Russian tycoon's body 'found by Putin spies' after dying in 'mysterious' 110ft plunge

Another top energy company manager in Moscow, with his body ‘discovered by an employee of ’s foreign spy service’.

Mikhail Rogachev, 64, had fallen 110ft from a window at his home, according to reports. He had been vice-president of Yukos, an oil giant which had opposed and was forced out of business by the . Rogachev also had a distinguished career as executive director of the Onexim group and later deputy general director of the Norilsk Nickel mining giant.

Initial reports in Moscow media outlets said that he had been suffering from “a severe form of cancer”, but these were strenuously denied by his circle, according to Telegram channel VCHK-OGPU which has links to law enforcement and the security services.

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His relatives insisted there were no signs that he was suicidal and he was in a “good mood” shortly before his death. His body was found in the courtyard of his tenth floor flat by an SVR employee linked to a former Russian spymaster. He was the personal driver of Sergei Vinokurov, ex-deputy director of the foreign intelligence service. The SVR operative said he had been walking his boss’s dog when he saw the body.

Rogachev “had breakfast with his relatives, was in a normal mood, and then his body was found under the windows of his house,” reported VCHK-OGPU. Some handwriting and other typed sheets of a possible suicide letter were found scattered in his bathroom, said reports. His loss was “another in a chain of strange deaths in the oil and gas industry in Russia”, said Borusio Telegram channel.

In other cases of energy industry deaths, Leonid Shulman, head of Gazprom Invest's transport service, was found dead at the age of 60. He was found dead with multiple stab wounds in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor.

Alexander Tyulyakov, deputy head of corporate security at Gazprom's United Settlement Centre, the energy giant’s “treasury”, allegedly committed suicide the day Putin went to war. He died in Gazprom's guarded Leninsky corporate village in Leningrad region, near St Petersburg on 25 February 2022, the same location where Shulman died. His body was reportedly discovered by his lover. His neck was in a noose in his £500,000 home yet there are strong suspicions he did not take his own life.

In April of the same year, multimillionaire Sergey Protosenya, 55, was found hanged after allegedly killing with an axe his wife Natalia, 53, and their teenage daughter, Maria, as they slept. Protosenya was a former deputy chairman of Novotek, a company closely linked to the Kremlin. Later reports suggest the tragic family may have been killed by a Putin hit squad permanently based on the Costa Blanca.

In May 2022, former Lukoil top manager Alexander Subbotin was found dead in the basement of a house in Mytishchi after “taking advice from shamans”. One theory is that Subbotin - who also owned a shipping company - was poisoned by toad venom triggering a heart attack.

Lukoil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, fell from a window of Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin clinic, in September 2022. He was replaced by Vladimir Nekrasov - in October 2023, who died aged 66 of “acute heart failure” in October 2023. Both Maganov and Nekrasov had opposed Putin’s war.

The following month, Russian senator and war backer, Vladimir Lebedev, with close Lukoil links, died suddenly in an unexplained “terrible tragedy” aged 60. In March, Lukoil vice-president Vitaly Robertus, 53, became the latest victim of a death curse to haunt Lukoil, a prominent company propping up Putin’s regime. He was found hanged in his office toilet.

Separately, Pavel Antov, 65, a Russian sausage tycoon and politician, fell from a hotel window in India in December 2022. Marina Yankina, 58, a defence official in charge of war money, died in February 2023 after falling 160ft to her death in St Petersburg.