and then he committed suicide. So the police at first they said, this is what it looks like, but other theories are possible and we need to investigate. So they started investigating, and they haven't said anything anything more.
The protosnas the family, they had in their house, they had a security system with cameras, they had CCTV, so I think that will be very interesting for the investigation.
Of course, the police can have.
Access to the images and it will be very easy for them to see what happens if they can recover the images.
But not it really is right.
They haven't said it.
No, they didn't release it.
Then they haven't said anything about it. It's it's secret. The investigation is secret because they judge wants it like this, and so we can't. It's very difficult to know what's going on.
Did they say that they're open to other theories.
Yes, so what they said is that probably.
It was a murder and then a suicide, but there are other hypotheses. There are other theories and in the investigation they are going to look to all of them.
Have there been any updates since the initial reporting, not really, not really, so it's very difficult to know.
So what we know right now is that this family bought this ten years ago.
More or less. They came here from time to time.
They had many properties in all of Europe and sometimes they like to conhere to the coast of Spain. They were very, you know, like very low profile. They didn't like the spotlight. So in this village some people knew them. This area is very popular with French people, British people, some Russian people who like Buried which is the name of the village. They really like it and they come here on Suner holidays and there is an important Russian community.
I know some people who live there or some some businessmen that really know this area. And what they said is that usually the Russian community that lives there or that spends the coliday is there.
There is a part of.
Them who are very wealthy, and they like to be on the spotlight and that people know that they are wealthy and that they have a very big house or a very luxurious car or water or whatever. And this was not the case with this family. They were very low profile, even though they were probably the wealthiest Russian family in the In the village and.
Is like the community is it kind of like a resort area? Like can you kind of describe what the area is like?
You read?
This village is located in Costa Brava, which is one of the most famous coasts in Spain.
It's in the north of Spain, very very near France.
All of this coast is very beautiful, so it's a very popular area for holidays with all of these coasts which is very beautiful and very big.
The biggest town is you read. So it's a village, but it's a bigger than other villages in the area.
Has a lot of hotels and a lot of resorts, and there are night clubs, there are very big restaurants, very big hotels, and yeah, so it's a popular tourist destination.
I'm not very familiar with Spain how things work. You know, there have been cases where Russia, faid Off police and like things like that, is this something that's possible in Spain? Like could it be that the investigation was influenced in some way? First of all, is it possible? And then are there any kind of clues that it might have been.
I don't think so.
I don't think that the police can be influenced by corruption in this Everything is possible, but it's not usual.
With the regional police.
They have a very good investigation service and usually they solve very difficult mark orders.
So I think that they are investigating.
Of course, it's a difficult case because it has probably diplomatic consequences, and it's a case that they don't want it to be very published, so which it's very secret. But I think that they are going to investigate if there are images, and they are going to reach the conclusions. And so what I think is that I don't know what to think. Actually, there are different theories. The suspicious thing or the weird thing here is that what is going on like in all the world, in Russia, in
the UK, in Spain. So in a very short period of time, there are different deaths of olivegoods and wealthy Russian people so would it be that some of these deaths are assassinations by the FSB or some mafia. It would be, but of course suicides do happen. You have also do take into account that the family in the case of the Portosnia, they were used to being wealthy, to being rich, to having a life style that was
very luxurious. So once the sanctions, the European and Western sanctions to Russian individuals started, that can be a complication because they were used to living in They could be in Spain, they could be in other European countries without problem, and all of us, all of us outen the Bangka counts are frozen. So this can also be a problem, an economic problem that can have a psychological impact on that person for sure.
Yeah, that could be a mix of of course.
I think there's two other cases where there was the same thing, basically entire family murdered by the husband. So it's definitely, you know, weird an kind of especially the same kind of social group.
It looks like like there's a part from Yeah, yeah, definitely.
So specifically for this case, who's who's the charge of the case, the regional police.
So from the ground, things don't exactly look suspicious. It's worth noting here in light of the talk about Sergey Protozenya's many properties, that he owned a property management company known as Sherwood Premiere. Novtech has since taken it over, But again, overall, no huge red flags. According to Victor Racatcha, Protozena had a nice, big villa in a nice area, wasn't that flashy, and kept himself to himself despite probably
being the richest person in the whole village. That said, a more discreet lifestyle doesn't tee up with the usual kinds of rich folk who carry out family annihilations. As Professor Yardley said in episode one, they're usually the type to flaunt their wealth and power. She did also stress though, that there's no completely solid template to the kinds of
people that do these killings. Protozena could well have done this, and unlike the first family annihilation case we looked at the Heelnikov killings, there's not as much information directly related to the case that looks highly suspicious. However, we still couldn't get over the timing of this. The Mormi and Sergey looked into that aspect of things, it got even stranger. So it turns out that just one day before Sergei Protozenya apparently killed his whole family and himself, yet another
Russian oligarch did the exact same thing. Vladislav Aviyev was found dead alongside his murdered family on April eighteenth in their upscale Moscow apartment. The Russian authorities said that they were investigating, but they believe Aviev killed his wife and daughter before offering himself. Aviev was the former vice president of Gazprom Bank, the financial wing of Russian gas giant Gazprom, which we spoke about at length in episode two. Averyev
also apparently used to work for the Kremlin. So within the space of forty eight hours, two mega rich Russian businessmen, both of them involved in both banking and the gas industry, killed their families and then themselves. All this within less than four weeks of Vasily Melnikov murdering his family apart
from one child who wasn't there, same with proto Zenya. Now, neither me nor Surgery are dramatic people with not the types to jump to conclusions, but the timing of this, considering how rare family annihilation cases are feels a little bit fishy to us, especially considering they're all within the same demographic of people. It's very very rare that this
would happen. So to sum up that three Russian oligarchs who killed their families and then themselves, all within the space of four weeks, one on March twenty third, one on April eighteenth, and one on April nineteenth. Two of these oligarchs worked in both the gas and banking industries for the first and second largest gas suppliers in Russia. If it's all just a coincidence, it's a very big one.
Sad Oligarch is a h eleven production for Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio, hosted, produced, researched and edited by me Jake Hanrahan and Sergey Slipchenkok co produced by Sophie Lichtman. Music by Sam Black, artwork by Adam mcdoyle, sound mix.
By Splicing Block.
Go to Jakeanrahan dot com for more information.