The limits of money : Russian oligarchs who in recent times met their Waterloo in the UK in suspicious circumstances

Billionaire Dmitry Obretetskiy, 49, was hit and killed by a car while walking his black labrador on Oxshott Heath in November 2019

Tycoon Dmitry Obretetskiy is the latest in a fairly long list of rich UK-based Russians to die in suspicious circumstances. The billionaire was heading back towards his gated mock Georgian mansion last week Monday when he met his end. Mr Obretetskiy was taken to hospital, where he fell into a coma and died on Saturday.

Mr Obretetskiy with his son

Mr Obretetskiy made his fortune in Volgograd after the fall of the Soviet Union. He founded a household chemical retail company called Magnat in 1991, which distributed products for Mars, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble in Russia.

Mr Obretetskiy’s daughter, Evelina, with her mother


Oligarch Boris Berezovsky was found dead in his Berkshire bathroom with a ligature around his neck in March 2013. A coroner recorded an open verdict, saying that he either took his own life or was killed, and the scene subsequently staged to make it look like suicide.

In 2018 Nikolai Glushkov, a Russian exile and Kremlin critic who was a friend of the late Berezovsky, died at his home in New Malden, southwest London. Police said that he was strangled, but no suspects have yet been identified.