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