"10 Little niggers" of the raw materials industry: strange deaths of Russian TOP managers

Victoria Pavlova

The deaths of top managers in the oil and gas industry always attract attention. Enormous money is circulating in this area, the budget of the whole country depends on hydrocarbons. The current and former CEOs of the richest companies leave this world one by one. The reasons remain a mystery, and the silence of law enforcement officers only fuels interest in finding different versions. Why do successful people who have everything suddenly decide to "commit suicide", and who can be the next in this series of tragedies, so similar to the plot of Agatha Christie's novel "10 Little Indians"?

“Ten blacks decided to have lunch, one suddenly choked - and there were nine left ...”

67-year-old Ravil Maganov , winner of the Honorary Oilman award, was treated in a ward on the 6th floor of the Central Clinical Hospital. He went to the hospital with a heart condition, but doctors also diagnosed depression. On September 1, his body was found under the windows of the medical facility. According to law enforcement agencies, it was a suicide, TASS reports . Maganov was an old-timer of the domestic oil industry. Since 1993, he has held the post of first executive vice president of Lukoil. And since 2020, he was the chairman of the board of directors of the company - then he replaced Valery Graifer , who died at the age of 91 after a long illness.

“Nine blacks are not eating, they pecked with his nose, one could not wake up - and there were eight left ...”

Coincidence or not, this is the sixth death of a top manager in a commodity company since the beginning of the year . It all started on May 6, 2020 - then Dmitry Bosov , co-owner of Sibanthracite and Vostokugol, was found with a gunshot wound in his own house. Investigators concluded that the successful billionaire (86th in the Forbes ranking) committed suicide. At the same time, Bosov did not leave a clearly formulated will: after his death, a protracted struggle began for his solid inheritance between partners and relatives.

"Eight blacks went for a walk then, one did not return - and there are seven of them ..."

In February 2022, in the elite village of Leninskoye, 61-year-old Alexander Tyulyakov hanged himself in a garage. Previously, he worked at Gazprom Transgaz. At the time of his death , Tyulyakov served as deputy general director of the Unified Settlement Center of Gazprom, a division that performs the functions of the treasury. The contents of the suicide note found on the body have not been released.

“Seven blacks were waved with an ax, one cut themselves alone - they remained with the senior ...”

And a series of mysterious deaths resumed 2 years after Bosov - just from the case with a colleague, a former colleague of Tyulakov . The first after the "break" was the 60-year-old head of the transport service of Gazprom Invest Leonid Shulman . He was at home (a mansion in the Vyborgsky district of the Leningrad region) on sick leave with a leg injury. In January 2022, his body was found in the bathroom with a knife and a suicide note stating that he "doesn't want to be disabled and a burden". A little earlier, at the end of 2021, the Gazprom Invest security service began checking the transport unit on suspicion of overestimating the cost of repairing the fleet.

"Six blacks went to the hives to play, one stung bumblebee - and there were five of them ..."

In May 2022, the former top manager of Lukoil, Alexander Subbotin , was found dead in the basement of a private house near Mytishchi. According to TASS, Subbotin arrived at the local shaman in a state of extreme alcohol and drug intoxication to perform voodoo rituals. Official documents indicate that Alexander Subbotin died of heart failure.

"Five blacksmanship was made, one was put on - there were four of them left ..."

July 5, 2022 Yuri Voronov , CEO of Gazprom's contractor for Arctic projects, Astra Shipping, was found dead in a pool on the territory of his own plot in the Morskie Terrasy village on the shores of the Gulf of Finland. He was shot in the head with a traumatic pistol. According to Baza (recognized as a foreign agent), Voronov died a few days after "a conflict with business partners due to loss of money."

“Four blacks went swimming in the sea, one fell for the bait - there are three of them left ...”

And earlier, in April 2022, the Spanish police in an elite villa in the resort town of Lloret de Mar found the bodies of three people: a woman and a girl with stab wounds lay in the house, and a man in the yard. It was identified as the former top manager of Novatek Sergey Protosenya . The Spanish investigation is considering the version according to which Protosenya first killed his family and then committed suicide. An ax and a knife were found next to Protosenya 's body. Sergey Protosenya has been the chief accountant of Novatek Leonid Mikhelson since 2002, and in March 2015 he joined the board. But already in December 2015, he suddenly left the company.

“All three went to the menagerie for a walk, one was bitten by a bear - and there were two of them left ...”

In the same April 2022, the bodies of three people were found in an apartment on Universitetsky Prospekt in Moscow: a husband, wife and daughter. According to the preliminary version of the investigation, the former vice-president of Gazprombank, Vladislav Avaev , shot his wife and 13-year-old daughter on domestic grounds, and then committed suicide. After leaving Gazprombank, he was a co-owner of Carbonix LLC, a manufacturer of bone-replacing carbon implants. The second partner in this business was the daughter of the deputy head of Rostec Nikolai Volobuev . He also owned a stake in RT-Carbon LLC, owned by Rostec through RT-Project Technologies JSC.

But all these deaths are united not only by a strange, as if someone's mockery, coincidence with a children's rhyme (or the plot of the film of the same name "10 Little Indians"), and not only the oil and gas past or the present of the deceased, but also the almost complete absence of information about the course of the investigation. Everything always ends with the publication of preliminary information. And mysteriously, those responsible for the deaths always turn out to be ... already dead. These cases are not commented on by any of the famous people. Sometimes only scraps of information about a rather strange course of the investigation break through. According to the stories of a source in the Investigative Committee, the security service of Gazprom promptly arrived at the place of death of Alexander Tyulyakov , they simply put the police, investigators and forensic specialists outside the site, and cordoned off the territory ...

Only anonymous Telegram channels openly express their opinion. SerpomPo writes that in this way the security forces are squeezing out Lukoil.

Mikhail Krutikhin , an economic analyst and specialist in the oil and gas market, also believes that special services are visible behind these deaths, which eliminate people who can blurt out too much.

- It is impossible to prove anything now until the direct executors speak. There is a suspicion that they are getting rid of people who can let it slip, or in whom conscience can wake up.

There can be a lot of versions of what happened, both true and erroneous. However, the longer the law enforcement agencies are silent, the more suspicious all these deaths look, because never before have top managers committed suicide so often ...

Well, if we continue the counting rhyme, then there are two more "candidates" ahead.

“Two blacks lay down in the sun, one burned out - and here one, unhappy, lonely ... The last black man looked tiredly, hanged himself - and no one was ...”

By the way, according to the plot of the same film "Ten Little Indians", the killer ultimately turns out to be also a kind of "silovik" - a judge. True, at the end he will put a bullet in his forehead with the words: “The true greatness of a judge is in the ability to punish himself!”