Russian officials complain they’ve been frustrated in repeated efforts to get information about the mysterious death of Mikhail Lesin, a former aide to President Vladimir Putin whose battered body was found in a Washington hotel room four months ago.
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Mikhail Lesin, who served as information minister under Putin and advised the president on media policies, ran one of Russia’s biggest media operations, Gazprom Media, until December 2014.
Lesin, 57, a former aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, died on November 6, 2015 at the Dupont Circle in downtown Washington.
At the time of his death, Russian media cited relatives who claimed Lesin died of a heart attack.
Lesin’s sudden death triggered a host of conspiracy theories in Russian Federation, but Washington police cautioned it was too early to jump to conclusions and stressed that the medical examiner had concluded that the manner of death was “undetermined”.
“There is an active, ongoing investigation” into the incident, said Hugh Carew, a spokesman for the police. He would not say whether the medical examiner’s ruling meant a crime was committed but said police are “not willing to close off anything at this point”.
Russian Federation expects “explanations and official data on the progress of the investigation”, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in a statement on Facebook.
“Yuri Chaika today sent his American colleague an inquiry about providing documents and materials necessary for ascertaining the cause and circumstances of the death of Mikahil Lesin”, Chaika’s spokesman Saak Karapetian was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
“We adhere to the national standard of completing 90 percent of autopsy reports within 90 days”, LaShon Beamon, of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Washington, told NPR.
After a five-year stint as press minister from 1999 to 2004, during which his no-tolerance attitude to anti-Kremlin voices earned him the nickname “The Bulldozer ” , he spent years working on the expansion of the Russian government’s control over television media.
The autopsy was completed this week and results released initially to Lesin’s family and then to the media, she said.
“It was unclear what Lesin was doing in Washington”.
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Last year, Republican Senator Robert Wicker of MS called for a probe of Lesin on suspicion of money laundering and corruption, according to ABC News.
