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 a window.
Speaker 1: Slashed his wrists, was poisoned, murdered his whole family.
Speaker 3: Last year, 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: In the first episode of this series, we looked into
Speaker 3: one of three family annihilations in the Russian tycoon community,
Speaker 3: three within the of one year. Whole families, including children,
Speaker 3: murdered by their own father. That this happened three times
Speaker 3: in a year within such a similar demographic is very unusual,
Speaker 3: to say the least. One of these family killings that's
Speaker 3: particularly gruesome and suspicious is the killing of the Proto
Speaker 3: Sena family. This happened less than a month after the
Speaker 3: Melnikov killings that we spoke about in episode one. On
Speaker 3: April nineteenth, twenty twenty two, Russian businessman Serge proto Zenya,
Speaker 3: fifty five, was found hanging from a railing inside his
Speaker 3: Spanish holiday villa in the affluent town of Loret del Mar.
Speaker 3: His wife, Natalia and teenage daughter Maria were also found dead.
Speaker 3: They'd been beaten with a blunt object and hacked to
Speaker 3: death with an axe. The room they were found in
Speaker 3: was a bloodbath. The Spanish police ruled the incident as
Speaker 3: a murder suicide. According to them, Sergo proto Sena had
Speaker 3: beaten his wife and daughter in their head, killed them
Speaker 3: with the axe, and then hanged himself afterwards. The only
Speaker 3: surviving member of the immediate family is Sergio Protozenya's adult
Speaker 3: son Fedl Now cursed your mind back to episode one,
Speaker 3: when Professor Elizabeth Yadley said that it was unusual that
Speaker 3: a family annihilation would spare any of the children.
Speaker 4: The very fact that biological children of the alleged perpetrator
Speaker 4: have survived tells me that this is very different from
Speaker 4: any family annihilation I've come across before, because when the
Speaker 4: perpetrator takes their family out, they take everybody out. They
Speaker 4: make sure that those children are home for the weekend,
Speaker 4: or that they're all together as a family. They don't
Speaker 4: leave leave anybody behind.
Speaker 3: Luckily for Fedor, he decided to stay in France instead
Speaker 3: of joining his family at the villa in Spain. This
Speaker 3: likely saved his life. Federer has since spoken out about
Speaker 3: the killings, saying that he doesn't believe the official story.
Speaker 3: He thinks someone else killed his family and then staged
Speaker 3: it to make it look as if his father had
Speaker 3: committed the awful murders. The local Spanish police have said
Speaker 3: that they still think it's likely to be a murder suicide.
Speaker 3: The investigations are still ongoing until the case is closed.
Speaker 3: The police aren't releasing the autopsy reports of the deceased.
Speaker 3: So why would Sergio Protosenya, a man worth half a
Speaker 3: billion dollars, murder his wife and daughter with an ax
Speaker 3: before taking his own life To try and maybe understand that,
Speaker 3: we need to understand who this guy actually was. Let's
Speaker 3: go back to when he made his money. The nineties
Speaker 3: a wild time in Russia.
Speaker 4: The red flag came down over the Kremlin tonight as
Speaker 4: President Kovatrov resigned and brought to an end seven decades
Speaker 4: of Communist ruled in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: Russia saw the collapse of the Soviet Union in December
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one. After that, for the following decade, Russia
Speaker 3: had its first free elections, formed a new constitution, privatized
Speaker 3: state assets, endured bombings in Moscow, saw the rise of
Speaker 3: violent mafias, and fought two brutal wards in Chechnya. In
Speaker 3: the midst of this turmoil, oligaks really got their start.
Speaker 3: They thrived amongst the lawlessness and newfound freedoms. The frantic
Speaker 3: privatization of previously government owned companies after the fall of
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union turned into a businessman's wild West. This
Speaker 3: was preceded by an economic program that then Russian President
Speaker 3: Boris Yeltsin introduced in nineteen ninety one. It was known
Speaker 3: as shock therapy. The idea was to rapidly flood Russia
Speaker 3: with hard and fast kept list systems to jolt the
Speaker 3: country into a fully functional free market in a short
Speaker 3: space of time. Shock therapy quickly removed subsidies for the
Speaker 3: people and redistributed profits to the top taken from the
Speaker 3: working class to make the elites fatter. Your average worker
Speaker 3: got poorer, and the rich folks got richer. Yeltsin did
Speaker 3: this to battle Soviet hardliners who wanted to keep the
Speaker 3: old authoritarian communist system resisting the new wave of capitalism
Speaker 3: that the president had introduced to Russia. This transition from
Speaker 3: one system to the other needed to be handled carefully
Speaker 3: and slowly, but Yeltsin didn't want to wait. Encouraged by
Speaker 3: the UN's International Monetary Fund, who were surprised a big
Speaker 3: advocates of shock therapy for Russia, Yeltsin lent full force
Speaker 3: into it. It was a complete disaster. The value of
Speaker 3: Russia's currency, the ruble plummet, people lost their savings due
Speaker 3: to high inflation rates, and the social welfare system was gutted.
Speaker 3: But hey, at least they could import levis now. Shock
Speaker 3: therapy in Russia paid the way for the madness of
Speaker 3: the oligarchs when the USSR collapsed. Was like giving loaded
Speaker 3: guns to an already blood thirsty militia. After the collapse,
Speaker 3: shock therapy led to further hyperinflation. By nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 3: prices for your average consumer had risen almost two thousandfold.
Speaker 3: As writer Greg Rosselski puts it, a candy bar that
Speaker 3: had cost one dollar now cost two thousand dollars. In
Speaker 3: the midst of this economic nightmare, the new Russian state
Speaker 3: issued what was known as privatization checks. These were essentially
Speaker 3: vouchers that could be used to buy shares of state
Speaker 3: business at public auctions, which were taking.
Speaker 1: Place all across Russia.
Speaker 3: Around one hundred and forty eight million of these vouchers
Speaker 3: were issued to Russian citizens built up money amidst the chaos,
Speaker 3: often via criminal enterprises, could now exploit this vulture system
Speaker 3: and take over a big infrastructure. Rossolski wrote about this, saying,
Speaker 3: quote the people on their way to become in Russia's
Speaker 3: first class of oligaks scoured the nation trying to buy
Speaker 3: as many privatization checks as they could. Many of the
Speaker 3: oligarchs had come from nothing. They'd initially gotten rich, but
Speaker 3: not mega rich, by hustling in the black market or
Speaker 3: through legitimate businesses. When the Soviet Union first allowed a
Speaker 3: private entrepreneurship in the late nineteen eighties, the oligarks went
Speaker 3: on a buying spree, purchasing hundreds of thousands of voltures,
Speaker 3: each of which were were ten thousand rubles or about
Speaker 3: forty dollars or less. Back in the nineties end quote. Now,
Speaker 3: back then, your average Russian, who barely had a pot
Speaker 3: to piss in due to hyperinflation, had little use for
Speaker 3: these vultures. They had no money, so they couldn't use
Speaker 3: them to buy shares in anything, and so they were
Speaker 3: eager to sell the privatization so that they could scrape
Speaker 3: some money together to try and provide for their families.
Speaker 3: People who had money brought them from the poor at
Speaker 3: a low price. Oligaks in the making stacked huge amounts
Speaker 3: of these checks up, exploiting the poor people of Russia
Speaker 3: to then buy undervalued stocks in new private businesses that
Speaker 3: were previously held by the USSR. Soon those stocks rose,
Speaker 3: oligarchs were laughing all the way to the bank. Often
Speaker 3: the same working class people who sold their vouchers to
Speaker 3: the oligachs would eventually end up taking low paid jobs
Speaker 3: at the companies brought out by the oligarchs with the
Speaker 3: help of the vouchers. The privatization checks ended in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety four. By then, though around seventy percent of the
Speaker 3: new Russian economy was already privatized. It's with this chaotic
Speaker 3: backdrop that now deceased and accused family murderer Sergei Protozenya
Speaker 3: worked as a deputy director for taco Cell Neft Gas.
Speaker 3: This oil and gas company was founded in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 3: Years later, Protosenya stayed within the industry but moved jobs,
Speaker 3: working as the head accountant for taco Cell Neft gas
Speaker 3: linked firm Novotech. Novotech is Russia's second largest natural gas company.
Speaker 3: Protosena was admitted to the prestigious position as a board
Speaker 3: member of Novotech, of which he owned a zero point
Speaker 3: five steak with around two point three million shares. This
Speaker 3: steak alone was worth around two hundred and thirty five
Speaker 3: million dollars. Novotech makes around ten billion dollars a year
Speaker 3: and has around seventeen billion barrels of proved oil reserves.
Speaker 3: Their extraction operations are mostly in Western Siberia, which accounts
Speaker 3: for eighty percent of Russia's national gas and around fifteen
Speaker 3: percent of global natural gas. Needless to say, Novotech is
Speaker 3: a serious company that makes the Kremlin a lot of
Speaker 3: money in tax. Novotech's chairman is Leonid Michelson, a Russian
Speaker 3: Israeli oligarch worth around twenty billion dollars. He holds almost
Speaker 3: thirty percent of the shares of Novatech in the same
Speaker 3: year that Sergei proto Zenja was admitted to the board
Speaker 3: of Novatech. Twenty fifteen, he resigned. Why, we don't really know.
Speaker 3: He did have a lucrative side hustle though. He was
Speaker 3: the co founder of Russian banking firm Full Bank. Now
Speaker 3: not a lot is publicly known about Full Bank, neither
Speaker 3: in Russia or in English language reports. What we have
Speaker 3: found out is interesting. Goal proto Sena co founded this
Speaker 3: bank with a businessman named Andre Makalov. He owned two
Speaker 3: other banks, sibzots Bank and pro Banker. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: bank bought another bank named Pochto Bank. As you can see,
Speaker 3: the names for these banks are not very adventurous. Full
Speaker 3: Bank was doing well. By the looks of it. Protosenya
Speaker 3: and Makalov were buying up other banks, absorbing them, increasing
Speaker 3: their business and making profit. A year later, though, in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, Full Bank had its financial license revot.
Speaker 3: There's very little information out there about why this actually happened,
Speaker 3: but surgery managed to find out Full Bank they lost
Speaker 3: their license. It's quite hard to find out what actually happened.
Speaker 5: What have you found A lot of information on Russian
Speaker 5: sides kind of unreliable I found so far. I don't
Speaker 5: know if they're plagiarizing or or if they get some
Speaker 5: kind of state message, but a lot of articles will
Speaker 5: have the same mistakes, like across different publications. A lot
Speaker 5: of times they'll be saying the same things. For this
Speaker 5: one is kind of hard to find because I think
Speaker 5: everybody's been focusing on as death right, so it was
Speaker 5: kind of hard to find the reason for it. They
Speaker 5: would just be like, lost his license, that's it, and
Speaker 5: I'm like, okay, why, and it's completely they don't talk
Speaker 5: about it at all. Had to look a bit a
Speaker 5: bit further back. It was twenty twenty one, and basically
Speaker 5: what I could find was that the state government conducted investigation.
Speaker 5: The official I guess the official reason is money laundering.
Speaker 5: Also I saw some other reasons of being like giving
Speaker 5: somebody a bank account when they're not supposed to get
Speaker 5: it because their past critic is either expired or they
Speaker 5: don't have a passport. Just kind of small things like
Speaker 5: that that I feel like you could even just miss.
Speaker 5: They didn't say that this is being done like maliciously,
Speaker 5: but I guess there was reason enough but there was
Speaker 5: speculation that the Russian government is China reduced the number
Speaker 5: of like institutions that are open inside or like financial institutions.
Speaker 5: I guess that datan't control and that allegedly that's why
Speaker 5: they kind of gave the reason of money laundering and
Speaker 5: all the other little reasons that kind of seem almost random,
Speaker 5: but that they just wanted to shut it down again.
Speaker 5: The official reason is money laundering and that they could
Speaker 5: find that they found a bunch of like other illegal
Speaker 5: activity at the bank which caused it to lose the license.
Speaker 1: Interesting.
Speaker 3: You would think if this bank was money loan during
Speaker 3: that there would then be some kind of criminal charges,
Speaker 3: right if you found anything like that. I didn't see
Speaker 3: anything about that.
Speaker 5: No, that's the thing that That's why I was kind
Speaker 5: of like, it's weird because like, if an entire bank
Speaker 5: loses its license over money laundering, I assume it's not
Speaker 5: an issue with a single case or something you know,
Speaker 5: or a single bank teller or some small person doing something.
Speaker 5: To me, it seems like the entire bank was kind
Speaker 5: of in on it, and you would think that you know,
Speaker 5: there would be follow up by either resting or figuring
Speaker 5: out who's responsible. I mean, maybe there's still an investigation
Speaker 5: that we don't know about, but from what I can tell,
Speaker 5: it kind of just lost his license and that's where
Speaker 5: I was left off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is odd. It seems odd to me. I'm
Speaker 3: no expert on banking matters, but the guy Andre Makalov,
Speaker 3: who also he's like the co founder of full Bank
Speaker 3: with Protesena, he has several other banks, and from what
Speaker 3: I've seen, they haven't had their licenses revoked. I would
Speaker 3: imagine if it was real serious on the scale of right,
Speaker 3: like money laundering for example, like I don't know HSBC
Speaker 3: in the West were laundry money for literal cartels, saying
Speaker 3: that nothing happened to them. They had to pay a
Speaker 3: fine and nobody went to prison. I guess that's how
Speaker 3: the banks are. But I didn't see any other evidence
Speaker 3: that any of Macalov's other banks were shut down.
Speaker 1: The jew No.
Speaker 5: It seems like this is the only one specifically, and
Speaker 5: from what understood, this is the only one. Patsena is
Speaker 5: kind of like related to.
Speaker 1: Right and when.
Speaker 3: This is why I'm kind of struggling to understand a
Speaker 3: little bit. Are these actual physical banks or are they
Speaker 3: just banking firms that deal with stuff, or they have
Speaker 3: like actual banks, they have employees as a teller, what
Speaker 3: have you. Or is it some kind of firm that
Speaker 3: operates I guess mostly online.
Speaker 5: I've heard of it before. It's a pretty well known bank.
Speaker 5: It had physical locations for sure. It's not like some
Speaker 5: new just kind of like purely online bank. I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm sure expanded to online banking, but it's definitely not
Speaker 5: like one of these random bigs that pop up and
Speaker 5: kind of offer online services.
Speaker 3: In terms of the relation that this might have to
Speaker 3: the killings, do you think there's something there or not?
Speaker 3: I mean, I asked because if if you look at
Speaker 3: for example, Professor Elizabeth Yadley was saying, she was saying, like, well,
Speaker 3: these family annihilations will often happen when someone that's rich
Speaker 3: and influential at least in their circles finds that their
Speaker 3: life is about to kind of fall apart. Do you
Speaker 3: think that this bank situation in twenty twenty one has
Speaker 3: any any implications towards Prozena.
Speaker 1: We don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe it really affected him, but I don't know, what
Speaker 3: do you think.
Speaker 5: I really don't think so, I mean, okay, like if
Speaker 5: he lost his bank, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: he has no income, he's living below his means, he's
Speaker 5: living in France, going vacation in Spain. I think he's fine.
Speaker 5: I don't know his you know, entire like portfolio of businesses,
Speaker 5: et cetera. But to me, it seems like nothing changed
Speaker 5: after the bank closed. It's like one of his incomes,
Speaker 5: you know, one of his many, many, many incomes, was closed.
Speaker 5: And maybe he lost access to some bank accounts at most,
Speaker 5: But to me, it seemed like he was living just fine,
Speaker 5: living in France, going to Spain for like a couple
Speaker 5: months for vacation. He didn't seem to be struggling in
Speaker 5: any way. I want to say it was irrelevant. I mean,
Speaker 5: who knows, maybe it was bigger than that, But the
Speaker 5: bank lost its license in twenty twenty one, and he
Speaker 5: was living fine well into twenty twenty two. I can't
Speaker 5: say that like this was such a messive loss that
Speaker 5: will led him to this.
Speaker 1: I really don't think.
Speaker 3: So, right, And I mean, the guy was worth the
Speaker 3: most I think five hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1: It's like, eh, oh, well.
Speaker 5: It seems like a drop of the bucket, right, it does? Sure,
Speaker 5: he didn't put all his eggs in one basket. I
Speaker 5: think he's aware how Russia operates and that like you
Speaker 5: can kind of lose these things at a drop of
Speaker 5: a hat.
Speaker 1: So I highly doubt.
Speaker 5: He put everything into this one bank and lost it
Speaker 5: when the license went.
Speaker 3: That's true, and if you look at his history, he
Speaker 3: definitely wasn't the guy that put his egg into one basket,
Speaker 3: because he'still it off in the gas and oil industry
Speaker 3: in various different roles, ended up being an accountant.
Speaker 1: Then went on, you know, a member of the board.
Speaker 3: Then he's also on the side he's got this bank
Speaker 3: like he Yeah, he seems to be a guy diversifying
Speaker 3: his funds.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he was around, you know, like he's he's spread
Speaker 5: as wealth like in a way of securing his own
Speaker 5: future funds. I think he was fine. Honestly, again, I
Speaker 5: can't exactly say what his entire portfolio is, but it
Speaker 5: clearly isn't just four bank.
Speaker 3: That said, there's still a possibility Protozenya was having money problems.
Speaker 3: This is a recurring theme when it comes to people
Speaker 3: who kill their clothes family. But remember Serge Protozenya's surviving
Speaker 3: son Fedor he doesn't believe, or maybe doesn't want to believe,
Speaker 3: that his father killed his mother and his sister. We
Speaker 3: reached out to Fedor but got no response, which is
Speaker 3: fair enough. He probably didn't want to talk about how
Speaker 3: his whole family were murdered recently. When the killings happened. Initially,
Speaker 3: though he did briefly speak out in the media, Fedor
Speaker 3: said quote, my father is not a killer. He loved
Speaker 3: my mother and especially Maria, my sister. He would never
Speaker 3: do anything to harm them. I don't know what happened
Speaker 3: that night, but I know that my dad did not
Speaker 3: hurt them.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: Strangely enough, Novtech, the company where Sergei Protozenja was formerly
Speaker 3: an executive of the board, seemed to share a similar
Speaker 3: view to Fedor. In his statement released April twenty first,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, just three days after the proto Senja killings,
Speaker 3: Novtech said, quote, in relation to the tragic death of
Speaker 3: a former member of Novtech's management board, Sergei Protozenja, and
Speaker 3: members of his family, we extend our deepest sympathies to
Speaker 3: all those affected by this tragic situation. Sergio Protozenja worked
Speaker 3: in the Novtech group from nineteen ninety seven to twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: He established himself as a an outstanding person and a
Speaker 3: wonderful family man, a strong professional who made a considerable
Speaker 3: contribution to the formation and development of the company. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: speculations have emerged in the media about this topic, but
Speaker 3: we are convinced that these speculations bear no relation to reality.
Speaker 3: We hope that this Spanish law enforcement authorities will conduct
Speaker 3: a thorough and impartial investigation to determine what happened ends quote.
Speaker 3: So even Novertek feels so strongly that the conclusion that
Speaker 3: Protozenya murdered his own family and then killed himself is
Speaker 3: unlikely that they put out an official statement and so
Speaker 3: soon after the killings. Now, with this case specifically, we've
Speaker 3: found many different reports that tend to contradict each other.
Speaker 3: The details are very confusing. To get a clear idea
Speaker 3: of what's going on, we spoke to a local reporter
Speaker 3: in Spain who covered the case. Sergei spoke to journalist
Speaker 3: Victor Ricatcha.
Speaker 5: Reading Western news and reading Russian news, I think gives
Speaker 5: you one perspective, but I think the best is kind
Speaker 5: of local. You have more details and kind of more
Speaker 5: insight into it, so I kind of want to talk
Speaker 5: to you about that.
Speaker 6: The Catalan police started an investigation just after his death.
Speaker 2: It's its secret.
Speaker 6: This investigation is secret, so it's very hard to really
Speaker 6: know what's going on and what did the police find out.
Speaker 6: But what they did say at the beginning was that
Speaker 6: it looked like it might be murdered his wife and
Speaker 6: his daughter, and then he committed suicide. So the police
Speaker 6: at first they said, this is what it looks like,
Speaker 6: but other theories are possible and we need to investigate.
Speaker 6: So they started investigating, and they haven't said anything anything more.
Speaker 6: The protosnas the family, they had in their house, they
Speaker 6: had a security system with cameras, they had CCTV, so
Speaker 6: I think that will be very interesting for the investigation.
Speaker 2: Of course, the police can have.
Speaker 6: Access to the images and it will be very easy
Speaker 6: for them to see what happens if they can recover
Speaker 6: the images.
Speaker 2: But not it really is right.
Speaker 1: They haven't said it.
Speaker 2: No, they didn't release it.
Speaker 6: Then they haven't said anything about it. It's it's secret.
Speaker 6: The investigation is secret because they judge wants it like this,
Speaker 6: and so we can't. It's very difficult to know what's
Speaker 6: going on.
Speaker 5: Did they say that they're open to other theories.
Speaker 2: Yes, so what they said is that probably.
Speaker 6: It was a murder and then a suicide, but there
Speaker 6: are other hypotheses. There are other theories and in the
Speaker 6: investigation they are going to look to all of them.
Speaker 2: Have there been any updates since the initial reporting, not really,
Speaker 2: not really, so it's very difficult to know.
Speaker 6: So what we know right now is that this family
Speaker 6: bought this ten years ago.
Speaker 2: More or less. They came here from time to time.
Speaker 6: They had many properties in all of Europe and sometimes
Speaker 6: they like to conhere to the coast of Spain. They
Speaker 6: were very, you know, like very low profile. They didn't
Speaker 6: like the spotlight. So in this village some people knew them.
Speaker 6: This area is very popular with French people, British people,
Speaker 6: some Russian people who like Buried which is the name
Speaker 6: of the village. They really like it and they come
Speaker 6: here on Suner holidays and there is an important Russian community.
Speaker 6: I know some people who live there or some some
Speaker 6: businessmen that really know this area. And what they said
Speaker 6: is that usually the Russian community that lives there or
Speaker 6: that spends the coliday is there.
Speaker 2: There is a part of.
Speaker 6: Them who are very wealthy, and they like to be
Speaker 6: on the spotlight and that people know that they are
Speaker 6: wealthy and that they have a very big house or
Speaker 6: a very luxurious car or water or whatever. And this
Speaker 6: was not the case with this family. They were very
Speaker 6: low profile, even though they were probably the wealthiest Russian
Speaker 6: family in the In the village and.
Speaker 5: Is like the community is it kind of like a
Speaker 5: resort area? Like can you kind of describe what the
Speaker 5: area is like?
Speaker 1: You read?
Speaker 6: This village is located in Costa Brava, which is one
Speaker 6: of the most famous coasts in Spain.
Speaker 2: It's in the north of Spain, very very near France.
Speaker 6: All of this coast is very beautiful, so it's a
Speaker 6: very popular area for holidays with all of these coasts
Speaker 6: which is very beautiful and very big.
Speaker 2: The biggest town is you read. So it's a village,
Speaker 2: but it's a bigger than other villages in the area.
Speaker 6: Has a lot of hotels and a lot of resorts,
Speaker 6: and there are night clubs, there are very big restaurants,
Speaker 6: very big hotels, and yeah, so it's a popular tourist destination.
Speaker 5: I'm not very familiar with Spain how things work. You know,
Speaker 5: there have been cases where Russia, faid Off police and
Speaker 5: like things like that, is this something that's possible in Spain?
Speaker 5: Like could it be that the investigation was influenced in
Speaker 5: some way? First of all, is it possible? And then
Speaker 5: are there any kind of clues that it might have been.
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 6: I don't think that the police can be influenced by
Speaker 6: corruption in this Everything is possible, but it's not usual.
Speaker 2: With the regional police.
Speaker 6: They have a very good investigation service and usually they
Speaker 6: solve very difficult mark orders.
Speaker 2: So I think that they are investigating.
Speaker 6: Of course, it's a difficult case because it has probably
Speaker 6: diplomatic consequences, and it's a case that they don't want
Speaker 6: it to be very published, so which it's very secret.
Speaker 6: But I think that they are going to investigate if
Speaker 6: there are images, and they are going to reach the conclusions.
Speaker 6: And so what I think is that I don't know
Speaker 6: what to think. Actually, there are different theories. The suspicious
Speaker 6: thing or the weird thing here is that what is
Speaker 6: going on like in all the world, in Russia, in
Speaker 6: the UK, in Spain. So in a very short period
Speaker 6: of time, there are different deaths of olivegoods and wealthy
Speaker 6: Russian people so would it be that some of these
Speaker 6: deaths are assassinations by the FSB or some mafia. It
Speaker 6: would be, but of course suicides do happen. You have
Speaker 6: also do take into account that the family in the
Speaker 6: case of the Portosnia, they were used to being wealthy,
Speaker 6: to being rich, to having a life style that was
Speaker 6: very luxurious. So once the sanctions, the European and Western
Speaker 6: sanctions to Russian individuals started, that can be a complication
Speaker 6: because they were used to living in They could be
Speaker 6: in Spain, they could be in other European countries without problem,
Speaker 6: and all of us, all of us outen the Bangka
Speaker 6: counts are frozen. So this can also be a problem,
Speaker 6: an economic problem that can have a psychological impact on
Speaker 6: that person for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that could be a mix of of course.
Speaker 5: I think there's two other cases where there was the
Speaker 5: same thing, basically entire family murdered by the husband. So
Speaker 5: it's definitely, you know, weird an kind of especially the
Speaker 5: same kind of social group.
Speaker 2: It looks like like there's a part from Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 6: So specifically for this case, who's who's the charge of
Speaker 6: the case, the regional police.
Speaker 3: So from the ground, things don't exactly look suspicious. It's
Speaker 3: worth noting here in light of the talk about Sergey
Speaker 3: Protozenya's many properties, that he owned a property management company
Speaker 3: known as Sherwood Premiere. Novtech has since taken it over,
Speaker 3: But again, overall, no huge red flags. According to Victor Racatcha,
Speaker 3: Protozena had a nice, big villa in a nice area,
Speaker 3: wasn't that flashy, and kept himself to himself despite probably
Speaker 3: being the richest person in the whole village. That said,
Speaker 3: a more discreet lifestyle doesn't tee up with the usual
Speaker 3: kinds of rich folk who carry out family annihilations. As
Speaker 3: Professor Yardley said in episode one, they're usually the type
Speaker 3: to flaunt their wealth and power. She did also stress though,
Speaker 3: that there's no completely solid template to the kinds of
Speaker 3: people that do these killings. Protozena could well have done this,
Speaker 3: and unlike the first family annihilation case we looked at
Speaker 3: the Heelnikov killings, there's not as much information directly related
Speaker 3: to the case that looks highly suspicious. However, we still
Speaker 3: couldn't get over the timing of this. The Mormi and
Speaker 3: Sergey looked into that aspect of things, it got even stranger.
Speaker 3: So it turns out that just one day before Sergei
Speaker 3: Protozenya apparently killed his whole family and himself, yet another
Speaker 3: Russian oligarch did the exact same thing. Vladislav Aviyev was
Speaker 3: found dead alongside his murdered family on April eighteenth in
Speaker 3: their upscale Moscow apartment. The Russian authorities said that they
Speaker 3: were investigating, but they believe Aviev killed his wife and
Speaker 3: daughter before offering himself. Aviev was the former vice president
Speaker 3: of Gazprom Bank, the financial wing of Russian gas giant Gazprom,
Speaker 3: which we spoke about at length in episode two. Averyev
Speaker 3: also apparently used to work for the Kremlin. So within
Speaker 3: the space of forty eight hours, two mega rich Russian businessmen,
Speaker 3: both of them involved in both banking and the gas industry,
Speaker 3: killed their families and then themselves. All this within less
Speaker 3: than four weeks of Vasily Melnikov murdering his family apart
Speaker 3: from one child who wasn't there, same with proto Zenya. Now,
Speaker 3: neither me nor Surgery are dramatic people with not the
Speaker 3: types to jump to conclusions, but the timing of this,
Speaker 3: considering how rare family annihilation cases are feels a little
Speaker 3: bit fishy to us, especially considering they're all within the
Speaker 3: same demographic of people. It's very very rare that this
Speaker 3: would happen. So to sum up that three Russian oligarchs
Speaker 3: who killed their families and then themselves, all within the
Speaker 3: space of four weeks, one on March twenty third, one
Speaker 3: on April eighteenth, and one on April nineteenth. Two of
Speaker 3: these oligarchs worked in both the gas and banking industries
Speaker 3: for the first and second largest gas suppliers in Russia.
Speaker 3: If it's all just a coincidence, it's a very big one.
Speaker 3: Sad Oligarch is a h eleven production for Cool Zone
Speaker 3: Media and iHeartRadio, hosted, produced, researched and edited by me
Speaker 3: Jake Hanrahan and Sergey Slipchenkok co produced by Sophie Lichtman.
Speaker 3: Music by Sam Black, artwork by Adam mcdoyle, sound mix.
Speaker 1: By Splicing Block.
Speaker 3: Go to Jakeanrahan dot com for more information.