Vyacheslav Taran, a financier and cryptocurrency entrepreneur from Russia, died in a helicopter accident on French soil. The incident adds another name to the list of Russian millionaires who passed away this year in unexplained circumstances and is the latest in a string of deaths of cryptocurrency leaders.
While travelling to Monaco, the Libertex President’s helicopter crashes, killing him.
Vyacheslav Taran, the creator of Forex Club and the CEO of Libertex Group, was a Russian businessman who passed away in a helicopter crash in southeast France. The aircraft’s 35-year-old French pilot, who was also slain, had only the 53-year-old billionaire as a passenger.
Taran was traveling from the Swiss city of Lucerne to Monaco when the accident took place on Friday, Nov. 25, near the Italian border. The news of his death was confirmed by Libertex, a trading platform for various assets including cryptocurrencies, and by the Russian embassy in Paris.
On Monday, the diplomatic mission told the Tass news agency that the helicopter owned by Monacair crashed in the area of Villefranche-sur-Mer. French authorities have launched an investigation into the case but the exact cause of the accident is yet to be determined.
Vyacheslav Taran’s death is the latest of series of such events in the crypto space. On Nov. 23, the co-founder of the Hong Kong-based company Amber Group, Tiantian Kullander, died in his sleep at the age of just 30. On Oct. 28, crypto developer and Makerdao co-founder, 29-year-old Nikolai Mushegian, drowned in Puerto Rico.
Taran is also one of several Russian businessmen who have died recently under mysterious circumstances. The group includes the 39-year-old Managing Director of Russia’s Corporation for the Development of the Far East and the Arctic, Ivan Pechorin, who drowned after falling off a boat near Vladivostok on Sept. 10.
Half of the senior executives who reportedly passed away this year—at least 10 in total—were connected to two of Russia’s largest energy companies, state-run Gazprom and privately held Lukoil, either by suicide or bizarre accidents. As another illustration, in September, the chairman of the oil firm, 67-year-old Ravil Maganov, reportedly died after falling from a hospital window in Moscow.
The Central Bank of Russia ordered the closure of Taran’s Forex Club, a collection of businesses that specialised in contract for difference and foreign exchange trading on the retail market, when it lost its Russian licence in 2018. It was one of the biggest such platforms in the nation when it was founded in 1997.