Further details have come to light which shroud the death of Inessa Papernaya in yet more mystery. As reported by TCA yesterday, Papernaya and her companion were found dead in a Tashkent hotel on October 20, along with an Uzbek man in a neighboring room whom media sources initially referred to simply as U.Kh. It has since come to light that this person was Khushnud Udekov, a well-known 48-year-old businessman from the Khorezm region whose private gas company was liquidated.
Initially, reports stated that Papernaya was a Russian journalist known for her work with lenta.ru and profile.ru. It was also reported that Papernaya was in Uzbekistan on vacation, and was staying at the Karaman Palace Hotel with her fiancé, Maxim Radchenko, whom she had traveled with in order to meet his relatives. However, Papernaya’s last post for either of these publications came in 2019, since when she had become an employee of the Russian mining company, Norilsk Nickel.
According to accounts surrounding the death of Papernaya and Radchenko, hotel staff knocked on the door of their room after the couple, who were supposed to have returned to Moscow, stopped answering the phone. Receiving no response, staff entered the room, where they discovered the bodies of the pair in the bathroom.
“When she didn’t answer her phone at 11 PM, I felt something was wrong,” Papernaya’s mother told the media. “I knew something had happened.”
The body of Udekov was subsequently found in the room directly below, with some local publications speculating that the businessman may have been the target of a contract killing.
Preliminary reports attributed the cause of the deaths to poisoning of “unknown origin,” with early suggestions being made that gas seeped into the room through the ventilation system after the hotel’s pool was cleaned on October 19-20, leading to the incident. The hotel where the incident occurred was also still under construction, and the first floor was stuffed with building materials and furniture.
Following the gruesome discovery, authorities sealed off the Karaman Palace Hotel. The Prosecutor General’s Office of Uzbekistan launched an investigation under Article 186 of the Uzbek Criminal Code, which covers the provision of unsafe services, and a forensic examination was ordered to determine the precise causes of death.
According to Hayat Shamsutdinov, the press secretary of Uzbekistan’s Prosecutor General ‘s Office, the exact cause of death will be determined after a thorough examination, the results of which are expected in about a month.
Forensic expert Alexey Reshetun, however, has stated that it is “extremely difficult to imagine that two adults would die in a single room as a result of gas entering through the ventilation.” Relatives of Radchenko, meanwhile, have disputed what they describe as several different versions of the deaths which have been put forward. Radchenko’s sister stated that the family were initially told “he had an epileptic seizure; she ran up to him, slipped, fell, hit her head and died. This is some kind of TV series: how do you fall? What nonsense… Then there was a version about drugs; since their bodies were in the bathroom, that meant they were drug addicts.”
In a further challenge to the official narrative regarding gas seepage related to the pool being cleaned, Radchenko’s sister categorically stated that “there is no pool there.” No websites advertising rooms at the Karaman Palace make any mention of a pool, with some stating outright that this amenity is not available. A builder at the site also confirmed there is no swimming pool at the hotel.
In the latest twist, it now transpires that the day before the incident in Tashkent, Mikhail Rogachev, executive director at the Onexim Group and deputy general director of Norilsk Nickel also died, after plunging from the window of his tenth-floor apartment in Moscow. Rogachev’s body was reportedly discovered by a member of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the SVR. The death of the former vice-president of the disbanded energy giant Yukos was quickly labeled a suicide by the state news agency, TASS, due to his suffering from cancer. However, his condition was far from critical, and on the day of his death he “had breakfast with his loved ones and was in a normal mood”. Rogachev’s passing is the latest in a spate of suspicious deaths among oligarchs, which often involve falls from windows.
Giving the timing of these events, rumors are circulating that Papernaya’s death was related to Norilsk Nickel, which had recently stepped up its activities in Central Asia. In September, the company held talks with JSC NC Kazakh Invest in Almaty regarding possible cooperation in the extraction and development of copper and gold in the Almaty region, as well as the prospects for investment in mining projects in Kazakhstan.
Officials from Norilsk Nickel had also shown interest during repeated trips to Uzbekistan in participating in the development of roughly 70 gold deposits with reserves of approximately 6,000 tons. Russian state corporation Rosatom was in discussions with the company earlier this year over the construction of small-scale nuclear plants, including in Uzbekistan.
Norilsk Nickel is majority-owned by Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin, who holds most of his shares through the private investment company, Interros. According to Bloomberg, Potanin’s wealth stands at $32.3 billion, making him the richest man in Russia and the 57th richest person in the world. Potanin is subject to sanctions, and whilst Norilsk Nickel is not, due to Russia’s war in Ukraine the company has increasingly been snubbed by European buyers, and has seen its revenues decrease by 15% year-on-year.
Norilsk Nickel’s profits were already in steady decline, since in May 2020 the company was responsible for the second largest oil spill in modern Russian history, which led Vladimir Putin to declare a state of emergency and publicly lambast its executives. Whilst the company suffered losses in the form of a massive fine, reduced revenues and shareholder value, however, Norilsk Nickel’s board avoided any penalties. Potanin, meanwhile, blamed the environmental disaster on the “melting of permafrost.”
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Uzbekistan has confirmed that the bodies of Papernaya and Radchenko were transported back to Moscow on October 23. Papernaya’s mother, Lyubov, announced that her daughter’s funeral will take place on October 25.
Inessa Papernaya was born in Irkutsk into a family of scientists, one of three sisters. Her father, Viktor Paperniy, is a professor and head of the Department of General and Space Physics at Irkutsk State University, and her mother is a Doctor of Chemical Sciences. Inessa leaves behind a 12-year-old son, who is now being cared for by his grandparents.
