A leading Russian businessman has been found dead in Moscow after falling more than 110ft from a window at his home.
Mikhail Rogachev, 64, was found by a member of the Russian spy service (FSB) after the mysterious fall.
He was vice-president of Yukos, an oil giant which had opposed Vladimir Putin and was forced out of business by the dictator.
Rogachev also had a distinguished career as executive director of the Onexim group and later deputy general director of the Norilsk Nickel mining giant.
Initial reports in Moscow media outlets said that he had been suffering from ‘a severe form of cancer’, but these were strenuously denied by his circle.
His relatives insisted there were no signs that he was suicidal and he was in a ‘good mood’ shortly before his death.
His body was found in the courtyard of his tenth floor flat by an SVR employee linked to a former Russian spymaster.
The SVR operative said he had been walking his boss’s dog when he saw the body.
Rogachev ‘had breakfast with his relatives, was in a normal mood, and then his body was found under the windows of his house,’ reported VCHK-OGPU.
Some handwriting and other typed sheets of a possible suicide letter were found scattered in his bathroom, said reports.
His loss was ‘another in a chain of strange deaths in the oil and gas industry in Russia’, said Borusio Telegram channel.
Just days ago, Putin’s ‘eyes and ears’ died in mysterious circumstances.
Former director of the Federal Migration Service, Konstantin Romodanovsky, 67, had ‘incriminating documents on current politicians, businessmen and employees of the [secret service] agencies,’ alleged Telegram channel VChK-OGPU.
For years he had been Putin’s ‘eyes and ears’ in several government departments – notably the Interior Ministry while always remaining a seconded secret services officer, it has been reported.
Romodanovsky was Colonel-General in the ministry, but had been the first head of the FSB’s security directorate where he was nicknamed ‘Boot’ and he held a similar high rank.
‘Romodanovsky died in his country house under very strange circumstances’ said the channel, which has links to intelligence and law enforcement.
In other cases of energy industry deaths, Leonid Shulman, head of Gazprom Invest’s transport service, was found dead at the age of 60.
He was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor.
Alexander Tyulyakov, deputy head of corporate security at Gazprom’s United Settlement Centre, the energy giant’s ‘treasury’, allegedly committed suicide the day Putin went to war.
He died in Gazprom’s guarded Leninsky corporate village in Leningrad region, near St Petersburg on February 25, 2022, the same location where Shulman died.
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