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 gm, 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. As we know, many rich Russians have died in mysterious
circumstances between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Not every one of them warrants a full episode, but either way, me and SERGERI wanted to weigh up and take stock of the cases that didn't make the full list. Honestly getting ridiculous how many people have started dying in these
rich Russian tycoon circles. As well as that since we launched this show three months ago, several more people within this world have fallen out of windows, gotten sudden heart attacks, and even died of cancer instantly surgery and me raked over the strange Russian millionaire deaths the last twelve weeks since we've been doing this, I've been getting pings. You've been getting pings. People are like, oh, look, another one,
another one. Like it's almost become this joke. Some of them it's like, ah, whatever, but others it's quite interesting. So I think let's talk about the people that have died in mysterious circumstances that are kind of linked to all of this sad oligarch scenarios since we've been doing this series.
So who would the first one be?
I think the one guy that was interesting if you look at December seventh, twenty twenty two, Kragory COCHINOI. So he was basically like a young guy working in computer services. I think it was a key, and he spoke out against Russia's invasion in Ukraine. All of a sudden, accused of having child pornography, his house was being searched, and then while while it's being searched, he jumps from his balcony and dies. The investigation says Oh, he was really embarrassed.
He was like, oh, I'm got right handed, so I'm going to kill myself.
Now, this tech tycoon gurgor Ycoaching of might well have been a pedophile. If that's true. Nothing of value was lost when he jumped to his death. However, no evidence of him having child sexual abuse images on his computer has actually come out other than the word of the Russian authorities, and as we know, they're often less interested in justice, more interested in following the orders of the Kremlin.
What's also worth noting, perhaps is that this happened in the high market nisney Novgorod area of Moscow, a place several of these unusual deaths have occurred. Now this could just be because that's where rich people live, or there could be another reason.
He was basically really big in the at sphere of Russia. He was working on like different applications. I think some of them were for the Russian government, some were just used by the Russian government. And then his biggest thing is his biggest mistake was speaking out against the Russian government. A lot of his co workers and friends actually fled.
I saw one was in Georgia. A couple like around Europe and they were saying, like they told them to leave, that he just didn't listen, and that's basically what happened. You know, speaks out against Russia all of a sudden, he's blamed for some thing, in this case owning sheild pornography and stays there searching his house, and according to them,
he just jumped off the balcony himself. You know, a lot of these things can be assisted, and there's not like that indicates that he was like very deep with the government, but there seems to be a bit of overlapping of him his services being like used for the Russian government. It seems like speaking out against the invasion is at least several of these instances had people killed. So the guy in India December twenty fourth, Pavel Antov, he was a politician essentially, he was pretty rich.
He was a millionaire himself. He wasn't really in with Puchin.
He was powerful in his own way, having money and being kind of influential in that way. He was in enemies with Puchin, but he wasn't exactly in the boys club, but he was kind of tolerated. But according to the news.
Articles, he spoke out against Puchin.
He spoke out against the w saying it's bead for business, and he takes a trip to India. Then at first, if you remember, two days earlier, his friend or travel partner, Latimar Ridenov dies also in the same hotel, in this case from hard complications, and two days later, pavel Antov is found dead after falling from a third floor balcony, which is also kind of interesting.
I mean, third floor can be relatively high.
But I don't know, kind of seems interesting that you would choose to take your life from the third floor.
And his friend died in the same hotel.
Exact same hotel two days earlier, hard complications, surrounded by one bottles is what they said. Kind of alluded that maybe he was an alcoholic. He was drinking after he died. Bible himself actually said like this is really suspicious, Like he doesn't think you know that this is normal.
He demanded that the police investigate and stuff.
And then two days later he's the one dying from a third form balcony.
So Russian millionaire businessman and politician pavel Antov dies falling from a window not long after criticizing Putin for his invasion of Ukraine. This happened two days after his friend died of alleged heart problems in the same hotel, and Toov said that was suspicious, and then he died himself. At the same time, other rich, influential Russians were also dying even better.
On the same exact same day, December twenty fourth, that Pavolantov died, two other guys died. Alexander Buzakov sixty six years old, you know older, but people said he's in relatively good shape. He was actually like part of the navy. I didn't quite understand if he was like, you know, record ranking officer or he was more on the research slash procurement side of things. But basically he was in charge of lunching a submarine and he had some issues. But then the navy he fail to be up to
standard and he dies of a heart attack. People said, basically, he was out for a walk, he had a heart attack and somebody found him already dying.
They couldn't save him in time.
And then there was another one, another rich Russian, dying at exactly the same time.
Alexey Maslov, also same exact day, in the summer twenty fourth dies at a military hospital near Moscow.
No death, no cause of death was provided.
Right, this guy also involved with the military, same thing kind of failed to give results, and he's dead the eACT same day, December twenty fourth.
The guy folls out the window.
The guy dies in the hotel, and then this happens like what within the space of how many dies two days?
So the summer twenty second is the first guy who allegedly dies from heart complications, and then on the summer twenty fourth it's tree deaths on the exact same day.
Come on like that.
I mean, there's so many coincidences in this series that to me feels like someone has said, hey, let them know all on the same day. I know, it's kind of it sounds comical at this day, so much madness has happened, though, it's like, yeah, why not. It's like in a Breaking Bad where Wall is like, right, we have to kill all of the possible informants in the prison in the exact same hour, like to kind of prove the point, like I can get you. It feels very like calculated, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, It's like I think you've seen those things where they say, like sometimes you have to dumb the movie down because like the reality is too it's too hard to believe.
This is what kind of feels like.
It's like the bad guy like sends out the hit and he's like get it done. Everybody like sets in emotion like okay, let's do this movie. Ask and you see a little montage of this happening. It's like it's just again. I think if you just tell somebody this to be like yeah, okay, like sure, yeah, be serious.
Like it's like yeah, like the clock is take in the background and you see each scene like boom boom boom, each hit. But I mean, so much weird stuff has happened. What's been looking at this?
The thing I noticed with recent cases is there's a lot less information. I don't know if it's intentional, if people are getting tired of it, but I'm finding it a lot harder to actually find articles on it.
It's covered a lot less.
A lot of the articles will say oh, we're going to have an autopsy done or examination done, and there will be like news in two, three days whatever, and I can't really ever find those updates. In a similar case, there's on May twentieth Kuchenko, pretty young guy, forty six years old, Deputy Science min of Russia. It's a pretty high position. Falls ill on a flight from Cuba to Russia. They claim that it's a hard condition, but what do
we know. A couple of months earlier, a Russian journalist who's like he's like hiding from the Russian government too, says he talked to this guy and that he complained about Russia, and he was very famously quoted as saying Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a fascist invasion, a big no no to say about Russia's special military operation. And then like and then this happens a few months later,
he's dead. So you know, clearly, I think complaining openly and kind of not distrust but kind of going against the narrative is very not Okay.
Well, it's interesting, like you were saying at the start, this in the start of the kind of climeline, you know, you could look at it and okay, Leonid Shulman, there was you know, quite a lot of information same with to you look of. And then as it gets more and more and more, suddenly the Russian media is no longer interested. Now whether that's because they're realizing. Ah, like
the tide has changed after the Ukraine War. I mean Russia was never particularly open, you know, with press freedom by any stretch, but certainly things have got a lot harder after the Ukraine invasion. So whether it's the press going, oh, well, we're best just if it looks like maybe the government or someone tied to the Oligas did this, maybe for our own cel preservation, it's best just to keep quiet.
Maybe it's that, or maybe it's you know, the state is like, yeah, we need this actually to be a little quiet, because more attention is being brought to this than perhaps we thought it would be.
I mean, it's insane.
We've got over I mean we're twelve episodes this series and there's still like five or six people that we could still put on this. And it's the nobody's going up, you know what I'm saying. It's carrying on. There's more stuff happening.
Yeah, I mean every month, there's at least it seems
one or two that has been the trend. There have been like quiet months, but for the most part, like I'm looking here May, June, June, July, July, August, August, you know, pretty consistent, and yeah, like definitely, you know, like with like you said, Lenie Shulman, we had straight up pictures of his diary of his suicide, no slash diary, right, and then here in the newer ones, I'm looking and it's like suicide note but no mention of it, no picture,
no seeing other crime or anything. Shulman as well, we have pictures of him that on the on his bathroom floor, right, and then we're not seeing any of this, and again I'm just like struggling to find information on it. Maybe it's a burnout of sort, you know, like how people get burned out, but hearing about the war in Ukraine kind of like what is like news fatigue? You know, it could be that, and then certainly could be hey, let's stop covering this so much, you know, for better
or for worse. Like I can one hundred percent see someone like an editor coming over and being like, hey, like calm down with coverage with that, we don't need to hear this. They definitely don't want to hear this, So let's let's keep our jobs and let's talk about something else.
Let's talk about our successes in Ukraine.
Saying that though there was one that kind of happened early on, there wasn't that much info. One of vladislav Avayev. He's the guy the third murder suicide of his whole family, killed his pregnant wife, his thirty year old daughter, and then shot himself. This was in Moscow. Who was this guy, Vladi vladislav Avayev.
Yeah, the murder suicides were actually pretty much one after the other. That one was either the first or the last one.
So Vasilli Minokov was March twenty third, vladislav Aviev who killed his whole family, was April eighteenth, and then Sergey Protozenya was April nineteenth. Literally the Daylight in Lorette del Mar, Spain, which we did the episode about, I think episode three.
He was a rich guy living in a rich Moscow neighborhood luxury apartment, kills his family with the pistol. Finding a pistol in Russia is not exactly difficult. He was also part of the military for a couple of years, nothing significant from what I understood.
He just did his usual service.
Left, he went into the social sector and then from up to twenty ten, and then he becomes vice president of gus Prom Bank, which is kind of interesting the career leap that he made.
Wait wait wait, gas from is involved again.
Of course I thought you were that you were on the memo here come on. Of course Gosproms is involved. And yeah, and I couldn't find much of how he made that career drump. You know, he social sector being like social worker or something. Again, not not much as provide info is like known about that, but it just has social sector, maybe social worker, some kind of HR guy. And then goes on to be the vice president of
gus Prombank. And then he starts his own medical company in Carbonyx in kuni Ingrad, a little strip of land in Europe that Russia has. He starts a company there creating carbon Bonem replacements. From what understood, it didn't like go fully public. It was kind of like being built up. But the contracts it had and technology it had, it was like it was valued at a pretty high price, a couple of million, I believe. And I believe he's had some disputes with a business partner, so they were
like coning the business. They coned other businesses, shell companies.
He was in.
His his partner was in the Panama papers and stuff, so you know, involved in a lot of stuff. And then they had a dispute from what I understood about the ownership of the company kind of who gets to own it as such. So you know, there's that lead and then what actually happened. He kills his thirteen year old daughter. She has cerebral palsy.
My understanding of the.
Condition or disease is she's basically very like incapacitated. She can't really move, she can't take care of herself. You need like twenty four to seven care for that kind of condition. He shoots her through the back of the neck in a single shot. This is from the report, right, shoots his pregnant wife again in the head and then multiple times in the chest, and then shoots himself in the head. He was found in the bathroom next to his wife holding the pistol. Kindness seems you know, for
a murder suicide. It's like takes a single shot on his daughter, single shot to the head to his wife, single shot to himself.
Seems per the single shot does, yeah, and the back of the head. But there is part of me though that thinks, okay, this is absolutely horrendous. This guy as a fucking monster, But there is part of me that thinks this one almost does sound.
Like there were enough.
Obviously, it's never an excuse, but there were enough, almost like mitigating circumstances for the sort of person that would be this monstrous to maybe do it. Whereas the others, You're like, where the hell did this come from? However, saying that, I feel almost naive to say that that, like, yeah, this guy just was the one that happened to kill his whole family whilst being in the same circuit as the other oligarchs who also killed their whole families literally
within months of each other. I don't know, it's again, it would be an insane coincidence. And like you said, the shot to the back of the head feels like your archetypal professional here, and that isn't just American movie stuff like shot to the back of heead is generally how like an assassin might carry out hit. However, you could then ar you, well, this guy, okay, he was a nut case of psycho, but he didn't want to look at his family when he shot them.
I don't know, what do you think.
I can't say, certainly but the biggest things that kind of make it seem suspicious is he called his driver to pick him up next day, like nothing happened, you know, Like the driver said, it was the normal day.
He just he was planning to come pick him up, go to work.
He told his daughter he was being picked up, his eldest daughter. That's the other thing, right again, in this case. You spoke to the expert and she said, you know, when they do this, they want the entire family there, they want everybody there to kill them. And his eldest daughter wasn't there. It's just him and his younger daughter, his wife. That's the biggest thing for me.
That's a great point.
So that means we've got three murder suicides within very rich Russian tai Q communities, and each one of them all within the space of a few months, left at least one child alive.
These specific ones are literally within a month.
Surgery's right.
Three rich Russian businessmen killed their whole families apart from one child each who wasn't there. Vasilli Melnikov did this on March twenty third, twenty twenty two. Vladislav Abayev did this on April eighteenth, twenty twenty two, and Sergey Protozenja did this the next day on April nineteenth, twenty twenty two. The chances of all this happening by coincidence in such a specific way are extremely slim.
Three murder suicidence.
It's like, I don't know, man, same exact demographic, very similar. Maybe if it's not the Russian government, it might be the thing I said about the company here, I made a carbon axid, a very competitive company and product, and it was literally going public in a couple of days.
You know, he wasn't having money trouble.
The worth was it was going to open at thirty two million rubles and that's like it's gonna go public and then make more money. Right, I'm about to get even richer, unless you know, somebody doesn't want to split that money. Because he did a co owner company and they were kind of fighting over rights to the company. I mean, that's a pretty good motive, you know. I think that's as clear cut as a motive gets.
Yeah, now you say that, I'm already trying to I guess I kind of. Yeah, It's it seems quite clear cut that there's a possibility. I should say I guess it just seems beyond belief that anyone would be that vicious to kill a young disabled girl and kill a pregnant woman. But there are plenty of people in this world like that. I mean, I should know. I've literally interviewed people like that evil, you know, through my work. But it just it's so I don't know, it's so disturbing,
you know. I mean sometimes I think it's easy to kind of lose sight of the level of just pure brutality that.
That has been doled out here.
Yeah, I think sometimes you kind of get lost and like, oh, well, this seems like out of a movie.
This is too much.
I kind of can't believe it, right, it's kind of hard to believe in accepted. But then like if you look at real life cases, sometimes they're more brutal than the movie depict And also again again with the circumstances this was a single case, maybe then you can start like doubting it, but it just with the contexts and just kind of hard to dismiss.
Yeah, there were still I mean, there were even others like I mean, you've got this guy Taran, he died in a helicopter crash, riot or traveling from Switzerland, but he was kind kind of definitely not in five with the Russian government, right.
Yeah, so that is November twenty fifth, Yeah, so the month before another crypto guy dies. But this Tehran I think at this point he's living in Monaco, between Monaco, France, Switzerland, like in that area, I guess, because he was pretty significant in Russia. He created the Forks like trading system and he brought it to Russia. He made the biggest platform. He was on board of a Swiss company. They were working crypto, so he kind of went from four x trading to like crypto trading.
He was pretty central in.
Russia's banking system, so central bank, you know, central bank, and then he lost his licenses.
In twenty eighteen, yet another similar pattern. Multi billionaire Russian businessman Vaitchoslav Tarran at his banking license revoked by the Russian government. We saw the same thing happen with Dan Rappaport and Sergei proto Zenya. No one knows exactly why Tarwan lost his licenses, but it was a leg that his bank failed to follow Russia's financial regulations.
Do assumption aigans.
Basically, it didn't specify why there's no specific like official document that said why, but we know that he had his licenses revoked and he left the country. He didn't run away from the police or anything, but he stopped living there as much. He's flying between his From what I said, I was like he was at a work meeting in Switzerland flying back to Monaco his helicopter crashes.
He was pretty connected with the government. He was involved with the banking and I think, as we know at this point, if you're in banking and Russia, you're probably involved with the governments at some level. So the crash happened, I think it was like between Switzerland and Monaco. But guests who investigated Russian government, the Russian embassy said they're going to look into it. They're going to be the
ones investigating it. Pretty sure, like the embassy doesn't. Like the Russian embassy usually can't just get you know, jurisdiction and come over and be the ones investigating. They were the one in charge of that, and that also kind of stood out to you.
Yeah, it's funny that all these people have some ties to gas banking or other kind of natural resource trading companies that are link to the Russian government in some way, although you could then argue, well, yeah, all of those the way that Russia is, all of those companies would be but it's I don't know, there's a very clear threat.
Well this is not normal in a way, like there is a certain pattern. You know, they weren't dying let's say like even twenty fifteen to twenty twenty, right, there weren't this many, all the gark deaths. What is it all of a sudden that this is happening in two years?
Yeah, exactly, And I mean that's kind of the point. It's like we're not the cops, and we're certainly not the FSB, and we're not the CIA. So it's like, yeah, I don't know. But if you look at it and lay it out like this, yeah, it's there's a lot of weird stuff. We could go all day about the various people that have been kind of linked. It's interesting
there's this person, there's that person. I think when looking into this you can kind of like lose your mind a bit, Like every single death surrounding the kind of sad Oligach circuit, it's like, oh, that's another one, but not necessarily. Some people have sent me someone it's like, yeah, that person just died, like it's not even that weird. The last one I do want to talk about, though, is Natalia botch Kariva. She was forty four years old, the door of the former governor of Penza Oblast.
She's very rich, so former governor of Penza Oblast, and she was basically some sources said, running like she was in charge. Some said she just had shares, but shares in her families. They quote it as empire of real estate, you know, several massive shopping centers, CEO of an advertising agency, and she's found that in her apartment. And once again, very little information. So all the police said was the
death was not violent. They didn't even say like how she died, why she died, just death was not violent, and allegedly she committed suicide. But then somebody else said it was a hard heart failure. It says we're going to give you an update once an autopsy comes in. There has been no update. I've been trying to check it out. I could not find anything. The other notable thing apparently in twenty twenty one she got scammed for
sixteen million rubles. Like he made the news, and all they could really provide was to make her personal problems go away. So I'm not sure what that means if she was trying to get rid of someone, if she has some shit she had to cover up. But apparently somebody promised to solve her personal problems and scammed her out of sixteen million.
Right, that already suggests to me right off the bat, that she's in Okay, she got scammed, but she's trying to at least be in some kind of world where you can get people killed. I mean, she's a multimillionaire, you know, through her family shares in the family's empire through oligarchy from her father. But either way, she's got money and she's trying to make her personal problems go away.
So her personal problems are very clearly not going to be related to money because she's got all the money. So who else could she possibly be paying someone to do to get rid of her personal problems. My guess is she tried to get someone killed and she got scammed. How much is sixty million roubles in like US dollars roughly.
Two hundred thousand about, But it's a lot of money for her. This is just paying for like a service I'm not you know, I'm not going around going to be able to pay somebody two hundred thousand dollars to make some issue away.
You know, this is for her. It seems like dropping the bucket kind of.
Thing honestly as well.
So it's like it's it's what it's like around one hundred and seventy two hundred thousand US dollars from what I know just through research or like, you know, the underground kind of circuit hitman Assassin's that kind of thing. That's a lot of money. That's I mean, it screams to me that she really didn't know what she was doing. And no one is paying like that kind of money to get someone killed unless they're of some specific notoriety
or some kind of standing politically or business. Maybe that's what she did, and maybe the person then said, Okay, well you didn't get me, you got scanned, and now I'll get you. I don't know, I'm just speculating, but who knows in this world.
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it doesn't sound like she really made her own anything.
Really.
It sounds like she just kind of grew up and being you know, in a rich family, just kind of guarded from her father.
She was.
She had a lot of shares in the companies. Like I said, already enough reason to kill someone, you know, whether to make somebody else shares more valuable or whatever the reason.
That's pretty much it on her.
Again, these most more recent ones have very limited information. There's actually two I want to I think are like significant enough to talk about more. And Natalia was July fourteenth, right, And these guys are actually the two most recent ones, so July twenty second. Antone Cherrypanicov. He's a forty year old IT security company billionaire. His company was associated with the head of with like the government. It wasn't like a government company, but it was basically it's only client.
They were making wired tapping companies, so things to you know, listen into your phone, any other technology, and they basically made all of the apasbad listening technology phone tapping.
Right.
He basically lobbied the government to include his tapping technology into most technologies, so again at least phones and I think computers. But yeah, this is the kind of guy he is, you know, a billionaire working with the government. He was also working on run net, which is like Russian net, right, I think China has this where basically they're completely disconnected from the rest of the Internet. They can control what's seen, who sees what. Yeah, North Korea
has it too, red stuff exactly. He was a big part of that project. And then he dies. Very little information how he dies. Some said it was suicide and they were saying like, oh, there's no way, he's so young, but no one said how like not even like fell off of a lot of a window or you know, took pills or anything like that.
Right, just he's dead.
Yeah, just basically he's dead, but pretty significant, you know if he's involved in this it security stuff, like very involved with the garment for sure, involved with deaf his bath he's making this equipment for them, right basically.
And then the other guy who was I.
Thought also was really interesting again nad Lopiro actually two weeks ago August sixteenth. He's the guy who was in charge of building Putin's palace. It's like the giant, massive, massive mention and souci that was built like specifically for Putin. This guy is a lieutenant general in the army. He actually also did security for like the southern region of Russia, Southern regions Russia. Like if Putin or any other high ranking guy would go like wherever P visit, he could
be in charge of the security. And he was in charge of these construction projects. I believe the project was like completing in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, so he would have been involved in making that palace, right, and then Putin's known to kind of he doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't want attention to it. So in twenty sixteen, this guy a Lottpero is accused of taking bribes.
Allegedly he's caught right handed taking a bribe, and then they also find more money that they say is in relation to bribes, so like they're like, this guy's fully corrupt. A year later, he is thrown in jail, high security basically for ten years. His sentence got slightly reduced because they tried to throw in some illegal weapons trafficking charges on to him, but that fell through, and he's spending his time in jail. Like so this year, right, and
he's actually on good behavior. He was about to be paroled, and all of a sudden he actually on August fourteenth, just two days before he dies, he's ill transferred to a hospital. Doctor said it was leukemia, and two days later he dies. Kemia is a type of cancer. Pretty sure it's not that fast, you know, Pretty sure it takes more than two days. But yeah, he dies, and he was very connected to this palace. He would have
been the one dealing with the finances and stuff. To me, if I had to speculate, you know, if it's the typical you construct your secret layer and then you kill the guys working on it. This is what it seemed like to me. But again, who knows. It's just the biggest thing to me is you know, he's working on this mansion. All of a sudden, he's accused of a crime, put away in jail, and right before he's about to leave jail days of a very weird circumstance.
If you're building the secret layer and you mess up the secret layer for the guy that wants the secret layer, you're probably gonna get it.
Well, secret for her isn't really if somebody has to build it, but you want it to be secret, there's a only so many ways to do that.
So, as you can see, there are many rich Russians that have died in mysterious circumstances even in the three months that we've been making this series, and what was lots of this might sound extraordinary, to the point of it being stranger than fiction. Take into account what just happened in Russia, you have get any Progosion, the oligarch and commander of the Kremlin backed mercenary contractor firm PMC. Wagner,
died in a mysterious plane crash. This happened August twenty third, exactly one month to the day since Progosion in his unit, launched an abandoned mutiny against Poutin. This was one of the largest open attacks against his authority in his whole life.
It's obvious the revenge would occur. Wagnerfiers claim that Progosion's plane was literally shot out of the sky by the Russian military, and Putin has said he most definitely will not be attending Progosion's funeral, his old friend turned enemy. We'll be looking into that next week on sad Oligach.
Sad Oligach is a h eleven production for Cool Zone Media and iHeart Radio, hosted, produced, researched, and edited by me Jake Hanrahan and Sergei Slipchenko co produced by Sophie Lichtman, music by Sam Black, artwork by Adam mcdoyle, sound mix by Splicing Block. Go to Jake hanry a hand dot com for more information. Mm hmm