Russian oligarch is said to have killed his family and himself killed, says his son

Sergey Protosenya, 55, is suspected of killing his wife Natalya and their 18-year-old daughter at their villa in Spain, but his son Fedor insists his father is not a murderer.

A Russian millionaire accused of killing his wife, daughter and himself has been killed, according to his son.

Former gas tycoon Sergey Protosenya, 55, allegedly beat his wife Natalya, 53, and their 18-year-old daughter Maria to death with an ax in their luxury Spanish villa before committing suicide.

It is one of four recent “suicides” of Russian gas business executives believed to be linked to Vladimir Putin’s circle, and their deaths are considered “suspicious”.

Catalan police continue to treat the deaths as a double murder-suicide.

But Mr. Protosenya’s son, Fedor, spoke out on Tuesday insisting his father was not a murderer and could never harm his family.

His comments come amid speculation the crime could be a mob triple murder disguised as domestic violence.

The 22-year-old university student spoke after arriving in the town of Lloret de Mar, on the Costa Brava, where his relatives were found dead in their vacation home on April 19.

“My father is not a murderer. He loved my mother and especially Maria, my sister,” Fedor told Mail Online.

“She was his princess. He could never do anything to harm them. I don’t know what happened that night, but I know my dad didn’t hurt them.”

Josep Milan, head of the Mossos d’Esquadra regional police in Girona province, which includes Lloret de Mar, gave a recent update on the case.

Speaking ahead of Fedor’s comments, he said: “Investigators are focusing on one person who committed suicide and two other people found dead inside a property and that’s what we’re seeing.

“Everything indicates that it is a crime of domestic violence, double murder and subsequent homicide.”

The police chief called reports pointing to possible Russian mafia involvement in the crime “speculative.”

A Mossos source insisted that “nothing has changed since Mr. Milan spoke last week.”

They added: “This is still being treated as a double murder and subsequent suicide.”

Fedor had stayed at the family home in the French city of Bordeaux while his relatives traveled to Lloret de Mar to spend the Easter holidays in their Catalan villa.

He raised the alarm through a friend of his father last Tuesday morning after his phone calls to the house went unanswered.

The friend alerted the police who found Mr. Protosenya hanging lifeless from a rope tied to a garden railing and the bodies of his wife Natalya, 53, and daughter Maria, 18, inside.

Police have been working on the theory that Protosenya, who had been vice president of the major Russian gas company Novotek, attacked his daughter with an ax and knife in her sleep before murdering his wife in the same way and then taking off. life.

Local reports following the gruesome discovery said Fedor was quick to raise the alarm when he was unable to reach his family by phone because he had been “disturbed” by his last phone conversation with them on Monday night.

The Delegation of the Government of Spain for Gender Violence has already registered Sergey’s wife as the 12th person so far this year in Spain murdered by her partner or ex-partner -and the 1,138th since the records began in 2003- .

Spain’s Equality Minister, without waiting for the judicial investigation into the crime to conclude, left little doubt that she believed Protosenya was to blame for her conviction of the murders last week by describing them as gender-related murders in a speech of press.

The results of the autopsies have not been made public as is usual in Spain, although the information that is being disseminated about the ongoing investigation of the crimes has been limited by a secrecy order imposed by the investigating judge.

Secrecy orders are exceptional measures designed to ensure the effectiveness of a judicial investigation.
They limit the number of people with access to the court file, meaning, for example, that defense attorneys for suspects in cases where the police have doubts about someone cannot see the file while the order is in effect.

Officials who violate them by disclosing confidential information can be fined or even sentenced to prison in some cases.

An interview that the police were planning with Mr. Protosenya, autopsies and analysis of CCTV cameras at the Lloret de Mar house, as well as telephone records, were considered important to the ongoing investigation, but have not been made public information about no progress in the investigation. .

Days before the discovery of Lloret de Mar, the body of Vladislav Avayev, 51, was found in his elite Moscow penthouse alongside his wife Yelena, 47, and daughter Maria, 13, in another apparent murder. -suicide.

Avayev was previously deputy chairman of Gazprombank, a bank that was set up to work for Russian gas giant Gazprom, and had also been a Kremlin official.

In both cases, suspicions have been raised that the deaths may have been staged as suicides.

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