Dailymail
A former Kremlin official and Gazprombank vice-president has been found dead in his elite £2 million Moscow apartment by his 26-year-old daughter, police have said.
Alongside the body of multimillionaire Vladislav Avayev, 51, was his ‘pregnant’ wife Yelena, 47, and younger daughter Maria, 13.
The bodies – all with gunshot wounds – were found by the couple’s distraught adult daughter Anastasia, when she opened the apartment after failing to reach her family.
Investigators said they are keeping an open mind on the 14th floor massacre, carried out ‘with Avayev’s pistol’, and investigating any links to his work and personal life.
Anastasia told officers that the gun had been in her father’s hand when she found his body, say reports.
Avayev previously worked as a high-flying executive at Gazprombank, a key part of Vladimir Putin’s gas-for-roubles scheme to hit back at Western sanctions – in which Putin demanded foreign companies open an account with the bank.
The 51-year-old had left the privately run bank as vice-president, but it was unclear if he retained connections to it.
Earlier he had been deputy head of a major department in Putin’s Kremlin administration. He was wealthy from his construction company.
One theory is that there had been jealousy after Yelena was found to be five months pregnant by her husband’s driver.
However, reports are ambiguous as to whether the dead woman was pregnant.
Other accounts suggest the wealthy ex-banker had discovered his wife was having an affair, and the driver had resigned.
