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Sometimes a manager falls out of a hospital window, sometimes a manager is found with a gunshot wound in a swimming pool. Another high-ranking company employee is said to have hanged himself, another falls while walking off a cliff – mysterious deaths among influential company leaders have been piling up in Russia for months. Eleven men have died under dubious circumstances since the beginning of the year alone. What’s behind it?

There is a lot of speculation about the background. Media reports talk about contract killings, about the secret service behind it, many even suspect Vladimir Putin is the mastermind and ask: Is the Kremlin boss going to get rid of such uneasy critics? Others think that economic fraud is being covered up.

For the Russia expert Fabian Burkhardt, there is not one mastermind. “Things are too different for that,” he says in an interview with t-online. Many deaths may never be cleared up, but for some, the structures are easier to see through. The Kremlin and its secret service are very rarely considered.

Burkhardt recommends taking a closer look at the Russian business elite, that is, the squad that is close to the Kremlin, but in which a wide variety of business bosses, tycoons and upstarts try to defend their interests.

For example, in the case of the death of the manager Rawil Maganov of the Lukoil company. The purely private company is the second largest mineral oil company in Russia, whose main activity is the exploration and production of oil and natural gas. Things have been looking good for Lukoil since its foundation in the 1990s: expansion, IPO, sales of billions.

Then, at the beginning of this year, there was a setback: the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all its economic consequences hit the company enormously.

As is well known, Russia has largely stopped gas exports to the West. Imports to Russia, such as technology and know-how, have almost come to a standstill in many sectors. Russian top executives, who are often major shareholders in their companies, including Lukoil, were placed on Western sanctions lists and their assets were frozen. And above all: since then there has been significantly less money in circulation in Russia. (Read more about the effects of the sanctions in Russia here.)

According to Burkhardt, this leads to fierce “distribution battles within the business elite”. And some of these are fought harder than those between the Kremlin and the “classic” political opposition, he says. The Russian business bosses are thus at war with each other so as not to get lost in the maelstrom of sanctions and the economic crisis.

The effects of the war also caused Lukoil to swing violently. As a result, two big names left the company: Wagit Alekperow and Leonid Fedun, founders and major shareholders of Lukoil. They left their position in April and June – a turning point in the company’s 30-year history. They gave way to Rawil Maganov. But Maganow would not remain at the helm of Lukoil for long.

Stumbled while smoking?

Because barely a few months later, on September 1, the 67-year-old died unexpectedly. After being treated at a well-guarded hospital, he fell from a sixth-floor window. Lukoil then said that Maganow had died of a serious illness, suffering from heart problems and depression.

Authorities reported that he committed suicide. Russian media reported that he tripped while smoking.

All statements that the expert Burkhardt questions. It is unlikely that the fall from the window happened by accident. His assumption: It’s more likely that someone put a hand to “set a sign”. “A lintel in the elite is a clear signal that someone has been murdered.” Security agencies also used this instrument, every now and then someone falls out of the window during interrogations.

struggle for power

But who was working in the Maganow case? Burkhardt suspects business elite representatives may have been dissatisfied with Maganow’s staff. After the departure of the founders Alekperov and Fedun, power in the administration was divided among several top managers, resulting in competition and struggle for distribution.

But the alleged defenestration does not necessarily have to be driven by Lukoil himself, says Burkhardt. It could also have been carried out by other economic actors and allied security authorities. Those who wanted to take control – directly or indirectly – over Lukoil.

The company had also publicly criticized the war in a statement in the spring and called for it to end. Some suspected that this was one of the reasons why the Kremlin wanted to get rid of Maganov. Burkhardt is not convinced. Maganov was not a driving force at Lukoil at the time, he says, it was Alekperov and Fedun at the time.

Stress, drugs and visits to shamans

Maganow was not the first to die in Lukoil. A former high-ranking company representative, Alexander Subbotin, died in bizarre circumstances in May. According to Burkhardt, however, his case is somewhat different. Because Subbotin had nothing to report to Lukoil at the time and a direct connection with the internal turbulence was “pretty impossible”.

The 43-year-old died while visiting a shaman in northern Moscow. Apparently he wanted to have his alcohol addiction or the effects of drunkenness treated there with rooster blood and toad venom. According to media reports, Subbotin went to sleep in the shaman’s basement after a ceremony ended, but never woke up. Read more here.

Even if murder isn’t impossible of course, Burkhardt says, this death can have rather trivial reasons. “Some Russian top managers lead a very unhealthy lifestyle. They are under extreme stress, drink a lot of alcohol and use hard drugs.” So it’s quite conceivable that Subbotin’s body just “gave up”.

Gazprom employees go abroad

The death toll near state-owned Gazprom had increased recently. Gazprom is a huge business conglomerate and is also suffering from the economic turmoil resulting from the Russian attack on Ukraine. High-ranking workers fled abroad, some bosses resigned, internal resentment grew – and the death toll rose.

Five managers from the energy company’s environment died this year alone. Yuri Voronov, 61, was found dead in July from a gunshot wound to the head in the swimming pool of his villa in suburban St. Petersburg. The multimillionaire ran a logistics company that worked for Gazprom.

Media reported that there had been disputes between businessmen around Gazprom before. Here too, the divisional struggle within the groupings could have played a role. However, it remains difficult to untangle these structures.

Another case was announced in May. Andrei Krukovsky, manager of a ski resort operated by Gazprom, was also killed. The 37-year-old is said to have fallen off a cliff while hiking near Sochi. The state news agency Tass briefly summarized the subject, writing: “He loved the mountains and found peace there.”

Think tank: cover for fraud

Polish think tank “Warsaw Institute” quotes explanation for deaths at Gazprom. Accordingly, the people could have been evicted to cover up cases of fraud in the state-owned company. Company security officers who had been seen at the crime scene suggested so.

It is the theory that people who know too much are “disarmed”. It has been circulating in Russia for decades and extends beyond business, such as journalism. Anna Politkovskaya, for example, an investigative journalist, probably also knew too much. She was murdered in 2016. In this case, the Kremlin is said to be behind the crime.

The word “death list” also keeps popping up in speculation. Does the Kremlin keep such tables and occasionally give instructions to “liquidate” people?

The researcher Burkhardt thinks this is conceivable: “There may be death lists. And certainly in some cases there is a green light from above.” Examples of this are the poison attacks at home and abroad, such as those on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Great Britain and on Alexei Navalny and the spy Alexander Litvinenko. But also the murder of a Georgian in Berlin’s Tiergarten in 2019 is a case in which the Kremlin gave the order, as has now been proven in court.

Blaming the Kremlin for the deaths per se since the beginning of the year is going too far, according to Burkhardt. Suicide is also possible in some cases. “But it is striking,” he says, “that Russia has become much more restless. Methods such as the lintel, which we actually know from the 1990s, have now returned.”

Note: Here you can find immediate and anonymous help if you think a lot about your own death or are worried about someone else.

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