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Ivan Sechin, son of Putin's confidante and Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, found dead at 35

The Insider

Ivan Sechin, the only son of Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, passed away at the age of 35. Former YUKOS manager Leonid Nevzlin reported his demise, citing an entry in Russia's inheritance register. The death of Sechin Jr. received no press coverage. Before taking charge of Russia’s oil giant Rosneft, his father Igor Sechin occupied a variety of senior positions in Vladimir Putin’s administration. Their alliance goes back to Putin’s tenure as the mayor of Saint Petersburg.

The independent publication Mediazona verified the entry in question, establishing that it indeed mentioned Ivan Igorevich Sechin, who was born in 1989 and resided in Moscow at 3 Shvedsky Tupik.

According to the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel, the alleged cause of his death is a “detached blood clot.” The Rosneft security service handled the investigation in-house. At around 4 a.m. on February 5, Ivan Sechin, 35, started having difficulty breathing and soon lost consciousness. He died in the Evropa gated community in Krasnogorsk outside Moscow, VChK-OGPU writes. The security guards called an ambulance, providing the name “Evgeny Anatolyevich Panin.” According to the channel's sources, this name was also on Ivan Sechin's death certificate.

As The Insider wrote earlier, the 11-story high-end apartment block at 3 Shvedsky Tupik in Moscow where Ivan Sechin owned an apartment is known as “Putin’s friends’ house.” At different times, prominent Putin allies were known to own apartments there, from Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to businessman Gennady Timchenko's son Ivan, head of the Rostec state-owned corporation Sergei Chemezov, and Rosneft CEO's ex-wife Marina Sechina. One of the penthouses belonged to the head of Kremlin-controlled Channel One Konstantin Ernst.

According to leaks from Russian databases, Ivan Sechin was a Rosneft employee and declared an income of $667,440 in 2021. He is also known to have been promoted to a senior managerial position in 2014 – at the age of 25.

In January 2015, 26-year-old Sechin Jr. was decorated with a medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” in the 2nd degree “for a major contribution to the development of the fuel and energy industry and many years of conscientious work.”