Oil tycoon linked to ex-KGB spy dies after plunging 180ft from luxury apartment in latest mystery Russian exec death
A RUSSIAN oil tycoon has died after falling 180ft from a tower block in the latest in a string of mysterious deaths.
Andrey Badalov, 62, fell from the 17th floor of the luxury Moscow tower block – where he lived in a tenth floor penthouse.
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Badalov was married with two children.
Suicide has been recorded as the preliminary cause of death, but investigations are still ongoing.
A letter supposedly written by Badalov to his wife was reportedly found.
Kremlin media cited a source as saying: “Badalov’s body was found under the windows of an [apartment building] on Rublevskoye Highway.”
Badalov was vice-president of Transneft – Russia’s state oil pipeline operator and the largest such company in the world.
The firm is headed up by former KGB spy, Nikolai Tokarev, 74, who served alongside Putin in Germany during the Cold War.
A spate of mysterious deaths of executives linked to the oil and gas industries have hit Russia since Putin started plotting his invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago.
This is at least the 12th such death among high-ranking industry figures since the beginning of 2022.
These are often recorded as suicides – but many cases have raised cries of foul play.
Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazansky is among the sceptics.
He posted a sarcastic jibe: “Top managers of YUKOS and Lukoil have already fallen out of windows before.
“What are you laughing at? They just fall out of windows themselves.
“Russian oil workers have this professional deformity.
As soon as they approach the windows, their legs immediately give way.”
These deaths often involve fall from a balcony or window.
In 2022, Ravil Maganov, chairman of Lukoil, Russia’s second-largest oil company, died when he plunged from a sixth-floor window at Moscow’s elite Central Clinical Hospital – also known as the Kremlin Clinic.
On the same morning, Putin – who had earlier decorated Maganov, 67, with a top honour – swept into the hospital to pay his final respects to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who had died the same week.
In 2023, leading war official Marina Yankina, 58, a finance official at Russia’s Ministry of Defence, was found dead after apparently falling 160ft from a 16th-floor window in St. Petersburg.
Former oil company vice president Mikhail Rogachev, 64, died after falling from his tenth-floor apartment in Moscow in October 2024.
He had been a senior executive at Yukos, an oil company dismembered by Putin and his cronies.
And just months ago in March, former MP Buvaysar Saitiev, 49, was found in a “serious condition” after plunging from a window in Moscow and later died.
The ex-MP, who was also a three-time Olympic wrestling champion, reportedly had no visible injuries or blood.
A janitor who discovered Saitiev on the ground on Sunday said the circumstances were unclear.
