Russian businessman and parliament member, Pavel Antov died on Saturday after falling from the third floor of his hotel in India. His friend and travel partner Vladimir Budanov died two days earlier due to a heart attack on Antov’s 65th birthday.
Antov is thought to have committed suicide by leaping off the third floor of his hotel. The postmortem report, though, hasn’t been made public yet. He was discovered dead outside a hotel in the Rayagada district. In addition, 61-year-old Budanov already had a heart condition.
A senior police officer in the Indian state of Odisha, Vivekanand Sharma, stated that the case had been classified as an “unnatural death”, which includes suicides and accidents.
Antov, a businessman and member of the regional parliament for the Vladimir region in western Russia, celebrated his 65th birthday on December 22, according to the Russian state news agency TASS.
According to Forbes Russia, Antov made 9.97 billion rubles ($211 million) worth of fortune in 2018 and topped the Forbes 100 richest civil servants in Russia list. Antov was a member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party.
Antov protested a missile strike on a housing complex in Kyiv, Ukraine, in June. A man was killed in the attack, and his 7-year-old daughter, along with her mother, were also hurt. A WhatsApp message on Antov’s account stated that it was very difficult to describe the occurrence as anything other than terrorism.
Later, Antov deleted the message and declared his support for Putin on social media. He described the previous comment as an unfortunate misunderstanding. He had accidentally uploaded a message from someone he didn’t agree with.
After hearing of Antov’s death, his colleagues expressed their condolences. His passing is the most recent incident this year involving prominent oil and gas executives and Russian tycoons. Ravil Maganov, 67, the chairman of the Russian oil corporation Lukoil, died in September after falling from a Moscow hospital’s window.
