August 30, 2023 • 35 mins
In the penultimate episode of the series, Jake and Sergiy discuss the many mysterious Russian billionaire and millionaire deaths that have occurred since Sad Oligarch launched just three months ago. Several dark patterns emerge.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Something strange is going on. Who is killing Russian billionaires?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Another Russian oligarch has been found dead. Reports suggests that
he hanged himself, fell out of.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A window, slashed his wrists, was poisoned, murdered his whole family.
Last gm, more than a dozen Russian oligarchs died in
the space of nine months. Many of the deaths are
suspicious with links to the Kremlin. This is sad Oligach,
an investigation into these recently dead Russian billionaires. It's created
(00:32):
by me, Jake Hanrahan and my colleague Sergey Slipchenkov. Sad
Oligach is a h eleven production for Kulso Media and iHeartRadio.
As we know, many rich Russians have died in mysterious
(00:53):
circumstances between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Not
every one of them warrants a full episode, but either way,
me and SERGERI wanted to weigh up and take stock
of the cases that didn't make the full list. Honestly
getting ridiculous how many people have started dying in these
rich Russian tycoon circles. As well as that since we
(01:15):
launched this show three months ago, several more people within
this world have fallen out of windows, gotten sudden heart attacks,
and even died of cancer instantly surgery and me raked
over the strange Russian millionaire deaths the last twelve weeks
(01:38):
since we've been doing this, I've been getting pings. You've
been getting pings. People are like, oh, look, another one,
another one. Like it's almost become this joke. Some of
them it's like, ah, whatever, but others it's quite interesting.
So I think let's talk about the people that have
died in mysterious circumstances that are kind of linked to
all of this sad oligarch scenarios since we've been doing
(02:02):
this series.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So who would the first one be?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I think the one guy that was interesting if you
look at December seventh, twenty twenty two, Kragory COCHINOI. So
he was basically like a young guy working in computer services.
I think it was a key, and he spoke out
against Russia's invasion in Ukraine. All of a sudden, accused
of having child pornography, his house was being searched, and
(02:28):
then while while it's being searched, he jumps from his
balcony and dies. The investigation says Oh, he was really embarrassed.
He was like, oh, I'm got right handed, so I'm
going to kill myself.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Now, this tech tycoon gurgor Ycoaching of might well have
been a pedophile. If that's true. Nothing of value was
lost when he jumped to his death. However, no evidence
of him having child sexual abuse images on his computer
has actually come out other than the word of the
Russian authorities, and as we know, they're often less interested
(03:01):
in justice, more interested in following the orders of the Kremlin.
What's also worth noting, perhaps is that this happened in
the high market nisney Novgorod area of Moscow, a place
several of these unusual deaths have occurred. Now this could
just be because that's where rich people live, or there
could be another reason.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
He was basically really big in the at sphere of Russia.
He was working on like different applications. I think some
of them were for the Russian government, some were just
used by the Russian government. And then his biggest thing
is his biggest mistake was speaking out against the Russian government.
A lot of his co workers and friends actually fled.
(03:43):
I saw one was in Georgia. A couple like around
Europe and they were saying, like they told them to leave,
that he just didn't listen, and that's basically what happened.
You know, speaks out against Russia all of a sudden,
he's blamed for some thing, in this case owning sheild
pornography and stays there searching his house, and according to them,
(04:07):
he just jumped off the balcony himself. You know, a
lot of these things can be assisted, and there's not
like that indicates that he was like very deep with
the government, but there seems to be a bit of
overlapping of him his services being like used for the
Russian government. It seems like speaking out against the invasion
(04:30):
is at least several of these instances had people killed.
So the guy in India December twenty fourth, Pavel Antov,
he was a politician essentially, he was pretty rich.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
He was a millionaire himself. He wasn't really in with Puchin.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
He was powerful in his own way, having money and
being kind of influential in that way. He was in
enemies with Puchin, but he wasn't exactly in the boys club,
but he was kind of tolerated. But according to the news.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Articles, he spoke out against Puchin.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
He spoke out against the w saying it's bead for business,
and he takes a trip to India. Then at first,
if you remember, two days earlier, his friend or travel partner,
Latimar Ridenov dies also in the same hotel, in this
case from hard complications, and two days later, pavel Antov
(05:19):
is found dead after falling from a third floor balcony,
which is also kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I mean, third floor can be relatively high.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
But I don't know, kind of seems interesting that you
would choose to take your life from the third floor.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
And his friend died in the same hotel.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Exact same hotel two days earlier, hard complications, surrounded by
one bottles is what they said. Kind of alluded that
maybe he was an alcoholic. He was drinking after he died.
Bible himself actually said like this is really suspicious, Like
he doesn't think you know that this is normal.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
He demanded that the police investigate and stuff.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
And then two days later he's the one dying from
a third form balcony.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So Russian millionaire businessman and politician pavel Antov dies falling
from a window not long after criticizing Putin for his
invasion of Ukraine. This happened two days after his friend
died of alleged heart problems in the same hotel, and
Toov said that was suspicious, and then he died himself.
(06:23):
At the same time, other rich, influential Russians were also
dying even better.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
On the same exact same day, December twenty fourth, that
Pavolantov died, two other guys died. Alexander Buzakov sixty six
years old, you know older, but people said he's in
relatively good shape. He was actually like part of the navy.
I didn't quite understand if he was like, you know,
record ranking officer or he was more on the research
(06:51):
slash procurement side of things. But basically he was in
charge of lunching a submarine and he had some issues.
But then the navy he fail to be up to
standard and he dies of a heart attack. People said, basically,
he was out for a walk, he had a heart
attack and somebody found him already dying.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
They couldn't save him in time.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And then there was another one, another rich Russian, dying
at exactly the same time.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Alexey Maslov, also same exact day, in the summer twenty
fourth dies at a military hospital near Moscow.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
No death, no cause of death was provided.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Right, this guy also involved with the military, same thing
kind of failed to give results, and he's dead the
eACT same day, December twenty fourth.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
The guy folls out the window.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
The guy dies in the hotel, and then this happens
like what within the space of how many dies two days?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
So the summer twenty second is the first guy who
allegedly dies from heart complications, and then on the summer
twenty fourth it's tree deaths on the exact same day.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Come on like that.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I mean, there's so many coincidences in this series that
to me feels like someone has said, hey, let them
know all on the same day. I know, it's kind
of it sounds comical at this day, so much madness
has happened, though, it's like, yeah, why not. It's like
in a Breaking Bad where Wall is like, right, we
(08:17):
have to kill all of the possible informants in the
prison in the exact same hour, like to kind of
prove the point, like I can get you. It feels
very like calculated, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Yeah, yeah, It's like I think you've seen those things
where they say, like sometimes you have to dumb the
movie down because like the reality is too it's too
hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
This is what kind of feels like.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
It's like the bad guy like sends out the hit
and he's like get it done. Everybody like sets in
emotion like okay, let's do this movie. Ask and you
see a little montage of this happening. It's like it's
just again. I think if you just tell somebody this
to be like yeah, okay, like sure, yeah, be serious.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Like it's like yeah, like the clock is take in
the background and you see each scene like boom boom boom,
each hit. But I mean, so much weird stuff has happened.
(09:23):
What's been looking at this?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
The thing I noticed with recent cases is there's a
lot less information. I don't know if it's intentional, if
people are getting tired of it, but I'm finding it
a lot harder to actually find articles on it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
It's covered a lot less.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
A lot of the articles will say oh, we're going
to have an autopsy done or examination done, and there
will be like news in two, three days whatever, and
I can't really ever find those updates. In a similar case,
there's on May twentieth Kuchenko, pretty young guy, forty six
years old, Deputy Science min of Russia. It's a pretty
(10:01):
high position. Falls ill on a flight from Cuba to Russia.
They claim that it's a hard condition, but what do
we know. A couple of months earlier, a Russian journalist
who's like he's like hiding from the Russian government too,
says he talked to this guy and that he complained
about Russia, and he was very famously quoted as saying
(10:23):
Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a fascist invasion, a big
no no to say about Russia's special military operation. And
then like and then this happens a few months later,
he's dead. So you know, clearly, I think complaining openly
and kind of not distrust but kind of going against
the narrative is very not Okay.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Well, it's interesting, like you were saying at the start,
this in the start of the kind of climeline, you know,
you could look at it and okay, Leonid Shulman, there
was you know, quite a lot of information same with
to you look of. And then as it gets more
and more and more, suddenly the Russian media is no
(11:08):
longer interested. Now whether that's because they're realizing. Ah, like
the tide has changed after the Ukraine War. I mean
Russia was never particularly open, you know, with press freedom
by any stretch, but certainly things have got a lot
harder after the Ukraine invasion. So whether it's the press going, oh, well,
(11:29):
we're best just if it looks like maybe the government
or someone tied to the Oligas did this, maybe for
our own cel preservation, it's best just to keep quiet.
Maybe it's that, or maybe it's you know, the state
is like, yeah, we need this actually to be a
little quiet, because more attention is being brought to this
than perhaps we thought it would be.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I mean, it's insane.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
We've got over I mean we're twelve episodes this series
and there's still like five or six people that we
could still put on this. And it's the nobody's going up,
you know what I'm saying. It's carrying on. There's more
stuff happening.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yeah, I mean every month, there's at least it seems
one or two that has been the trend. There have
been like quiet months, but for the most part, like
I'm looking here May, June, June, July, July, August, August,
you know, pretty consistent, and yeah, like definitely, you know,
like with like you said, Lenie Shulman, we had straight
(12:24):
up pictures of his diary of his suicide, no slash diary, right,
and then here in the newer ones, I'm looking and
it's like suicide note but no mention of it, no picture,
no seeing other crime or anything. Shulman as well, we
have pictures of him that on the on his bathroom floor, right,
and then we're not seeing any of this, and again
(12:45):
I'm just like struggling to find information on it. Maybe
it's a burnout of sort, you know, like how people
get burned out, but hearing about the war in Ukraine
kind of like what is like news fatigue? You know,
it could be that, and then certainly could be hey,
let's stop covering this so much, you know, for better
(13:06):
or for worse. Like I can one hundred percent see
someone like an editor coming over and being like, hey,
like calm down with coverage with that, we don't need
to hear this. They definitely don't want to hear this,
So let's let's keep our jobs and let's talk about
something else.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Let's talk about our successes in Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Saying that though there was one that kind of happened
early on, there wasn't that much info. One of vladislav Avayev.
He's the guy the third murder suicide of his whole family,
killed his pregnant wife, his thirty year old daughter, and
then shot himself. This was in Moscow. Who was this guy,
Vladi vladislav Avayev.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Yeah, the murder suicides were actually pretty much one after
the other. That one was either the first or the
last one.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
So Vasilli Minokov was March twenty third, vladislav Aviev who
killed his whole family, was April eighteenth, and then Sergey
Protozenya was April nineteenth. Literally the Daylight in Lorette del Mar, Spain,
which we did the episode about, I think episode three.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
He was a rich guy living in a rich Moscow
neighborhood luxury apartment, kills his family with the pistol. Finding
a pistol in Russia is not exactly difficult. He was
also part of the military for a couple of years,
nothing significant from what I understood.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
He just did his usual service.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Left, he went into the social sector and then from
up to twenty ten, and then he becomes vice president
of gus Prom Bank, which is kind of interesting the
career leap that he made.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Wait wait wait, gas from is involved again.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Of course I thought you were that you were on
the memo here come on. Of course Gosproms is involved.
And yeah, and I couldn't find much of how he
made that career drump. You know, he social sector being
like social worker or something. Again, not not much as
provide info is like known about that, but it just
(15:03):
has social sector, maybe social worker, some kind of HR guy.
And then goes on to be the vice president of
gus Prombank. And then he starts his own medical company
in Carbonyx in kuni Ingrad, a little strip of land
in Europe that Russia has. He starts a company there
(15:23):
creating carbon Bonem replacements. From what understood, it didn't like
go fully public. It was kind of like being built up.
But the contracts it had and technology it had, it
was like it was valued at a pretty high price,
a couple of million, I believe. And I believe he's
had some disputes with a business partner, so they were
(15:44):
like coning the business. They coned other businesses, shell companies.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
He was in.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
His his partner was in the Panama papers and stuff,
so you know, involved in a lot of stuff. And
then they had a dispute from what I understood about
the ownership of the company kind of who gets to
own it as such. So you know, there's that lead
and then what actually happened. He kills his thirteen year
old daughter. She has cerebral palsy.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
My understanding of the.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Condition or disease is she's basically very like incapacitated. She
can't really move, she can't take care of herself. You
need like twenty four to seven care for that kind
of condition. He shoots her through the back of the
neck in a single shot. This is from the report, right,
shoots his pregnant wife again in the head and then
(16:40):
multiple times in the chest, and then shoots himself in
the head. He was found in the bathroom next to
his wife holding the pistol. Kindness seems you know, for
a murder suicide. It's like takes a single shot on
his daughter, single shot to the head to his wife,
single shot to himself.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Seems per the single shot does, yeah, and the back
of the head. But there is part of me though
that thinks, okay, this is absolutely horrendous. This guy as
a fucking monster, But there is part of me that
thinks this one almost does sound.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Like there were enough.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Obviously, it's never an excuse, but there were enough, almost
like mitigating circumstances for the sort of person that would
be this monstrous to maybe do it. Whereas the others,
You're like, where the hell did this come from? However,
saying that, I feel almost naive to say that that, like, yeah,
this guy just was the one that happened to kill
his whole family whilst being in the same circuit as
(17:40):
the other oligarchs who also killed their whole families literally
within months of each other. I don't know, it's again,
it would be an insane coincidence. And like you said,
the shot to the back of the head feels like
your archetypal professional here, and that isn't just American movie
stuff like shot to the back of heead is generally
(18:02):
how like an assassin might carry out hit. However, you
could then ar you, well, this guy, okay, he was
a nut case of psycho, but he didn't want to
look at his family when he shot them.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I don't know, what do you think.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I can't say, certainly but the biggest things that kind
of make it seem suspicious is he called his driver
to pick him up next day, like nothing happened, you know,
Like the driver said, it was the normal day.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
He just he was planning to come pick him up,
go to work.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
He told his daughter he was being picked up, his
eldest daughter. That's the other thing, right again, in this case.
You spoke to the expert and she said, you know,
when they do this, they want the entire family there,
they want everybody there to kill them. And his eldest
daughter wasn't there. It's just him and his younger daughter,
his wife. That's the biggest thing for me.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's a great point.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
So that means we've got three murder suicides within very
rich Russian tai Q communities, and each one of them
all within the space of a few months, left at
least one child alive.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
These specific ones are literally within a month.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Surgery's right.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Three rich Russian businessmen killed their whole families apart from
one child each who wasn't there. Vasilli Melnikov did this
on March twenty third, twenty twenty two. Vladislav Abayev did
this on April eighteenth, twenty twenty two, and Sergey Protozenja
did this the next day on April nineteenth, twenty twenty two.
(19:33):
The chances of all this happening by coincidence in such
a specific way are extremely slim.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Three murder suicidence.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
It's like, I don't know, man, same exact demographic, very similar.
Maybe if it's not the Russian government, it might be
the thing I said about the company here, I made
a carbon axid, a very competitive company and product, and
it was literally going public in a couple of days.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
You know, he wasn't having money trouble.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
The worth was it was going to open at thirty
two million rubles and that's like it's gonna go public
and then make more money. Right, I'm about to get
even richer, unless you know, somebody doesn't want to split
that money. Because he did a co owner company and
they were kind of fighting over rights to the company.
I mean, that's a pretty good motive, you know. I
(20:20):
think that's as clear cut as a motive gets.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah, now you say that, I'm already trying to I
guess I kind of. Yeah, It's it seems quite clear
cut that there's a possibility. I should say I guess
it just seems beyond belief that anyone would be that
vicious to kill a young disabled girl and kill a
(20:44):
pregnant woman. But there are plenty of people in this
world like that. I mean, I should know. I've literally
interviewed people like that evil, you know, through my work.
But it just it's so I don't know, it's so disturbing,
you know. I mean sometimes I think it's easy to
kind of lose sight of the level of just pure
brutality that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
That has been doled out here.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Yeah, I think sometimes you kind of get lost and like, oh, well,
this seems like out of a movie.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
This is too much.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I kind of can't believe it, right, it's kind of
hard to believe in accepted. But then like if you
look at real life cases, sometimes they're more brutal than
the movie depict And also again again with the circumstances
this was a single case, maybe then you can start
like doubting it, but it just with the contexts and
just kind of hard to dismiss.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, there were still I mean, there were even others
(21:51):
like I mean, you've got this guy Taran, he died
in a helicopter crash, riot or traveling from Switzerland, but
he was kind kind of definitely not in five with
the Russian government, right.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Yeah, so that is November twenty fifth, Yeah, so the
month before another crypto guy dies. But this Tehran I
think at this point he's living in Monaco, between Monaco, France, Switzerland,
like in that area, I guess, because he was pretty
significant in Russia. He created the Forks like trading system
and he brought it to Russia. He made the biggest platform.
He was on board of a Swiss company. They were
(22:26):
working crypto, so he kind of went from four x
trading to like crypto trading.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
He was pretty central in.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Russia's banking system, so central bank, you know, central bank,
and then he lost his licenses.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
In twenty eighteen, yet another similar pattern. Multi billionaire Russian
businessman Vaitchoslav Tarran at his banking license revoked by the
Russian government. We saw the same thing happen with Dan
Rappaport and Sergei proto Zenya. No one knows exactly why
Tarwan lost his licenses, but it was a leg that
(23:00):
his bank failed to follow Russia's financial regulations.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Do assumption aigans.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Basically, it didn't specify why there's no specific like official
document that said why, but we know that he had
his licenses revoked and he left the country. He didn't
run away from the police or anything, but he stopped
living there as much. He's flying between his From what
I said, I was like he was at a work
meeting in Switzerland flying back to Monaco his helicopter crashes.
(23:28):
He was pretty connected with the government. He was involved
with the banking and I think, as we know at
this point, if you're in banking and Russia, you're probably
involved with the governments at some level. So the crash happened,
I think it was like between Switzerland and Monaco. But
guests who investigated Russian government, the Russian embassy said they're
(23:49):
going to look into it. They're going to be the
ones investigating it. Pretty sure, like the embassy doesn't. Like
the Russian embassy usually can't just get you know, jurisdiction
and come over and be the ones investigating. They were
the one in charge of that, and that also kind
of stood out to you.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah, it's funny that all these people have some ties
to gas banking or other kind of natural resource trading
companies that are link to the Russian government in some way,
although you could then argue, well, yeah, all of those
the way that Russia is, all of those companies would
(24:25):
be but it's I don't know, there's a very clear threat.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Well this is not normal in a way, like there
is a certain pattern. You know, they weren't dying let's
say like even twenty fifteen to twenty twenty, right, there
weren't this many, all the gark deaths. What is it
all of a sudden that this is happening in two years?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, exactly, And I mean that's kind of the point.
It's like we're not the cops, and we're certainly not
the FSB, and we're not the CIA. So it's like, yeah,
I don't know. But if you look at it and
lay it out like this, yeah, it's there's a lot
of weird stuff. We could go all day about the
various people that have been kind of linked. It's interesting
(25:05):
there's this person, there's that person. I think when looking
into this you can kind of like lose your mind
a bit, Like every single death surrounding the kind of
sad Oligach circuit, it's like, oh, that's another one, but
not necessarily. Some people have sent me someone it's like, yeah,
that person just died, like it's not even that weird.
The last one I do want to talk about, though,
(25:25):
is Natalia botch Kariva. She was forty four years old,
the door of the former governor of Penza Oblast.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
She's very rich, so former governor of Penza Oblast, and
she was basically some sources said, running like she was
in charge. Some said she just had shares, but shares
in her families. They quote it as empire of real estate,
you know, several massive shopping centers, CEO of an advertising agency,
(25:55):
and she's found that in her apartment. And once again,
very little information. So all the police said was the
death was not violent. They didn't even say like how
she died, why she died, just death was not violent,
and allegedly she committed suicide. But then somebody else said
it was a hard heart failure. It says we're going
(26:16):
to give you an update once an autopsy comes in.
There has been no update. I've been trying to check
it out. I could not find anything. The other notable
thing apparently in twenty twenty one she got scammed for
sixteen million rubles. Like he made the news, and all
they could really provide was to make her personal problems
(26:37):
go away. So I'm not sure what that means if
she was trying to get rid of someone, if she
has some shit she had to cover up. But apparently
somebody promised to solve her personal problems and scammed her
out of sixteen million.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Right, that already suggests to me right off the bat,
that she's in Okay, she got scammed, but she's trying
to at least be in some kind of world where
you can get people killed. I mean, she's a multimillionaire,
you know, through her family shares in the family's empire
through oligarchy from her father. But either way, she's got
(27:12):
money and she's trying to make her personal problems go away.
So her personal problems are very clearly not going to
be related to money because she's got all the money.
So who else could she possibly be paying someone to
do to get rid of her personal problems. My guess
is she tried to get someone killed and she got scammed.
How much is sixty million roubles in like US dollars roughly.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Two hundred thousand about, But it's a lot of money
for her. This is just paying for like a service
I'm not you know, I'm not going around going to
be able to pay somebody two hundred thousand dollars to
make some issue away.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
You know, this is for her. It seems like dropping
the bucket kind of.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Thing honestly as well.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
So it's like it's it's what it's like around one
hundred and seventy two hundred thousand US dollars from what
I know just through research or like, you know, the
underground kind of circuit hitman Assassin's that kind of thing.
That's a lot of money. That's I mean, it screams
to me that she really didn't know what she was doing.
And no one is paying like that kind of money
(28:17):
to get someone killed unless they're of some specific notoriety
or some kind of standing politically or business. Maybe that's
what she did, and maybe the person then said, Okay,
well you didn't get me, you got scanned, and now
I'll get you. I don't know, I'm just speculating, but
who knows in this world.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it doesn't sound like
she really made her own anything.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Really.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
It sounds like she just kind of grew up and
being you know, in a rich family, just kind of
guarded from her father.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
She was.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
She had a lot of shares in the companies. Like
I said, already enough reason to kill someone, you know,
whether to make somebody else shares more valuable or whatever
the reason.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
That's pretty much it on her.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Again, these most more recent ones have very limited information.
There's actually two I want to I think are like
significant enough to talk about more. And Natalia was July fourteenth, right,
And these guys are actually the two most recent ones,
so July twenty second. Antone Cherrypanicov. He's a forty year
old IT security company billionaire. His company was associated with
(29:24):
the head of with like the government. It wasn't like
a government company, but it was basically it's only client.
They were making wired tapping companies, so things to you know,
listen into your phone, any other technology, and they basically
made all of the apasbad listening technology phone tapping.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
He basically lobbied the government to include his tapping technology
into most technologies, so again at least phones and I
think computers. But yeah, this is the kind of guy
he is, you know, a billionaire working with the government.
He was also working on run net, which is like
Russian net, right, I think China has this where basically
(30:05):
they're completely disconnected from the rest of the Internet. They
can control what's seen, who sees what. Yeah, North Korea
has it too, red stuff exactly. He was a big
part of that project. And then he dies. Very little
information how he dies. Some said it was suicide and
they were saying like, oh, there's no way, he's so young,
but no one said how like not even like fell
(30:27):
off of a lot of a window or you know,
took pills or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Right, just he's dead.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, just basically he's dead, but pretty significant, you know
if he's involved in this it security stuff, like very
involved with the garment for sure, involved with deaf his
bath he's making this equipment for them, right basically.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
And then the other guy who was I.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Thought also was really interesting again nad Lopiro actually two
weeks ago August sixteenth. He's the guy who was in
charge of building Putin's palace. It's like the giant, massive,
massive mention and souci that was built like specifically for Putin.
This guy is a lieutenant general in the army. He
actually also did security for like the southern region of Russia,
(31:11):
Southern regions Russia. Like if Putin or any other high
ranking guy would go like wherever P visit, he could
be in charge of the security. And he was in
charge of these construction projects. I believe the project was
like completing in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, so he would
have been involved in making that palace, right, and then
Putin's known to kind of he doesn't want to talk
(31:32):
about it, he doesn't want attention to it. So in
twenty sixteen, this guy a Lottpero is accused of taking bribes.
Allegedly he's caught right handed taking a bribe, and then
they also find more money that they say is in
relation to bribes, so like they're like, this guy's fully corrupt.
A year later, he is thrown in jail, high security
(31:54):
basically for ten years. His sentence got slightly reduced because
they tried to throw in some illegal weapons trafficking charges
on to him, but that fell through, and he's spending
his time in jail. Like so this year, right, and
he's actually on good behavior. He was about to be paroled,
and all of a sudden he actually on August fourteenth,
(32:15):
just two days before he dies, he's ill transferred to
a hospital. Doctor said it was leukemia, and two days
later he dies. Kemia is a type of cancer. Pretty
sure it's not that fast, you know, Pretty sure it
takes more than two days. But yeah, he dies, and
he was very connected to this palace. He would have
been the one dealing with the finances and stuff. To me,
(32:38):
if I had to speculate, you know, if it's the
typical you construct your secret layer and then you kill
the guys working on it. This is what it seemed
like to me. But again, who knows. It's just the
biggest thing to me is you know, he's working on
this mansion. All of a sudden, he's accused of a crime,
put away in jail, and right before he's about to
(32:58):
leave jail days of a very weird circumstance.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
If you're building the secret layer and you mess up
the secret layer for the guy that wants the secret layer,
you're probably gonna get it.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Well, secret for her isn't really if somebody has to
build it, but you want it to be secret, there's
a only so many ways to do that.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So, as you can see, there are many rich Russians
that have died in mysterious circumstances even in the three
months that we've been making this series, and what was
lots of this might sound extraordinary, to the point of
it being stranger than fiction. Take into account what just
happened in Russia, you have get any Progosion, the oligarch
(33:42):
and commander of the Kremlin backed mercenary contractor firm PMC. Wagner,
died in a mysterious plane crash. This happened August twenty third,
exactly one month to the day since Progosion in his unit,
launched an abandoned mutiny against Poutin. This was one of
the largest open attacks against his authority in his whole life.
(34:06):
It's obvious the revenge would occur. Wagnerfiers claim that Progosion's
plane was literally shot out of the sky by the
Russian military, and Putin has said he most definitely will
not be attending Progosion's funeral, his old friend turned enemy.
We'll be looking into that next week on sad Oligach.
(34:36):
Sad Oligach is a h eleven production for Cool Zone
Media and iHeart Radio, hosted, produced, researched, and edited by
me Jake Hanrahan and Sergei Slipchenko co produced by Sophie Lichtman,
music by Sam Black, artwork by Adam mcdoyle, sound mix
(34:57):
by Splicing Block. Go to Jake hanry a hand dot
com for more information. Mm hmm
Something strange is going on. Who is killing Russian billionaires?
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Another Russian oligarch has been found dead. Reports suggests that
he hanged himself, fell out of.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
A window, slashed his wrists, was poisoned, murdered his whole family.
Last gm, more than a dozen Russian oligarchs died in
the space of nine months. Many of the deaths are
suspicious with links to the Kremlin. This is sad Oligach,
an investigation into these recently dead Russian billionaires. It's created
(00:32):
by me, Jake Hanrahan and my colleague Sergey Slipchenkov. Sad
Oligach is a h eleven production for Kulso Media and iHeartRadio.
As we know, many rich Russians have died in mysterious
(00:53):
circumstances between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three. Not
every one of them warrants a full episode, but either way,
me and SERGERI wanted to weigh up and take stock
of the cases that didn't make the full list. Honestly
getting ridiculous how many people have started dying in these
rich Russian tycoon circles. As well as that since we
(01:15):
launched this show three months ago, several more people within
this world have fallen out of windows, gotten sudden heart attacks,
and even died of cancer instantly surgery and me raked
over the strange Russian millionaire deaths the last twelve weeks
(01:38):
since we've been doing this, I've been getting pings. You've
been getting pings. People are like, oh, look, another one,
another one. Like it's almost become this joke. Some of
them it's like, ah, whatever, but others it's quite interesting.
So I think let's talk about the people that have
died in mysterious circumstances that are kind of linked to
all of this sad oligarch scenarios since we've been doing
(02:02):
this series.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So who would the first one be?
Speaker 4 (02:05):
I think the one guy that was interesting if you
look at December seventh, twenty twenty two, Kragory COCHINOI. So
he was basically like a young guy working in computer services.
I think it was a key, and he spoke out
against Russia's invasion in Ukraine. All of a sudden, accused
of having child pornography, his house was being searched, and
(02:28):
then while while it's being searched, he jumps from his
balcony and dies. The investigation says Oh, he was really embarrassed.
He was like, oh, I'm got right handed, so I'm
going to kill myself.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Now, this tech tycoon gurgor Ycoaching of might well have
been a pedophile. If that's true. Nothing of value was
lost when he jumped to his death. However, no evidence
of him having child sexual abuse images on his computer
has actually come out other than the word of the
Russian authorities, and as we know, they're often less interested
(03:01):
in justice, more interested in following the orders of the Kremlin.
What's also worth noting, perhaps is that this happened in
the high market nisney Novgorod area of Moscow, a place
several of these unusual deaths have occurred. Now this could
just be because that's where rich people live, or there
could be another reason.
Speaker 4 (03:20):
He was basically really big in the at sphere of Russia.
He was working on like different applications. I think some
of them were for the Russian government, some were just
used by the Russian government. And then his biggest thing
is his biggest mistake was speaking out against the Russian government.
A lot of his co workers and friends actually fled.
(03:43):
I saw one was in Georgia. A couple like around
Europe and they were saying, like they told them to leave,
that he just didn't listen, and that's basically what happened.
You know, speaks out against Russia all of a sudden,
he's blamed for some thing, in this case owning sheild
pornography and stays there searching his house, and according to them,
(04:07):
he just jumped off the balcony himself. You know, a
lot of these things can be assisted, and there's not
like that indicates that he was like very deep with
the government, but there seems to be a bit of
overlapping of him his services being like used for the
Russian government. It seems like speaking out against the invasion
(04:30):
is at least several of these instances had people killed.
So the guy in India December twenty fourth, Pavel Antov,
he was a politician essentially, he was pretty rich.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
He was a millionaire himself. He wasn't really in with Puchin.
Speaker 4 (04:44):
He was powerful in his own way, having money and
being kind of influential in that way. He was in
enemies with Puchin, but he wasn't exactly in the boys club,
but he was kind of tolerated. But according to the news.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Articles, he spoke out against Puchin.
Speaker 4 (04:59):
He spoke out against the w saying it's bead for business,
and he takes a trip to India. Then at first,
if you remember, two days earlier, his friend or travel partner,
Latimar Ridenov dies also in the same hotel, in this
case from hard complications, and two days later, pavel Antov
(05:19):
is found dead after falling from a third floor balcony,
which is also kind of interesting.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
I mean, third floor can be relatively high.
Speaker 4 (05:28):
But I don't know, kind of seems interesting that you
would choose to take your life from the third floor.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
And his friend died in the same hotel.
Speaker 4 (05:36):
Exact same hotel two days earlier, hard complications, surrounded by
one bottles is what they said. Kind of alluded that
maybe he was an alcoholic. He was drinking after he died.
Bible himself actually said like this is really suspicious, Like
he doesn't think you know that this is normal.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
He demanded that the police investigate and stuff.
Speaker 4 (05:59):
And then two days later he's the one dying from
a third form balcony.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So Russian millionaire businessman and politician pavel Antov dies falling
from a window not long after criticizing Putin for his
invasion of Ukraine. This happened two days after his friend
died of alleged heart problems in the same hotel, and
Toov said that was suspicious, and then he died himself.
(06:23):
At the same time, other rich, influential Russians were also
dying even better.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
On the same exact same day, December twenty fourth, that
Pavolantov died, two other guys died. Alexander Buzakov sixty six
years old, you know older, but people said he's in
relatively good shape. He was actually like part of the navy.
I didn't quite understand if he was like, you know,
record ranking officer or he was more on the research
(06:51):
slash procurement side of things. But basically he was in
charge of lunching a submarine and he had some issues.
But then the navy he fail to be up to
standard and he dies of a heart attack. People said, basically,
he was out for a walk, he had a heart
attack and somebody found him already dying.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
They couldn't save him in time.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
And then there was another one, another rich Russian, dying
at exactly the same time.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
Alexey Maslov, also same exact day, in the summer twenty
fourth dies at a military hospital near Moscow.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
No death, no cause of death was provided.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
Right, this guy also involved with the military, same thing
kind of failed to give results, and he's dead the
eACT same day, December twenty fourth.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
The guy folls out the window.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
The guy dies in the hotel, and then this happens
like what within the space of how many dies two days?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
So the summer twenty second is the first guy who
allegedly dies from heart complications, and then on the summer
twenty fourth it's tree deaths on the exact same day.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Come on like that.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
I mean, there's so many coincidences in this series that
to me feels like someone has said, hey, let them
know all on the same day. I know, it's kind
of it sounds comical at this day, so much madness
has happened, though, it's like, yeah, why not. It's like
in a Breaking Bad where Wall is like, right, we
(08:17):
have to kill all of the possible informants in the
prison in the exact same hour, like to kind of
prove the point, like I can get you. It feels
very like calculated, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Yeah, yeah, It's like I think you've seen those things
where they say, like sometimes you have to dumb the
movie down because like the reality is too it's too
hard to believe.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
This is what kind of feels like.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
It's like the bad guy like sends out the hit
and he's like get it done. Everybody like sets in
emotion like okay, let's do this movie. Ask and you
see a little montage of this happening. It's like it's
just again. I think if you just tell somebody this
to be like yeah, okay, like sure, yeah, be serious.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Like it's like yeah, like the clock is take in
the background and you see each scene like boom boom boom,
each hit. But I mean, so much weird stuff has happened.
(09:23):
What's been looking at this?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
The thing I noticed with recent cases is there's a
lot less information. I don't know if it's intentional, if
people are getting tired of it, but I'm finding it
a lot harder to actually find articles on it.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
It's covered a lot less.
Speaker 4 (09:39):
A lot of the articles will say oh, we're going
to have an autopsy done or examination done, and there
will be like news in two, three days whatever, and
I can't really ever find those updates. In a similar case,
there's on May twentieth Kuchenko, pretty young guy, forty six
years old, Deputy Science min of Russia. It's a pretty
(10:01):
high position. Falls ill on a flight from Cuba to Russia.
They claim that it's a hard condition, but what do
we know. A couple of months earlier, a Russian journalist
who's like he's like hiding from the Russian government too,
says he talked to this guy and that he complained
about Russia, and he was very famously quoted as saying
(10:23):
Russia's invasion of Ukraine was a fascist invasion, a big
no no to say about Russia's special military operation. And
then like and then this happens a few months later,
he's dead. So you know, clearly, I think complaining openly
and kind of not distrust but kind of going against
the narrative is very not Okay.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Well, it's interesting, like you were saying at the start,
this in the start of the kind of climeline, you know,
you could look at it and okay, Leonid Shulman, there
was you know, quite a lot of information same with
to you look of. And then as it gets more
and more and more, suddenly the Russian media is no
(11:08):
longer interested. Now whether that's because they're realizing. Ah, like
the tide has changed after the Ukraine War. I mean
Russia was never particularly open, you know, with press freedom
by any stretch, but certainly things have got a lot
harder after the Ukraine invasion. So whether it's the press going, oh, well,
(11:29):
we're best just if it looks like maybe the government
or someone tied to the Oligas did this, maybe for
our own cel preservation, it's best just to keep quiet.
Maybe it's that, or maybe it's you know, the state
is like, yeah, we need this actually to be a
little quiet, because more attention is being brought to this
than perhaps we thought it would be.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I mean, it's insane.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
We've got over I mean we're twelve episodes this series
and there's still like five or six people that we
could still put on this. And it's the nobody's going up,
you know what I'm saying. It's carrying on. There's more
stuff happening.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
Yeah, I mean every month, there's at least it seems
one or two that has been the trend. There have
been like quiet months, but for the most part, like
I'm looking here May, June, June, July, July, August, August,
you know, pretty consistent, and yeah, like definitely, you know,
like with like you said, Lenie Shulman, we had straight
(12:24):
up pictures of his diary of his suicide, no slash diary, right,
and then here in the newer ones, I'm looking and
it's like suicide note but no mention of it, no picture,
no seeing other crime or anything. Shulman as well, we
have pictures of him that on the on his bathroom floor, right,
and then we're not seeing any of this, and again
(12:45):
I'm just like struggling to find information on it. Maybe
it's a burnout of sort, you know, like how people
get burned out, but hearing about the war in Ukraine
kind of like what is like news fatigue? You know,
it could be that, and then certainly could be hey,
let's stop covering this so much, you know, for better
(13:06):
or for worse. Like I can one hundred percent see
someone like an editor coming over and being like, hey,
like calm down with coverage with that, we don't need
to hear this. They definitely don't want to hear this,
So let's let's keep our jobs and let's talk about
something else.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Let's talk about our successes in Ukraine.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Saying that though there was one that kind of happened
early on, there wasn't that much info. One of vladislav Avayev.
He's the guy the third murder suicide of his whole family,
killed his pregnant wife, his thirty year old daughter, and
then shot himself. This was in Moscow. Who was this guy,
Vladi vladislav Avayev.
Speaker 4 (13:43):
Yeah, the murder suicides were actually pretty much one after
the other. That one was either the first or the
last one.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
So Vasilli Minokov was March twenty third, vladislav Aviev who
killed his whole family, was April eighteenth, and then Sergey
Protozenya was April nineteenth. Literally the Daylight in Lorette del Mar, Spain,
which we did the episode about, I think episode three.
Speaker 4 (14:08):
He was a rich guy living in a rich Moscow
neighborhood luxury apartment, kills his family with the pistol. Finding
a pistol in Russia is not exactly difficult. He was
also part of the military for a couple of years,
nothing significant from what I understood.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
He just did his usual service.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Left, he went into the social sector and then from
up to twenty ten, and then he becomes vice president
of gus Prom Bank, which is kind of interesting the
career leap that he made.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Wait wait wait, gas from is involved again.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Of course I thought you were that you were on
the memo here come on. Of course Gosproms is involved.
And yeah, and I couldn't find much of how he
made that career drump. You know, he social sector being
like social worker or something. Again, not not much as
provide info is like known about that, but it just
(15:03):
has social sector, maybe social worker, some kind of HR guy.
And then goes on to be the vice president of
gus Prombank. And then he starts his own medical company
in Carbonyx in kuni Ingrad, a little strip of land
in Europe that Russia has. He starts a company there
(15:23):
creating carbon Bonem replacements. From what understood, it didn't like
go fully public. It was kind of like being built up.
But the contracts it had and technology it had, it
was like it was valued at a pretty high price,
a couple of million, I believe. And I believe he's
had some disputes with a business partner, so they were
(15:44):
like coning the business. They coned other businesses, shell companies.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
He was in.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
His his partner was in the Panama papers and stuff,
so you know, involved in a lot of stuff. And
then they had a dispute from what I understood about
the ownership of the company kind of who gets to
own it as such. So you know, there's that lead
and then what actually happened. He kills his thirteen year
old daughter. She has cerebral palsy.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
My understanding of the.
Speaker 4 (16:19):
Condition or disease is she's basically very like incapacitated. She
can't really move, she can't take care of herself. You
need like twenty four to seven care for that kind
of condition. He shoots her through the back of the
neck in a single shot. This is from the report, right,
shoots his pregnant wife again in the head and then
(16:40):
multiple times in the chest, and then shoots himself in
the head. He was found in the bathroom next to
his wife holding the pistol. Kindness seems you know, for
a murder suicide. It's like takes a single shot on
his daughter, single shot to the head to his wife,
single shot to himself.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
Seems per the single shot does, yeah, and the back
of the head. But there is part of me though
that thinks, okay, this is absolutely horrendous. This guy as
a fucking monster, But there is part of me that
thinks this one almost does sound.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Like there were enough.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Obviously, it's never an excuse, but there were enough, almost
like mitigating circumstances for the sort of person that would
be this monstrous to maybe do it. Whereas the others,
You're like, where the hell did this come from? However,
saying that, I feel almost naive to say that that, like, yeah,
this guy just was the one that happened to kill
his whole family whilst being in the same circuit as
(17:40):
the other oligarchs who also killed their whole families literally
within months of each other. I don't know, it's again,
it would be an insane coincidence. And like you said,
the shot to the back of the head feels like
your archetypal professional here, and that isn't just American movie
stuff like shot to the back of heead is generally
(18:02):
how like an assassin might carry out hit. However, you
could then ar you, well, this guy, okay, he was
a nut case of psycho, but he didn't want to
look at his family when he shot them.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I don't know, what do you think.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I can't say, certainly but the biggest things that kind
of make it seem suspicious is he called his driver
to pick him up next day, like nothing happened, you know,
Like the driver said, it was the normal day.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
He just he was planning to come pick him up,
go to work.
Speaker 4 (18:31):
He told his daughter he was being picked up, his
eldest daughter. That's the other thing, right again, in this case.
You spoke to the expert and she said, you know,
when they do this, they want the entire family there,
they want everybody there to kill them. And his eldest
daughter wasn't there. It's just him and his younger daughter,
his wife. That's the biggest thing for me.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
That's a great point.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
So that means we've got three murder suicides within very
rich Russian tai Q communities, and each one of them
all within the space of a few months, left at
least one child alive.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
These specific ones are literally within a month.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Surgery's right.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Three rich Russian businessmen killed their whole families apart from
one child each who wasn't there. Vasilli Melnikov did this
on March twenty third, twenty twenty two. Vladislav Abayev did
this on April eighteenth, twenty twenty two, and Sergey Protozenja
did this the next day on April nineteenth, twenty twenty two.
(19:33):
The chances of all this happening by coincidence in such
a specific way are extremely slim.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
Three murder suicidence.
Speaker 4 (19:41):
It's like, I don't know, man, same exact demographic, very similar.
Maybe if it's not the Russian government, it might be
the thing I said about the company here, I made
a carbon axid, a very competitive company and product, and
it was literally going public in a couple of days.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
You know, he wasn't having money trouble.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
The worth was it was going to open at thirty
two million rubles and that's like it's gonna go public
and then make more money. Right, I'm about to get
even richer, unless you know, somebody doesn't want to split
that money. Because he did a co owner company and
they were kind of fighting over rights to the company.
I mean, that's a pretty good motive, you know. I
(20:20):
think that's as clear cut as a motive gets.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
Yeah, now you say that, I'm already trying to I
guess I kind of. Yeah, It's it seems quite clear
cut that there's a possibility. I should say I guess
it just seems beyond belief that anyone would be that
vicious to kill a young disabled girl and kill a
(20:44):
pregnant woman. But there are plenty of people in this
world like that. I mean, I should know. I've literally
interviewed people like that evil, you know, through my work.
But it just it's so I don't know, it's so disturbing,
you know. I mean sometimes I think it's easy to
kind of lose sight of the level of just pure
brutality that.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
That has been doled out here.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
Yeah, I think sometimes you kind of get lost and like, oh, well,
this seems like out of a movie.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
This is too much.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
I kind of can't believe it, right, it's kind of
hard to believe in accepted. But then like if you
look at real life cases, sometimes they're more brutal than
the movie depict And also again again with the circumstances
this was a single case, maybe then you can start
like doubting it, but it just with the contexts and
just kind of hard to dismiss.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yeah, there were still I mean, there were even others
(21:51):
like I mean, you've got this guy Taran, he died
in a helicopter crash, riot or traveling from Switzerland, but
he was kind kind of definitely not in five with
the Russian government, right.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Yeah, so that is November twenty fifth, Yeah, so the
month before another crypto guy dies. But this Tehran I
think at this point he's living in Monaco, between Monaco, France, Switzerland,
like in that area, I guess, because he was pretty
significant in Russia. He created the Forks like trading system
and he brought it to Russia. He made the biggest platform.
He was on board of a Swiss company. They were
(22:26):
working crypto, so he kind of went from four x
trading to like crypto trading.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
He was pretty central in.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Russia's banking system, so central bank, you know, central bank,
and then he lost his licenses.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
In twenty eighteen, yet another similar pattern. Multi billionaire Russian
businessman Vaitchoslav Tarran at his banking license revoked by the
Russian government. We saw the same thing happen with Dan
Rappaport and Sergei proto Zenya. No one knows exactly why
Tarwan lost his licenses, but it was a leg that
(23:00):
his bank failed to follow Russia's financial regulations.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Do assumption aigans.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
Basically, it didn't specify why there's no specific like official
document that said why, but we know that he had
his licenses revoked and he left the country. He didn't
run away from the police or anything, but he stopped
living there as much. He's flying between his From what
I said, I was like he was at a work
meeting in Switzerland flying back to Monaco his helicopter crashes.
(23:28):
He was pretty connected with the government. He was involved
with the banking and I think, as we know at
this point, if you're in banking and Russia, you're probably
involved with the governments at some level. So the crash happened,
I think it was like between Switzerland and Monaco. But
guests who investigated Russian government, the Russian embassy said they're
(23:49):
going to look into it. They're going to be the
ones investigating it. Pretty sure, like the embassy doesn't. Like
the Russian embassy usually can't just get you know, jurisdiction
and come over and be the ones investigating. They were
the one in charge of that, and that also kind
of stood out to you.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Yeah, it's funny that all these people have some ties
to gas banking or other kind of natural resource trading
companies that are link to the Russian government in some way,
although you could then argue, well, yeah, all of those
the way that Russia is, all of those companies would
(24:25):
be but it's I don't know, there's a very clear threat.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Well this is not normal in a way, like there
is a certain pattern. You know, they weren't dying let's
say like even twenty fifteen to twenty twenty, right, there
weren't this many, all the gark deaths. What is it
all of a sudden that this is happening in two years?
Speaker 3 (24:44):
Yeah, exactly, And I mean that's kind of the point.
It's like we're not the cops, and we're certainly not
the FSB, and we're not the CIA. So it's like, yeah,
I don't know. But if you look at it and
lay it out like this, yeah, it's there's a lot
of weird stuff. We could go all day about the
various people that have been kind of linked. It's interesting
(25:05):
there's this person, there's that person. I think when looking
into this you can kind of like lose your mind
a bit, Like every single death surrounding the kind of
sad Oligach circuit, it's like, oh, that's another one, but
not necessarily. Some people have sent me someone it's like, yeah,
that person just died, like it's not even that weird.
The last one I do want to talk about, though,
(25:25):
is Natalia botch Kariva. She was forty four years old,
the door of the former governor of Penza Oblast.
Speaker 4 (25:34):
She's very rich, so former governor of Penza Oblast, and
she was basically some sources said, running like she was
in charge. Some said she just had shares, but shares
in her families. They quote it as empire of real estate,
you know, several massive shopping centers, CEO of an advertising agency,
(25:55):
and she's found that in her apartment. And once again,
very little information. So all the police said was the
death was not violent. They didn't even say like how
she died, why she died, just death was not violent,
and allegedly she committed suicide. But then somebody else said
it was a hard heart failure. It says we're going
(26:16):
to give you an update once an autopsy comes in.
There has been no update. I've been trying to check
it out. I could not find anything. The other notable
thing apparently in twenty twenty one she got scammed for
sixteen million rubles. Like he made the news, and all
they could really provide was to make her personal problems
(26:37):
go away. So I'm not sure what that means if
she was trying to get rid of someone, if she
has some shit she had to cover up. But apparently
somebody promised to solve her personal problems and scammed her
out of sixteen million.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
Right, that already suggests to me right off the bat,
that she's in Okay, she got scammed, but she's trying
to at least be in some kind of world where
you can get people killed. I mean, she's a multimillionaire,
you know, through her family shares in the family's empire
through oligarchy from her father. But either way, she's got
(27:12):
money and she's trying to make her personal problems go away.
So her personal problems are very clearly not going to
be related to money because she's got all the money.
So who else could she possibly be paying someone to
do to get rid of her personal problems. My guess
is she tried to get someone killed and she got scammed.
How much is sixty million roubles in like US dollars roughly.
Speaker 4 (27:34):
Two hundred thousand about, But it's a lot of money
for her. This is just paying for like a service
I'm not you know, I'm not going around going to
be able to pay somebody two hundred thousand dollars to
make some issue away.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
You know, this is for her. It seems like dropping
the bucket kind of.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
Thing honestly as well.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
So it's like it's it's what it's like around one
hundred and seventy two hundred thousand US dollars from what
I know just through research or like, you know, the
underground kind of circuit hitman Assassin's that kind of thing.
That's a lot of money. That's I mean, it screams
to me that she really didn't know what she was doing.
And no one is paying like that kind of money
(28:17):
to get someone killed unless they're of some specific notoriety
or some kind of standing politically or business. Maybe that's
what she did, and maybe the person then said, Okay,
well you didn't get me, you got scanned, and now
I'll get you. I don't know, I'm just speculating, but
who knows in this world.
Speaker 4 (28:37):
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it doesn't sound like
she really made her own anything.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Really.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
It sounds like she just kind of grew up and
being you know, in a rich family, just kind of
guarded from her father.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
She was.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
She had a lot of shares in the companies. Like
I said, already enough reason to kill someone, you know,
whether to make somebody else shares more valuable or whatever
the reason.
Speaker 2 (29:01):
That's pretty much it on her.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
Again, these most more recent ones have very limited information.
There's actually two I want to I think are like
significant enough to talk about more. And Natalia was July fourteenth, right,
And these guys are actually the two most recent ones,
so July twenty second. Antone Cherrypanicov. He's a forty year
old IT security company billionaire. His company was associated with
(29:24):
the head of with like the government. It wasn't like
a government company, but it was basically it's only client.
They were making wired tapping companies, so things to you know,
listen into your phone, any other technology, and they basically
made all of the apasbad listening technology phone tapping.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Right.
Speaker 4 (29:44):
He basically lobbied the government to include his tapping technology
into most technologies, so again at least phones and I
think computers. But yeah, this is the kind of guy
he is, you know, a billionaire working with the government.
He was also working on run net, which is like
Russian net, right, I think China has this where basically
(30:05):
they're completely disconnected from the rest of the Internet. They
can control what's seen, who sees what. Yeah, North Korea
has it too, red stuff exactly. He was a big
part of that project. And then he dies. Very little
information how he dies. Some said it was suicide and
they were saying like, oh, there's no way, he's so young,
but no one said how like not even like fell
(30:27):
off of a lot of a window or you know,
took pills or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (30:33):
Right, just he's dead.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, just basically he's dead, but pretty significant, you know
if he's involved in this it security stuff, like very
involved with the garment for sure, involved with deaf his
bath he's making this equipment for them, right basically.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
And then the other guy who was I.
Speaker 4 (30:48):
Thought also was really interesting again nad Lopiro actually two
weeks ago August sixteenth. He's the guy who was in
charge of building Putin's palace. It's like the giant, massive,
massive mention and souci that was built like specifically for Putin.
This guy is a lieutenant general in the army. He
actually also did security for like the southern region of Russia,
(31:11):
Southern regions Russia. Like if Putin or any other high
ranking guy would go like wherever P visit, he could
be in charge of the security. And he was in
charge of these construction projects. I believe the project was
like completing in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, so he would
have been involved in making that palace, right, and then
Putin's known to kind of he doesn't want to talk
(31:32):
about it, he doesn't want attention to it. So in
twenty sixteen, this guy a Lottpero is accused of taking bribes.
Allegedly he's caught right handed taking a bribe, and then
they also find more money that they say is in
relation to bribes, so like they're like, this guy's fully corrupt.
A year later, he is thrown in jail, high security
(31:54):
basically for ten years. His sentence got slightly reduced because
they tried to throw in some illegal weapons trafficking charges
on to him, but that fell through, and he's spending
his time in jail. Like so this year, right, and
he's actually on good behavior. He was about to be paroled,
and all of a sudden he actually on August fourteenth,
(32:15):
just two days before he dies, he's ill transferred to
a hospital. Doctor said it was leukemia, and two days
later he dies. Kemia is a type of cancer. Pretty
sure it's not that fast, you know, Pretty sure it
takes more than two days. But yeah, he dies, and
he was very connected to this palace. He would have
been the one dealing with the finances and stuff. To me,
(32:38):
if I had to speculate, you know, if it's the
typical you construct your secret layer and then you kill
the guys working on it. This is what it seemed
like to me. But again, who knows. It's just the
biggest thing to me is you know, he's working on
this mansion. All of a sudden, he's accused of a crime,
put away in jail, and right before he's about to
(32:58):
leave jail days of a very weird circumstance.
Speaker 3 (33:04):
If you're building the secret layer and you mess up
the secret layer for the guy that wants the secret layer,
you're probably gonna get it.
Speaker 4 (33:12):
Well, secret for her isn't really if somebody has to
build it, but you want it to be secret, there's
a only so many ways to do that.
Speaker 3 (33:21):
So, as you can see, there are many rich Russians
that have died in mysterious circumstances even in the three
months that we've been making this series, and what was
lots of this might sound extraordinary, to the point of
it being stranger than fiction. Take into account what just
happened in Russia, you have get any Progosion, the oligarch
(33:42):
and commander of the Kremlin backed mercenary contractor firm PMC. Wagner,
died in a mysterious plane crash. This happened August twenty third,
exactly one month to the day since Progosion in his unit,
launched an abandoned mutiny against Poutin. This was one of
the largest open attacks against his authority in his whole life.
(34:06):
It's obvious the revenge would occur. Wagnerfiers claim that Progosion's
plane was literally shot out of the sky by the
Russian military, and Putin has said he most definitely will
not be attending Progosion's funeral, his old friend turned enemy.
We'll be looking into that next week on sad Oligach.
(34:36):
Sad Oligach is a h eleven production for Cool Zone
Media and iHeart Radio, hosted, produced, researched, and edited by
me Jake Hanrahan and Sergei Slipchenko co produced by Sophie Lichtman,
music by Sam Black, artwork by Adam mcdoyle, sound mix
(34:57):
by Splicing Block. Go to Jake hanry a hand dot
com for more information. Mm hmm
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