Former top Novatek exec found dead with family in Spain
A former top executive at Russia's second largest gas producer Novatek has been found dead with his wife and daughter at a rented villa in Spain, local media reported on April 21.
Sergei Protosenya, who served as a former chief accountant and a member of its board of directors until leaving the company in 2016, was found hanged at the property in the town of Lloret de Mar near Barcelona on April 19, according to Spanish news site Telecino. His wife and daughter were also found stabbed to death.
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The 55-year-old had an estimated wealth of €400mn ($432mn), local media said. Police believe either Protosenya killed his family and then hanged himself, or that another person killed the entire family and then staged the crime scene.
At the height of its valuation in September last year, Novatek was worth $79bn. But its share price has nearly halved since then in light of Moscow's war in Ukraine and the subsequent Western sanctions imposed on Russia, despite soaring gas prices over the past six months.
Novatek is at the forefront of Russia's drive to become a major LNG exporter. But the fate of its upcoming Arctic LNG-2 project is now up in the air, as a result of sanctions and the exit of some financiers. Arctic LNG-2 was expected to start up in 2023, but Novatek CEO Leonid Mikhelson warned on April 21 that the schedule could be altered because of the challenges that the project faces.
The bodies of Protosenya and his family were found just a day after another Russian multimillionaire Vladislav Avayev along with his wife and younger daughter were found dead, all with gunshot wounds, at their Moscow apartment. Avayev was previously a vice president at Gazprombank, the finance arm of Gazprom.