The mysterious death of Dmitry Zelenov

Fifty-year-old Dmitry Zelenov was having dinner with some friends when he fell ill. After that, he allegedly fell down the stairs and suffered fatal head injuries, according to the Russian news agency “Baza” and the local French newspaper Var Matin.

He was rushed to the hospital, but the doctors were unable to save him, and his death was confirmed by the public prosecutor in the nearby municipality of Grasse, the next day. According to Baza’s Telegram channel, Zelenov was undergoing surgery for a heart problem a few weeks before his death, although no further information on this has been released.

Zelenov was a co-founder of Don-Stroy, once one of the most important Moscow empires for investment and real estate development, which he founded in 1994. He regularly appeared on the Forbes list of the richest Russians until 2008, when he suffered significant losses due to the financial crisis.

The circumstances of the real estate tycoon’s death are strikingly similar to those of Anatoly Gerashchenko, the former head of the Moscow Aviation Institute who died after allegedly falling down the stairs at the institute’s headquarters in Moscow in September.

Gerashchenko’s highly suspicious death comes less than two weeks after Vladimir Putin’s top man for developing Russian Arctic resources, Ivan Pechorin, “fell into the sea” while sailing along the Pacific coast. The two were the latest in a long line of high-ranking officials from Russia’s energy, technology and finance sectors linked to the Kremlin to die under suspicious circumstances in recent months.

The former CEO, Igor Nosov, also died suddenly in February, reportedly of a stroke. Oil tycoon and president of Lukoil, Ravil Maganov, fell from the window of the sixth floor of a Moscow hospital.

In July, Yuri Voronov, the head of a transport and logistics firm linked to Gazprom, was found dead in his swimming pool. Two more deaths of Gazprom-linked executives were reported in elite homes near St. Petersburg, fueling suspicions that the deaths may have been murders.

(Index.hr)