A top Russian oil executive died Thursday after purportedly falling out of a hospital window, according to local reports.
Ravil Maganov, the chairman of the board of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, is said to have fallen from the 6th floor of the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. The 67-year-old is just the latest Russian executive linked to the oil and gas industry to die in bizarre circumstances in recent months.
Russia’s RIA Novosti reports that the hospital confirmed his death and said investigators were working at the scene, though no further details were provided on how he died.
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“Maganov fell out the window of his room at [the hospital] this morning. He died of his injuries,” an unnamed source cited by the Interfax news agency said.
The press service of Lukoil also confirmed Maganov’s death, making no mention of his fall out a window.
“We are deeply saddened to inform you that Ravil Maganov … passed away after a serious illness. Ravil Ulfatovich made an invaluable contribution not only to the development of the company, but to the entire Russian oil and gas industry,” the company said in a press release quoted by Interfax.
In the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February, Lukoil took the rare step of condemning the war, telling shareholders in a letter at the time that the company stands for “the immediate cessation of the armed conflict.”
Maganov’s sudden death comes just a few months after Alexander Subbotin, a former top Lukoil executive, was found dead in May. An investigation into his death is said to be ongoing, though Russian state media put out a number of bizarre details at the time, citing sources who said Subbotin had been found dead in a shaman’s home where “voodoo rituals” were performed and that he’d been severely intoxicated.
Just a month earlier, Vladislav Avayev, the former vice president of Gazprombank, a privately-owned subsidiary of Gazprom, was found dead of a gunshot wound in Moscow, along with his wife and daughter. Investigators said they suspected a murder-suicide.
A day after Avayev’s body was found, Sergei Protosenya, the former deputy chairman of gas company Novatek, was found hanging in a villa in Spain, with his wife and daughter also found dead on the premises with stab wounds. Just as in the case of Avayev, local police said their preliminary theory was murder-suicide.
In February, Gazprom executive Alexander Tyulyakov was found hanged in his St. Petersburg garage, with police saying they’d discovered a suicide note near his body. His death came just a few weeks after Gazprom Invest exec Leonid Shulman was found dead at a cottage in the Leningrad region, with law enforcement sources also describing his death as a suicide.
