Dan Rapoport, Putin Critic Found Dead in Washington DC on 14 August 2022

Dan Rapoport, a Latvia-born American businessman was found dead in front of a luxury apartment building by the D.C. Metro Police Department.

Dan Rapoport, Latvia-Born American Businessman, Found Dead in Washington, D.C.

Dan Rapoport , an American stockbroker who made a fortune in the Russian market in the 1990s and 2000s and later co-founded a posh Moscow nightclub ” Soho Rooms ” before leaving the country in 2012 died of blunt force injuries suffered as a result of a fall from a Washington, D.C. building.

Earlier today, Dan Rapoport 🇺🇸, a great friend of Ukraine🇺🇦 and of the Russian democratic opposition, took his own life in Washington, DC. He was 52.

In 2017: @nolanwpeterson was a new journalist in Kyiv, Dan was in business, and I was with the former-SBU Director. Time flies. pic.twitter.com/MzonjCVUQT

— Jason Jay Smart (@officejjsmart) August 16, 2022

Who Was Dan Rapoport?

Dan Rapoport was born in Riga, Latvia (then Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR) in the 1990s. After being granted political asylum, his family immigrated to the United States of America in 1980 and lived in Houston, Texas. Rapoport came with his parents to the U.S. at age 11.

Educational Background Of Dan Rapoport

Rapoport was an undergraduate in finance from the University of Houston in 1991. He did his MBA degree from Middlesex University in London in 2015.

Career

After graduating from the University of Houston, Rapoport returned to Russia employed by Phibro Energy. He worked as a financial analyst for the first Russian American joint venture for oil production, White Nights Joint Enterprises, which was based in Raduzhny, Siberia.

After leaving Phibro, Rapoport stayed in Russia to work in corporate finance, brokerage, and investment banking. He held senior positions at several Russian financial institutions and worked on various cross-border transactions for Russian companies and international investors.

In 1995, Rapoport joined the CentreInvest Group and in 1999 was appointed Managing Director of CentreInvest Securities, in New York. From 2003, he was the Executive Director and head of the brokerage business in Moscow for CentreInvest Securities.

He co-owned a popular Moscow night club The Soho Rooms before leaving Moscow. He left Russia in 2012 reportedly due to his support for Navalny.

Wife And Children Of Dan Rapoport

Dan married Irina ( Fashion Model ) and had two kids. They both lived in US from 2012 till 2016. In 2016, Rapoport divorced his first wife, Irina. In Washington, Rapoport and Irina lived in the exclusive Kalorama neighborhood. They enrolled their one child at Maret, a top local private school.

After their divorce, Rapoport decided to settle with his second wife, Alena,a Ukrainian virologist, in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2016.

After the war began, Rapoport sent his wife Alena ( Alyona) and child to Denmark but stayed in Ukraine. Later he came to Washington along with his dog “Boy”

SEC Lawsuit

In 2008, while based in Moscow, Rapoport was charged by the SEC with an alleged violation of Section 15(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC claimed that the alleged infraction occurred while he was Managing Director of CentreInvest Securities (Moscow) and indirectly oversaw the activities of CentreInvest Inc. in New York. Unable to serve Rapoport with due notice at his Moscow location, the SEC in 2009 entered a default order judgment.

Once aware of the default judgment, Rapoport responded by filing a motion under Exchange Rule 155 (b) to vacate the default judgment. After several court decisions, in 2012, the DC District Court, Judge David Sentelle presiding, unanimously granted Rapoport’s petition to vacate, quoting the SEC’s failure to consistently apply its own rule.

Mysterious Death of Dan Rapoport: Was It Suicide, Murder, or Something Else?

Journalist Yuniya Pugacheva announced on her Telegram channel that Rapoport had killed himself, but not before apparently letting his dog out into a park along with some money and a suicide note attached. 

However, Dan Rapoport’s widow Alena refuted the claims and told Russian business news channel RBC that she did not believe her husband had died by suicide.

There were no notes, no suicide, no trip to London, no departure.

According to an incident report from last August 14, 2022, officers responding to a call about a jumper found Rapoport’s body on the sidewalk outside a luxury building at 24th and M Street, in the West End neighborhood  just before 9 p.m. The 52-year-old was wearing flip flops and a black hat; he was found with a cracked cell phone, headphones, a Florida driver’s license and $2,620 in cash, but no wallet.

The police did not suspect foul play, but they sent the body to the medical examiner as is standard practice for suspected suicides. The autopsy could have determined more about the death, such as whether it was an accidental fall (via toxicology screen) or whether there was a struggle or injury before the fall (which could suggest homicide).

However, when the autopsy report was finally released in November, it was inconclusive. The cause of death was listed as “multiple blunt force injuries due to fall from height,” but the manner of death was listed as “undetermined.”

This means that the medical examiner could not determine whether the fall was accidental, suicidal, or homicidal.

What Are the Theories Surrounding Dan Rapoport’s Death?

Dan Rapoport who worked for a long time in key positions at Centerinvest and IFC Metropol, announced his plans on his Facebook page. “After more than four years of living in Washington, in a few days I am moving to Ukraine, to Kyiv,” Rapoport wrote. His company Rapoport Capital received a mandate from US Asset Management to represent its interests and invest in Ukrainian assets. Rapoport has been involved in the Ukrainian topic for some time: in February he visited Kiev, and in June he took part in the US-Ukraine Business Council Roundtable with several Ukrainian ministers. US Asset Management is an American company providing investment management services. It was founded in 2002 by a group of investment bankers and is based in Pennsylvania. Information about the company’s assets is not disclosed.

In January 2017, the New York Times reported that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, the daughter and son-in-law of newly elected President Donald Trump, had bought a mansion in Washington, D.C. from Dan Rapoport and his first wife. The mansion was located in an exclusive neighborhood.

Later that same month, Raporport’s co-founder of the Soho Rooms nightclub, Sergei Tkachenko, was found dead outside a Moscow building. Investigators said he died because of injuries typical of a fall from a great height. Same format of fall which led to Dan Rapoport death in 2022 in USA.

Dan Rapoport ‘s Alternate Online Identity “David Jewberg”

In 2018, the open-source investigative organization Bellingcat reported that Rapoport had been the creator of a fictional persona named David Jewberg, who was frequently quoted in Ukrainian media as a senior Pentagon analyst.

Deaths of Russian Oligarchs 2022 ( Till July 2022)

Leonid Shulman

Leonid Shulman , a top executive for the Russian state-owned energy company Gazprom, was found dead of a reported suicide in a cottage in the village of Leninsky on Jan. 30 , 2022

Igor Nosov

The CEO of the Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, Igor Nosov, died on 8 Feb 2022.

Alexander Tyulakov 

Alexander Tyulakov , another top executive for Gazprom, was found dead on 25 February 2022 in a garage.

Mikhail Watford 

Ukraine-born oligarch Mikhail Watford was found dead on 28 February 2022 , three days after Tyulakov at his home in England.

Vasily Melnikov

On March 24 ,2022, Russian media reported that billionaire Vasily Melnikov, who owned the medical supply company MedStom , his wife, and their two sons were found dead in their luxury apartment in Nizhny Novgorod. They had all been stabbed, and the murder weapons Knifes were found at the scene.

Vladislav Avayev 

Vladislav Avayev, the former vice president of Gazprombank, one of the largest banks in Russia, which has ties to the energy industry, was found dead in his apartment in Moscow along with his wife and daughter on April 18. 

Sergey Protosenya 

Sergei Protosenya, a former deputy chairman of Novatek, a Russian natural gas firm, was found hanged while his wife and daughter were found stabbed to death at a villa in Spain on 19 April 2022.

Andrei Krukovsky

Andrei Krukovsky, the director of the Gazprom-owned Krasnaya Polyana ski resort, mysteriously fell off a cliff while hiking and died in May 2022.

Alexander Subbotin 

Former top Lukoil executive Alexander Subbotin was found dead in 8 May 2022 in the basement of a house near Moscow.

Yuri Voronov

Yuri Voronov, a 61-year-old Russian business executive having ties with Gazprom was found dead in his swimming pool with a gunshot wound to the head in Leningrad region at around 2 p.m on 4 July 2022.