Russian cryptocurrency tycoon Vyacheslav Taran died in a mystery helicopter crash.
One of Russia’s crypto industry’s billionaires was killed in a helicopter accident. His passing follows several other unexplained events that have occurred this year.
The death of a crypto billionaire in a helicopter crash near the French-Italian border is only the latest in a string of unexplained deaths in Russia.
According to a report in the New York Post, Vyacheslav Taran, 53, the president of the Libertex Group and the founder of Forex Club, was the only passenger on a helicopter that crashed over the weekend in Villefranche-sur-Mer.
“It is with great grief that Libertex Group reveals the loss of its co-founder and Chairman of Board of Directors, Vyacheslav Taran, after a helicopter crash,” the company, which advertises itself as a premier foreign exchange and crypto trading platform, said in a statement.
Local news outlets indicate that Taran was on the doomed Airbus H130 from Lucerne, Switzerland, to Monaco when it crashed.
The France Bleu radio station said that Taran and the French helicopter pilot, age 35, both perished in the crash.
The Russian Embassy in Paris acknowledged his passing on Monday.
Authorities have not yet ruled out the potential of foul play in the helicopter crash, but the probe is ongoing.
France Bleu said that another passenger who was supposed to ride on the airbus to Monaco had to cancel at the last minute.
The demise of Taran is just the most recent in the history of digital currencies.
On November 23, 2018, Tiantian Kullander, co-founder of the Hong Kong-based digital asset company Amber Group, passed away peacefully in his sleep. He was 30.
Nikolai Mushegian, a developer in the field of cryptocurrencies, perished in October at the age of 29.
In neither case has there been any indication of foul play by law enforcement.
When he died, Taran became the latest in a string of Russian oligarchs to perish this year under suspicious circumstances.
A pro-Kremlin Russian media outlet, Life, reported in 2018 that Taran’s company, Forex Club (a reference to the foreign exchange global market on which currencies are transacted), had its license revoked for allegedly defrauding investors.
Among Taran’s “many dissatisfied clients and adversaries in Russia, who may well get him abroad,” the website wrote.
Taran leaves behind a wife and three kids.
Russian oligarchs’ deaths have been met with suspicion.
Russia has seen the deaths of several oligarchs with ties to Vladimir Putin this year, and their deaths all seem to bear strange hallmarks.
Similarities in their deaths have led to speculation that they were ordered by Putin.
Tiantian Kullander, co-founder of Amber Group and a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency industry, passed away peacefully in his sleep on November 23.
Ivan Pechorin, Putin’s point man on tapping Russia’s massive Arctic riches, was another fatality.
Under strange circumstances, he fell overboard near Russky Island.
In January of this year, 67-year-old oil mogul Ravil Maganov “fell from a window” at a hospital in Moscow. The oil firm he founded, Lukoil, has spoken out against the conflict in Ukraine.
Sergey Protosenya, 55, deputy chairman of Novatek, was found dead in Spain alongside his wife and daughter; both had been murdered with an axe.
In the wake of the death of 61-year-old Gazprom executive Alexander Tyulakov in February, a note was discovered.
The 68-year-old editor of a newspaper, Vladimir Sungorkin, had a stroke and suffocated on the way to lunch, while the 52-year-old oil tycoon, Alexander Subbotin, died of a “drug-induced heart attack” during a shamanic ceremony or from “toad poison” while looking for a cure for a hangover.
