Mikhail Rogachev dies after falling from window
The authorities say it was suicide, but friends suspect otherwise: Mikhail Rogachev is dead.
The Russian oil magnate Mikhail Rogachev was found dead in front of his house in Moscow on Saturday morning.
He is said to have fallen from the tenth floor of his apartment, according to local media reports.
The British “Telegraph” writes that an agent of the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR discovered the body while walking a boss’s dog. Officially, the 64-year-old’s death is being treated as a suicide. Rogachev, who previously worked for the broken-up oil company Yukos, reportedly left a suicide note. He was suffering from cancer.
However, friends and relatives doubt the suicide theory. They emphasized that Rogachev was in good spirits and showed no signs of committing suicide, as the “Daily Mail” reports, among others.
In the past, Rogachev had worked as managing director for the Onexim Group and as deputy general director at Norilsk Nickel, a mining company. Norilsk Nickel is owned by Vladimir Potanin, the richest man in Russia according to Forbes.
Other rich Russians also died mysteriously
The Rogachev case is one of a series of mysterious deaths of high-ranking Russian business representatives, especially from the energy sector.
Since the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, almost a dozen prominent businessmen have died in unusual circumstances. These cases include, for example, Leonid Schulman, who was found dead in a house north of St. Petersburg in January 2022.
Schulman was head of the transport department of Gazprom Invest, a subsidiary of the Russian energy giant Gazprom.
Also related to Gazprom is the death of Alexander Tyulakov, who was found dead in his garage in Saint Petersburg in February 2022 – just one day after the start of the Ukraine war.
The death of Ravil Maganov, chairman of the oil company Lukoil, who is said to have fallen out of the window of a Moscow hospital in September 2022, was similarly mysterious. His successor, Vladimir Nekrasov, also died shortly afterwards, allegedly of heart failure.
It is striking that many of these deaths are treated at first glance as suicide or natural causes of death. However, observers repeatedly raise the question of whether these deaths may be related to political conflicts or internal power struggles within the Russian elite.
