The 62-year-old vice president of the company "Transneft" Andrey Badalov is considered one of the best digital technology specialists in the state sector of the fuel and energy complex. On July 4, he fell from the balcony of a multi-storey building on Rublyovskoye Shosse and died, the publication versia.ru writes.
It is reported that a holter monitor was found on the manager's body (editor's note: a medical device for monitoring heart activity). But the top manager of "Transneft" did not suffer from serious health problems - this is confirmed by the daughter of the deceased Marina Drobachevskaya. According to her, Badalov has recently been in a state of moral exhaustion and depression, but has not expressed any complaints about his health, let alone plans for suicide. At the same time, Drobachevskaya notes that her father's death may have been caused by an “accident“. The deceased did not leave a suicide note.
Badalov's entire biography is significant. He graduated from the Moscow Experimental School No. 710 of the USSR Academy of Sciences, then MEPhI and worked at defense enterprises. After completing advanced training courses at the Academy of the General Staff, he headed the Voskhod Research Institute (developer of state automated systems such as GAZ “Vybori“ and “Pravosudie“). And in 2019 moves to "Transneft", where he is responsible for information security and digital transformation.
So, was it suicide? It is possible, although it does not seem very likely: there is no clear motive. Or they prefer to announce it out loud. Or maybe the manager was "helped" to make a difficult decision or could even have been "helped" with an action... The investigation will show.
Publicist Georgy Bovt called the death of the top manager of Transneft suspicious. "Another Russian oil worker fell out of a window," TV presenter Sergei Mardan responded dryly to the news. "It is dangerous to work as a top manager, of course." It really is dangerous!
At the end of January 2022 In the elite village of Leninskoye in the Leningrad Region, the bloody body of 60-year-old Leonid Shulman, who headed the transport department of Gazprom Invest, was found in the bathroom of a three-story house. The day before, he had broken his leg and was on sick leave. It was reported that Shulman may have committed suicide due to severe pain, but, as Vysotsky sang, "it's not a pity if your leg hurts." Shulman was an experienced manager, "beaten," as they say about such people, and it is unlikely that the physical suffering associated with a broken leg would serve as a convincing reason for suicide. But an inspection of the work of the transport unit by the security service of Gazprom Invest could. Especially after the audit revealed the fact of inflated costs for the repair of the car fleet.
Shulman could not help but know who received bribes from state contracts, for example, when purchasing parts, when the purchase price was many times higher than their average market value.
A month later, 61-year-old Alexander Tyulyakov, head of the Unified Settlement Center of “Gazprom“, was found hanged in the garage of his own home. His death was also connected with the inspections. And Tyulyakov, like Shulman, left a rather strange suicide note.
Another month and a half passed and the body of 51-year-old vice president of “Gazprombank“ Vladislav Avaev was found in a Moscow apartment. According to investigators, Avaev first shot his 37-year-old wife with an award-winning TT, and then his 13-year-old daughter. Then he committed suicide himself. Jealousy may have been the motive (it was rumored that Avaev's wife had become pregnant by his driver). The killer fired 14 bullets into his wife (the magazine capacity was exactly 16 rounds), and one into his daughter and himself. And everything would have been fine if it hadn't been for the escape of this same driver to Moldova. And the traces of torture on the bodies of the spouses and their disabled daughter.
Three more days pass - and a new tragedy. In a villa in Lloret de Mar, an hour's drive from Barcelona, the bodies of the 55-year-old top manager of "Novatek", the dollar multimillionaire Sergei Protosenya, his 53-year-old wife and their 18-year-old daughter, were found. The wife and daughter are stabbed to death in their beds, apparently asleep, and Protosenya himself is strangled with a noose. The plot is almost a copy of the previous one. With a three-day difference. Jealousy, murder of loved ones and suicide? But in this plot there was neither pregnancy from the driver, nor personal enmity - the family was close-knit and the spouses, who had lived in marriage all their lives, managed to maintain warm feelings. In all the pictures they are always together, almost always - in their arms.
Natalia Protosenya was not a typical Rublyovka wife - she dressed simply and looked ordinary. In short, she was strange. She also had a grown son, but he did not go on vacation with his parents and sister. Intrigues were played out on social networks - it was written that it was strange that some of Protosenya's assets were registered with the Cypriot company Viladex Finance Limited, but not even a week had passed since the tragedy, and someone filed a claim with the Cyprus Registration Chamber.
“They died often“, but “nobody proved anything“
“Gazprom“ subcontractor in Africa, Yuri Voronov, was found in the pool of a mansion in the elite village of Morskie Terasi in the Vyborg region with a bullet in the head in July 2022. There was no water in the pool, but a systolet was found near it. Something curious: according to AiF “several spent cartridges were found at the bottom“, and then - “according to preliminary forensic data, the shot was fired at point-blank range“. That is, lying in an empty pool, the top manager of “Gazprom“ randomly fired a gun, and after having had enough fun, shot himself? “After reviewing the video surveillance footage, the police found that no one had entered or left the house since July 1“. Of course, such things can happen.
For example, the chairman of the board of directors, vice president of “Lukoil”, 67-year-old Ravil Maganov, fell from a window on the sixth floor of the Central Clinical Hospital (CCH) in September 2022. He was treated there for heart problems, but died, as the press reported, from “depression combined with heart problems“.
About a year later - in October 2023, 66-year-old Vladimir Nekrasov, who replaced Maganov as chairman of the board of directors of “Lukoil“, dies - imagine, from heart failure. We were warned: what unexpected coincidences do not happen in life!
“The company is private, an appetizing morsel, and, of course, conspiracists will say that this is no accident and that someone is trying to get their hands on it“, writes the publication “Business Online“ about Nekrasov's death. “However, not everyone believes the official version: this is already the third death of the head of the board of directors in 3 years.“ “The third death in 3 years – is it just a tragic coincidence or not?“, asks political strategist Viktor Minin rhetorically.
“I don't believe in such coincidences.“ “ “I simply can't judge whether this is a tragic coincidence or not, without knowing the facts“, convincingly argues political scientist Konstantin Kalachev. – At the very beginning of the creation of the “Lukoil” company, people also died very often, but, as you know, no one has proven anything.“
In June 2023, on “Khodinka” Boulevard; Kristina Baikova, vice president of “Loko-Bank“, fell from the window of an elite apartment on the 11th floor. She was 28 years old. There were two people in the room – she and her boyfriend named Andrey. They were arguing, Andrey was filming Baykova with a mobile phone camera. Suddenly the camera shook and Kristina “fell out of frame“. What happened next – who knows.
According to the girl's brother, the deceased did not have suicidal tendencies, and her psyche was quite stable. Let's quote the publication of “MK“: “The relatives of the deceased, crushed by grief, were left with many questions. One of them is why the window next to the balcony, which opens almost to the floor (most likely Kristina went out onto the ledge through it), was closed. After all, if it had been open, it would have been easy to get to the woman and drag herself into the apartment.“ “Meanwhile, Andrey was reaching out to her from the balcony.“ The deceased's family wrote a complaint to the Investigative Committee with a request to examine the course of the investigation, which, in their opinion, does not provide answers to the question of why the tragedy occurred.
Let's list other similar incidents in our minds. In February 2023, Vyacheslav Rovneiko, a business partner of Leonid Dyachenko, Boris Yeltsin's son-in-law, was found dead in his mansion in Odintsovo, near Moscow. They literally said about his death: he fell from a chair and died. Rovneiko worked as a top manager in several oil companies, was first vice president of the Komi oil company - Ural, and then, together with Dyachenko, founded the company Urals Energy N.V. He was also a co-owner of the Belgian company Nafta (B) N.V. and executive director of the Interregional Fuel Union.
The 53-year-old vice president of "Lukoil" Vitaly Robertus was found dead in his office. It is reported that he committed suicide for unknown reasons. Shortly before his death, he complained of a headache, asked for a pill, closed the door behind him - and was never seen alive again. Robertus is involved in a criminal case for bribing employees of the Central Energy Customs, who in return were supposed to provide data on the export activities of oil companies. However, as "Our Version" notes, "Robertus' sudden death is unlikely to clarify whether he himself organized the bribe or was carrying out other people's instructions".
If desired, other names of top managers could be mentioned - in mind - Ivan Pechorin, Mikhail Rogachev, Igor Shkurko. Of course, such an obvious mass death of rich and influential businessmen...
The changes cannot but raise questions. And we, the Russian society, have not yet heard clear answers to them.