Renowned Russian media executive and political consultant Igor Malashenko is believed to have committed suicide in Spain, Russian state media cited a Spanish court as saying.
Malashenko’s former colleagues and family said he had taken his own life at age 64 on Monday, but no official sources have yet confirmed the reports.
“Everything shows” that Malashenko committed suicide, the state-run TASS news agency cited an unnamed Spanish law enforcement source as saying on Tuesday.
A preliminary autopsy report indicated that “hanging was the cause of death,” an unnamed court official was later quoted as saying.
“According to preliminary data, there are no signs of a crime,” the High Court of Justice official added.
TASS reported that Malashenko’s final autopsy report will be ready within a month. Spain’s main news agency EFE reports that the autopsy was conducted on Tuesday.
Malashenko was the co-founder and president of NTV, an independent television channel founded by a group of leading journalists, before joining Boris Yeltsin’s campaign team to engineer his presidential victory in 1996. More recently, he headed Ksenia Sobchak’s 2018 presidential campaign.
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