Sergei Protosenya, vice president of gas giant Novatek found dead with his wife and daughter: he is the second oligarch in a few days

The (apparent) increase to two murder-suicide from russian oligarchs In some days. On Tuesday the corpse of Sergei Protosenya55-year-old vice president of the gas giant Novatekwas found along with those of his wife Natalya (53 years old) and their 18-year-old daughter Maria in their village in Lloret de Maron the neighboring Spanish coast barcelona: to raise the alarm – unable to contact the family – was the eldest son of the couple. Catalan investigators from the Mossos d’Esquadra are viewing the images recorded by the property’s cameras, also evaluating the hypothesis of a triple murder Mafia style. According to local news sites, the two women showed signs of to stabwhile Protosenya was found hanged: at the crime scene there was a Knife it is a’Axe bloodied, sent to the lab for fingerprint analysis. However – reports the online newspaper El Punt Avui – the murder-suicide hypothesis presents an incongruity: on the corpse of the oligarch, who allegedly killed his wife and daughter, there is no trace of blood. Stains that were noticed on a pair of socks, suggesting they were used as gloves to avoid getting dirty.

Protosenya, a graduate in economics and engineering from the Moscow Kuibyshev School, was CFO from the oil company Tarkosaleneftegaz and chief accountant at Novatek, before taking over the company. In 2011, its estimated assets were 440 million dollars. There were six in the village of Lloret luxury cars – BMW, Mercedes, Mustang and Audi – and wads of cash worth ten thousand euros each. A profile that cannot help but remember the icy warning of Vladimir Putin for those Russian businessmen “who have a villa in Miami or on the Côte d’Azur, who cannot do without foie gras, oysters or so-called gender liberties”: “The Russian people will just spitlike a mosquito that accidentally flew into its mouth,” he said in a televised message on March 16.

On Easter Monday, he was also found dead. Vladislav Avayev, 51, a former Kremlin adviser and former vice president of Gazprombank, the gas bank that has become a major hub for Russian gas ruble payments. In this case, too, the scene seemed to lead back to a murder-suicide: Avayev’s corpse had the gun in hand and beside him – on the 14th floor of a luxury apartment building in Moscow – were the lifeless bodies of his pregnant wife Yelena (47) and their 13-year-old daughter Maria, killed by shots. Also in this case, the eldest daughter, Anastasia, 26, found them. A multimillionaire thanks to the construction business, Avayev had been deputy head of an important department of the Kremlin administration: among the testimonies of neighbors collected by the daily mail some doubted the dynamics of death. “He had no reason to do so.. He was rich, smart. It is not possible that such a man can kill.”