Mikhail Lesin, a former Russian cabinet minister, seemed sloppily drunk
when he showed up at the bar in the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown one day
last fall, two police officials recounted Friday, and the bartender sent him
away.
He took a bottle of liquor — it was unclear if he
paid. He checked out of the hotel, where he had a room, and headed to the
Dupont Circle Hotel. Surveillance video there shows him walking in, looking
disheveled but not noticeably injured, another police official said.
The 57-year-old millionaire was found dead the morning
of Nov. 5 in his room, lying on the floor. His family told media outlets that the
former aide to Russian President Vladimir #Putin had suffered a heart attack.
But on Thursday, the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office
said Lesin died of blunt force trauma to the head and had bruises on other
areas of his body. The examiner reached no conclusion about whether the man who
was a trusted member of Putin’s inner circle and once ruled a media empire died
because of a crime, an accident or some other means.
The mysterious death of the Kremlin-connected
businessman — found two days after he failed to show at an exclusive Washington
fundraiser — is fueling conspiracy theories around the globe. Speculation
ranges from Lesin being targeted by a political or financial rival to being the
victim of a mundane bar fight.
An official with the Medical Examiner’s Office said the autopsy findings
took an unusually long time as officials awaited drug tests and ran conclusions
through peer review, a step taken only in complex cases. D.C. police said their
investigation continues, but they privately cautioned that detectives are
baffled.
The FBI said it is not currently involved in the case.
One senior D.C. police official said it is a “distinct possibility” that
Lesin was in a brawl, stumbled back to his hotel room and died. But the
official said police are considering other possibilities, too, including that
Lesin was hit by a car or fell.
So far, though, there’s no clear evidence of any of those scenarios.
“We don’t know what happened,” another police official
said. “We don’t know how the injuries occurred.”
Meanwhile, the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign
Ministry are pressuring authorities to keep them informed. “We count on
detailed official information being provided,” said Putin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov, according to the Interfax news agency.
Yury Melnik,
a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said officials are drafting
a request for a briefing. Of the speculation in the Russian and European media,
Melnik said, “I think politicizing this death is disrespectful.”
Putin ally
and media figure
#Lesin played
a central role in the evolution of Russia’s modern media scene into an
instrument of Kremlin influence and control. Trained as an engineer, he helped
found one of the country’s first ad agencies. After Putin came to power in
2000, Lesin took over the unruly anti-Kremlin NTV channel and reversed its
orientation. He was a longtime confidante and public relations adviser to Putin
and helped shape Putin’s domestic image as a virile, uncorrupt leader.
To bolster
Russia’s image abroad, and to propagate the Kremlin’s Western-skeptic worldview
to a broader audience, he helped foster the creation of Russia Today, an
English-language television network that has spread around the world since its
start in 2005.
More
recently, he had stepped down from his post as the head of Gazprom-Media, a
holding company that owns several prominent pro-Kremlin TV networks and the
popular Ekho Moskvy radio station. The break came after he clashed with the
station’s editor, Alexey Venediktov, over whether to fire a journalist who had
criticized the Kremlin.
After
leaving the media company in Russia, he bought three properties in California.
Two of them are occupied by his children, one of whom is a producer on films
including “Dirty Grandpa,” “Rock the Kasbah” and “Fury.”
In 2014,
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) requested that the Justice Department investigate
Lesin for possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and
anti-money-laundering statues. He questioned how the Putin aide was able to
amass tens of millions of dollars in Los Angeles real estate and noted his
connections to people covered by U.S. sanctions.
Assistant
Attorney General Peter J. Kadzik wrote back months later, saying the matter had
been referred to the Justice Department’s criminal division and the FBI. Such
referrals are common and do not indicate that an investigation has been
launched, and it was unclear Friday to what extent, if any, authorities looked
into Wicker’s concerns. Justice Department and FBI spokesmen declined to
comment Friday.
Wicker said
in a statement that he has “not been briefed on Mr. Lesin’s death or why he was
in our nation’s capital. I am sure that the FBI, the Intelligence Community,
and local authorities will work together to investigate the circumstances
surrounding this suspicious situation.”
A plot, or
too much alcohol?
On Nov. 3,
two days before his body was found, Lesin was expected at a fundraiser honoring
a philanthropist and chief executive of the largest private bank in Russia,
along with a Washington socialite and patron of the arts. It was organized by
the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, which works to build ties between
Russia and the West.
Caroline
Scullin, a spokeswoman for the institute, confirmed that Lesin had been invited
but did not pick up his place card for a table of 10 that cost at least
$10,000.
Kremlin
critics have advanced theories that Lesin may have been killed because
officials feared he was about to cut a deal with federal authorities
investigating his land dealings in California. Such stories have traction in a
world where ex-KGB agents are poisoned in London by radioactive tea and the
lawyers of Kremlin critics die in Moscow prisons.
But Russia’s
independent Dozhd television channel reported Friday that one unnamed person
who saw Lesin shortly before his death said he had been with a group of
friends. The person said Lesin may have gotten into a fight near his hotel.
A longtime
friend and business associate of Lesin’s, Sergey Vasiliev, said he believed
that Lesin, who also went by Misha, died after a bout of heavy drinking.
On the night
of Nov. 2, a Monday, Lesin settled into his hotel room, “was drunk” and in the
morning went out to buy more alcohol, Vasiliev said, saying he formed his
account after speaking to the Russian Foreign Ministry and others familiar with
the sequence of events.
Vasiliev said he was told that on Nov. 4, a hotel security guard visited
Lesin’s room because the guest had not left in a long time.
“He found Mikhail on the floor, sleeping and drunk. He
tried to lay him on the bed, but he resisted,” Vasiliev said, and the guard
left.
“The next morning the cleaner found him lying in the
same place, but already without any signs of life,” Vasiliev said. He added
that “earlier, when Misha had breakdowns, there were times when he fell,
injuring himself, at times quite heavily.”
A hotel spokesman declined to comment.
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