The vice president of Transneft, Russia’s state-owned oil pipeline monopoly, has reportedly died after falling from a window at his residence in the affluent Moscow suburb of Rublyovka, according to state media on Friday.
Transneft confirmed the passing of Andrei Badalov, who was 62, but it refrained from providing details about the incident. The company noted that his tenure coincided with a “challenging and stressful time” due to Western sanctions.
According to the government-run TASS news agency, which cited an anonymous law enforcement source, Badalov’s body was discovered beneath a window of a house situated on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye highway.
“The initial indication is that the cause of death may be suicide,” the source mentioned, while also stating that a preliminary inquiry is ongoing.
Since taking on the role of vice president in July 2021, Badalov had been responsible for leading Transneft’s digital transformation efforts.
His death marks yet another in a series of notable and mysterious fatalities among top officials in Russia’s energy industry following the onset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
In 2022 alone, at least four fatalities were associated with Gazprom, the major state energy corporation, while other cases involved executives from companies such as Novatek and Lukoil.