Oil tycoon falls to his death from elite Moscow apartment block in latest mystery death to hit Russia

Daily Mail​

04-07-2025

A top Russian oil tycoon has died after mysteriously plunging from a window at his luxury Moscow home.
The body of Andrey Badalov, 62, was discovered this morning at the bottom of an exclusive high-rise apartment building in Moscow's affluent Rublevskoye neighbourhood.
Badalov was the vice-president of state-owned oil pipeline monopoly Transneft.
Investigators were reported to be 'working at the scene', according to local media.
Badalov had been appointed vice-president for the oil giant in 2021 and had previously worked at the state-owned Voskhod Scientific Research Institute.
He had also studied at the General Staff Academy of the Armed Forces, which trains high-level officers and state managers.
The tycoon leaves behind a wife and two daughters.
His sudden death is the latest in a s pate of unexplained deaths of leading Russian figures under mysterious circumstances.
In these cases, individuals have died falling from windows, apparent suicides and in accidents. Some have been known to be critics of Vladimir Putin.
Top Russian oligarch Mikhail Rogachev, 64, was found dead back in October after mysteriously falling from a 110ft window in Moscow.
Rogachev was the vice-president of Russian oil giant Yukos, which was forced out of business for turning against Putin.
TV channels reported that he lived on the tenth floor and that it was a suicide, claiming he had cancer and left a note.
But these reports were vehemently denied by his close friends and relatives.
His family insisted there were no signs that he was suicidal and he was in a 'good mood' shortly before his death.
Rogachev had a long and successful career in some of post-Soviet Russia's leading companies.
Separately, Lukoil tycoon Ravil Maganov, 67, fell from a window of Moscow's elite Central Clinical Hospital, also known as the Kremlin Clinic, in September 2022.
Russian state media quickly said his death was a suicide but law enforcement sources said there was no suicide note and there were no CCTV cameras on the section of the building where Maganov fell.
Lukoil is a major Russian energy company and of of the largest oil producers worldwide.
Maganov was then replaced by Vladimir Nekrasov - in October 2023, who died aged 66 of 'acute heart failure' in October 2023.
The following month, Russian senator and war backer, Vladimir Lebedev, with close Lukoil links, died suddenly in an unexplained 'terrible tragedy' aged 60.
The Russian tycoon was found hanged in his office toilet by his boss.
Last March, Lukoil's vice-president Vitaly Robertus, 53, became victim to the firm's death curse.
Then a prominent female judge was found dead after falling from a Moscow high-rise building.
Natalia Larina, 50, was notorious for handling high-profile political and criminal cases, punishing traitors of the Kremlin.
She had been a criminal judge for more than 15 years - and had a reputation for ruling verdicts on cases against opposition political activists.
In December 2023, Vladimir Egorov, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, plunged to his death from a third-floor window in Moscow.
The 46-year-old Egorov was a wealthy and prominent politician in oil-rich Tobolsk in western Siberia.
His corpse was found in the yard of his house, according to reports.
Just weeks prior, the deputy editor of Putin's favourite propaganda newspaper was found dead aged only 35.
The body of Anna Tsareva, 35, was discovered at her home in the capital's Bolshoy Tishinsky Lane - nearly a year after the death of her boss Vladimir Sungorkin, 68.
In February of the same year, a top Russian defence official and a key figure in the funding of Putin's illegal war in Ukraine Marina Yankina, 58, also fell 160ft to her death in St Petersburg.
She was head of the financial support department of the Ministry of Defence for the Western Military District, which is closely involved in the dictator's invasion.