Madrid - $75-million superyacht (click here) linked to a sanctioned Russian steel billionaire was auctioned on Tuesday in Gibraltar, court sources said, in what is understood to be the first sale of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine in February.
The Axioma was impounded by the Gibraltar authorities in March after JPMorgan said its alleged owner Dmitry Pumpyansky had reneged on the terms of a $20 million loan.
There was an "unexpected late surge by prospective buyers" around the world for the vessel, Nigel Hollyer, broker to the Admiralty Marshal of the Supreme Court of Gibraltar who led the auction, told the Guardian newspaper last week....
Unrelated? LUKoil is having a very turbulent year for executives. There is something to be said for capitalism under the governance of democracy.
September 14, 2022
The top manager at Russia's Corporation (click here) for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic (KRDV), Ivan Pechorin, has been found dead after media reports said last weekend that he fell out of a motorboat in the Sea of Japan close to the city of Vladivostok.
The KRDV said in a statement that Pechorin's body was found on September 12.
Pechorin's death is the latest in a string of mysterious deaths among Russian executives to occur shortly before or after Russia's ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
In early September, LUKoil, Russia's largest private oil company and one of the few corporate voices to oppose to the Kremlin's war in Ukraine, said its chairman, Ravil Maganov, had died in Moscow following a "serious illness," while local media reports said the 67-year-old tycoon had plunged to his death from a hospital window.
In May, Russian media reported that a former top manager of LUKoil, Aleksandr Subbotin, was found dead in the basement of a house in the town of Mytishchi near Moscow....
I doubt a person would fall from a hospital window. Jumped or pushed or encouraged to jump might be closer to the truth. Normally, jumping from hospital buildings occurs when it is on fire. Why was he in the hospital? He thought he was safe? Oh, under the influence of alcohol and drugs. Well. That explains everything, doesn't it? Oh, more like heart failure. Right. Suicide with a knife? Really? Oh, "staged suicide." That is more believable. All these folks are Russian speaking people, right? A little gun violence seems to be at work as well. Falling off a mountain side? Falling off the side of a mountain is not suicide, okay? It just isn't. Who would go through all that trouble to die? First climb the mountain and then walk to a cliff and fall off. That seems like wrong. Okay? This guy loved nature and he went into nature to commit suicide. I would expect the opposite. I would expect he would find peace in the mountains and return home refreshed to face the day no matter what Putin had in mind for his life. Okay? I don't believe ANY of these deaths were suicide. Falling out an open window doesn't happen either. No one goes into a high rise building to enjoy the view so much they simply fall out of the window. I don't buy that one either.
And of all these murders. Dan Rapoport's murder is not being investigated. He just showed up dead in front of a ritzy hotel. That happens everyday, right? It is just one of those, oops, there goes another Russian billionaire kind of death. Well, I don't buy it! He knew and wanted Alexei Navalny to lead Russia. THAT IS A CLUE!
...The news of Pechorin's death (click here) came less than two weeks after the chairman of the board of Russia's largest private oil company, Ravil Maganov, died in what Russian news agencies cited as an accidental fall from a hospital window.
Initially, a statement by his company Lukoil said Maganov “passed away after a severe illness” on 1 September but did not give further details....
14 September 2022
By Aleksandar Brezar and David Mac Dougall
Initially, a statement by his company Lukoil said Maganov “passed away after a severe illness” on 1 September but did not give further details....
...Maganov appeared to have fallen from a sixth-story window, the reports said. Some sources claimed he tripped and fell while smoking, stating a pack of cigarettes was found by the window. The news site RBK also said police were investigating the possibility of suicide....
Russian news reports said the house belonged to a self-styled healer, Shaman Magua, who practised purification rites.
Magua testified that Subbotin came to his house under the influence of alcohol and drugs and demanded that the healer, whose real name is Aleksei Pindurin, performs a healing ritual for hangover symptoms....
Leonid Shulman, 60, was found in the bathroom of the house with slashed wrists, local news reported, citing a source.
According to the police authorities, a suicide note was allegedly found next to his body, in which he recounted his suffering after a leg injury -- which Gazprom claimed caused him to take a leave of absence.
The version has been questioned after the Warsaw Institue think tank stated that Shulman, who was the head of the transport service at Gazprom Invest, was involved in a possible corruption case at the Russian gas giant.
The morning after Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, Alexander Tyulyakov, 65, a senior executive of Gazproms's Corporate Security, died at his home in the same village as Shulman. According to the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, his body was found hanged in the garage.
The same newspaper quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as saying that Gazprom's own security unit arrived at the scene of the suicide at the same time as the police and was also investigating the death.
One of two deaths that have taken place abroad is that of Mikhail Watford, who lived with his family in the UK. On 28 February, the Ukrainian-born 66-year-old oil and gas magnate, who also built a property empire in London, was found dead at his home in Surrey.
Watford's cause of death was determined as death by hanging, but his wife and children, who were at home at the time, were unharmed. UK authorities were treating Watford's death as unexplained but not suspicious....
Melnikov had made his fortune working for one of the medical companies affected by Western sanctions.
According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Melnikov, along with his 41-year-old wife and two young children, aged 10 and 4 respectively, died of stab wounds. The murder weapon was allegedly found at the scene of the crime.
The newspaper reported that the oligarch had killed his family before committing suicide, although neighbours and other relatives disagreed with the official version....
The former head of the gas giant Novatek, with a personal worth of €400 million, was found hanged, along with those of his wife and daughter, who were stabbed to death in the family villa.
What was initially classified by the police as a double homicide followed by Protosenya's suicide was later categorically denied by his son.
Several family friends have also come out in public to state that Protosenya is, in fact, the third victim of a "staged suicide" and that the oligarch would have been incapable of murdering his family....
Russian state-owned news agency TASS quoted a source close to law enforcement as saying that preliminary evidence pointed to Avayev -- former advisor to Putin and former vice-president of Gazprombank -- killing his wife and daughter and then committing suicide.
A pistol was found in the oligarch's hand, and the flat was locked from the inside....
...On 2 May, Andrei Krukovsky, the 37-year-old director of a Sochi ski resort owned by the gas giant, died after allegedly falling off a cliff while hiking near the Achipse fortress, the scenic area's landmark monument.
“The general manager of the Krasnaya Polyana resort, Andrei Alekseevich Krukovsky, tragically passed away. He loved the mountains and found peace there,” TASS news agency reported.
The Krasnaya Polyana is one of the most popular ski venues in Russia and was a part of the Olympic complex during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
And on 4 July, multi-millionaire businessman Yuri Voronov was found in the swimming pool at his home in the affluent Vyborgsky neighbourhood of St Petersburg with a gunshot wound to his head.
The police retrieved a handgun at the scene, while bullet casings were found at the bottom of the pool, local media reported....
The unidentified man was a second secretary at the embassy, but German intelligence sources told the newspaper they suspected he was an undercover officer with Russia's FSB.
Investigative outlet Bellingcat said it used open-source data to identify the man as Kirill Zhalo, the son of General Alexey Zhalo, deputy director of the FSB's Second Service, responsible for dealing with internal political threats for the Kremlin.
In December of the same year, the founder of nationalist blog Sputnik and Pogrom Yegor Prosvirnin died after falling out of a window of a Moscow apartment building.
Prosvirnin's naked body was found next to a knife and a gas canister after shouts and yelling were heard from his apartment, local media reported....
Police say they were not treating Rapoport's death as suspicious, the Washington-based Politico reported, but the case remains under investigation.
Rapoport became rich while in Moscow before falling out of favour with the Kremlin, mostly due to his support for the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, according to reports.
In 2017, Rapoport's then-business partner, Sergei Tkachenko, also fell to his death from his Moscow apartment's window....
Vladimir Putin is afraid of his critics. All these deaths were of people with a voice in business and government. If enough of his critics were able to raise enough awareness to Putin's war deeds there might be an overthrow of the Putin regime in Moscow. Putin silences his critics. That is what he does. There are poisonings in Europe to confirm that.
None of these people died because they were distressed. They were all murdered. There needs to be open ended UNSOLVED murders of these cases, especially in Washington, DC. How it is an influential citizen of Russia simply shows up dead in front of a hotel in Washington, DC? I guess Putin wanted to make it plain no one can hide from his power. I would think in Washington, DC with mysterious deaths of Russian speaking people turning up everywhere, there would be at least a warning about the potential and an offer to provide some sort of protection.
These people hang in the balance of peace. They are vulnerable and while loyal to Russia, it is not plain to anyone they are loyal to Putin. One of the peace initiatives of USA policy is the encouragement of human rights and women's rights and girl's rights and prosperity for businesses that operate under the flag of global peace. These people should be at least on a list of vulnerable Russian speaking people by the FBI and/or CIA. They aren't operating as spies to injure the Free World, quite the contrary, they want enough global peace to make money. They should at least have the opportunity to know that the Free World knows their life is in danger.
All these very suspicious deaths need to be listed in the Free World as open ended unsolved murders. Please, let's find these Russian speaking people some dignity out of the wrath of Putin.
