Ravil Maganov, top Russian oil executive, dies in ‘fall from hospital window’

According to local reports, a senior Russian oil executive died on Thursday after allegedly falling out of a hospital window.

Ravil Maganov, CEO of Lukoil, Russia’s second largest oil company, is said to have fallen from the 6th floor of the Central Hospital in Moscow. The 67-year-old is just the latest Russian executive with ties 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, although no further details were given about how he died.

“Maganov fell out of the window of his room [the hospital] this morning. He died from his injuries,” said an unnamed source, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

Lukoil’s press service also confirmed Maganov’s death without mentioning his fall from the window.

“We are deeply saddened to announce that Ravil Maganov… passed away after a long illness. Ravil Ulfatovich has 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 cited by Interfax.

Following Russia’s sweeping invasion of Ukraine in late February, Lukoil took the rare step of condemning the war, writing a letter to shareholders at the time telling shareholders that the company was committed to “an immediate cessation of the armed conflict.”

Maganov’s sudden death comes just months after Alexander Subbotin, a former top executive at Lukoil, was found dead in May. An investigation into his death is said to be ongoing, although Russian state media released a number of bizarre details at the time, citing sources as saying Subbotin was found dead in a shaman’s home where “voodoo rituals” were being performed and that he was heavily intoxicated.

Just a month earlier, Vladislav Avayev, the former vice president of Gazprombank, a private subsidiary of Gazprom, was found with his wife and daughter with a gunshot wound in Moscow. Investigators assume a murder-suicide.

A day after Avayev’s body was found, Sergei Protosenya, the former deputy chairman of gas company Novatek, was found hanged in a villa in Spain, along with his wife and daughter, who were also found dead with stab wounds at the compound. Just as in Avayev’s case, local police said their preliminary theory was murder-suicide.

In February, Gazprom manager Alexander Tyulyakov was found hanged in his garage in St. Petersburg. Police said they discovered a suicide note near his body. His death came just weeks after Leonid Shulman, chief executive of Gazprom Invest, was found dead in a cottage in the Leningrad region. Law enforcement sources also described his death as a suicide.