A RUSSIAN multi-millionaire married to a beauty queen has been found dead in bizarre circumstances after fleeing a £37 million fraud trial.
Boris Avakyan, 43, a former customs chief, was reportedly discovered in the toilet of the Armenian consulate in St Petersburg.
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The father-of-two, wed to Mrs World 2014 winner Yulia Ionina, 39, had escaped a Russian courtroom by slipping outside for a cigarette before vanishing in a car.
He later surfaced at the Armenian consulate, seeking extradition to Armenia where he held dual citizenship.
But hours later his body was reportedly found – with Russian outlets immediately claiming suicide.
Lawyers Konstantin Tarasenko and Natalya Chernikova strongly disputed the version.
More on the mystery deaths
The Armenian side refused to back Moscow’s account and denied Russian investigators access to the body, fuelling intrigue.
Its whereabouts remain unclear.
Avakyan, once head of the Port of St Petersburg’s customs brokerage, was deputy director at a federal property agency that had previously employed Vladimir Putin.
He was also said to be close to Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan, whose relations with Moscow are notoriously tense.
He previously dodged trial by volunteering to fight in Putin’s war, only to refuse deployment.
Avakyan’s wife Yulia, daughter of a professor, has held multiple titles including Mrs St Petersburg 2012 and Queen of the World 2014.
The pair had two children.
His death follows a grim pattern. Just last week Alexander Tyunin, 50, boss of a military-linked chemical plant, was found dead with a gunshot wound and a rifle nearby.
Reports claimed a suicide note lay next to him, in which he allegedly wrote: “I did it myself — I’ve been tired of fighting depression for five years. It keeps getting worse. I have no strength left.”
But doubts swirled after the note appeared in Russian media before officials had even confirmed his death.
One insider said: “There was an obvious need to get out the version that this was suicide before any investigations had begun.”
It’s just the latest in a long line of mystery deaths among Russia’s elite.
Executives, oligarchs and even ministers have plunged from windows, shot themselves multiple times in the chest, or been found dead in bizarre accidents officially logged as suicides.
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Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazansky mocked the pattern, saying: “Top managers of YUKOS and Lukoil have already fallen out of windows before. What are you laughing at?
“They just fall out of windows themselves. Russian oil workers have this professional deformity. As soon as they approach the windows, their legs immediately give way.”
Recent cases include transport minister Roman Starovoit, carried away in a body bag hours after leaving morning meetings as normal, and Transneft vice-president Andrey Badalov, who plunged from his luxury Moscow tower.
Former MP Buvaysar Saitiev, 49, also fell to his death earlier this year.
In 2023, war finance official Marina Yankina plunged 160ft from a St Petersburg tower block.
Oil boss Mikhail Rogachev fell from his 10th-floor flat in Moscow in 2024.
And in 2022, Lukoil chairman Ravil Maganov tumbled from a hospital window – on the very morning Putin arrived to bid farewell to Mikhail Gorbachev.
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