"Was drinking like a goldfish", — writes Washington Post about the former Russian Minister of Press and ex-head of Gazprom-Media, Mikhail Lesin, or rather about his mysterious death in October 2015 in New York. Some people including the notorious Alfred Kokh suspect it might have been the work of the Kremlin.
And now the American media has the police report. It's quite an interesting read: 58 pages on how Lesin spent his last days.
For example: "He started drinking right after checking in to the Four Seasons Hotel in the late afternoon on November 2nd. He took a bottle of vodka from the mini bar and didn't stop from that point onwards. He was either emptying the mini bar or going out to buy more liquor usually tequila and whiskey. Sometimes, he would pass out drunk."
It's no secret that such marathons never end in anything good for one's liver. The police have drawn pretty much the same conclusion. They decided that there was nothing suspicious about Lesin's death.
Anton Podkovenko will tell us more about whether we can put the matter to rest.
- Greetings, Anton.
- Greetings.
- What about the head injury that's also mentioned in the report?
- It's not a head injury but a black eye. It didn't really bother Lesin. At least that's what the report says.
This is the only photo from the report published by Washington Post. Scattered clothes, an open mini bar, dozens of bottles, not liquor though, but lemonade and energy drinks. The police found liquor anyway. They found liquor in his room in Dupont Circle Hotel anyway: 3 bottles of beer and 2 of red wine. That's when the body was discovered.
On the day of his death, the hotel staff checked on Lesin twice. At 8 a.m. he was lying face-down on the floor. They couldn't wake him up. The same thing at 11 a.m. The hotel maid called for help but it was too late.
Oleg Lurye, journalist: "He was an alcoholic. He'd been drinking for a long time and he'd been drinking hard. And all the conspiracy theories about Lesin allegedly planning to testify to the FBI and other intelligence agencies about his contacts with the current and former governments were crushed by this report".
There were a lot of theories indeed. At first, the American side claimed he'd died of natural causes. But then the conspiracy started.
The Washington police and medical examiners claimed that Lesin had blunt injuries of the head, neck, arms, and legs. Buzzfeed published an article with reference to some FBI agents whose colleagues told them that the Russian media-manager had been murdered by the agents of the Kremlin. Lesin was allegedly invited to Washington for an interview about the peculiarities of Russian television and it was the US Department of Justice that paid for his rooms in expensive hotels.
Sergey Sokolov, editor in chief of Sovershenno Sekretno: "All those talks about Lesin's ties to the FBI, to God-knows-whom about some secret assignments of the Kremlin. At that point, it was clear that it's utter nonsense. No one considered the fact that Lesin hadn't been a government official or a minister for many years".
The conclusion of the main medical examiner of the District of Columbia that Lesin's death was an accident caused by alcohol poisoning didn't kill the enthusiasm of some media that started counting the finances of the ex-minister.
Sergey Sokolov: "Radio Svoboda made a sensational revelation that Lesin happened to have a giant yacht in Australia "Serenity." It was they who started revealing his overseas property even though he'd been engaged in business for a very long time".
The fact that before working for the government Lesin owned the biggest Russian advertising holding, Video International, with hundreds of thousands dollars in revenue wasn't taken into consideration.
But back to the report. Four days before his death, Lesin rented luxury suites in two hotels and was switching between them, drank bottles of tequila and whiskey in his rooms, and was wandering the halls in his shirt and underwear.
Alexander Treschev, lawyer: "He raided all the bars he could find. The security guards were horrified because he was drinking all day and they had to check on him. On the second day, he had a black eye. They saw him to his room in the evening and found his cold body in the morning with some accidental injuries. Why was he drinking? He had 28 million dollars worth of property that's been recently discovered. Some luxurious real estate".
Is that the end to Mikhail Lesin's story? Only extracts of the police report were published. The journalists were denied the autopsy results and the final conclusion on the cause of his death. Although the revealed extracts suggest only one conclusion.
- Anton Podkovenko on the dangers of alcohol abuse.
