Nikolay Alekseevich Glushkov was a Russian businessman who was the deputy director of Aeroflot and a finance manager for AvtoVAZ who died in suspicious circumstances.
20 Facts About Nikolai Glushkov
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Nikolai Glushkov was convicted and released in 2004, after serving three years.
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Nikolai Glushkov emigrated to the UK in 2010 and received political asylum.
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On 9 April 2021, the West London Coroner's Court ruled Nikolai Glushkov was unlawfully killed, with injuries consistent with strangulation.
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In 1972, Nikolai Glushkov graduated from the Moscow Peoples' Friendship University with a degree in physics.
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Nikolai Glushkov had been AvtoVAZ's Finance Chief until he left his job in late 1995 and was appointed as Deputy General Director of Aeroflot on request from Yevgeny Shaposhnikov in February 1996.
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Nikolai Glushkov closed all these accounts and channeled the money to Swiss company called Andava in Switzerland.
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Nikolai Glushkov sent a bill and wrote a letter to SVR director Yevgeny Primakov and FSB director Mikhail Barsukov, asking them to pay the salaries of their intelligence officers in Aeroflot in 1996.
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In 1996, a Forbes article claimed that Nikolai Glushkov was convicted of theft in 1982.
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Nikolai Glushkov was arrested in December 2000 by Russian law enforcers and charged with channelling money through his accounting centre Andava.
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Nikolai Glushkov had no intention of escaping and "was walking in his slippers to the hospital gate to go home for the night, with his guards' knowledge, as he had done a few days earlier".
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Nikolai Glushkov was cleared of the original fraud and money laundering charges by the court in March 2004, but found guilty of attempted escape and "abuse of authority" and sentenced to 3 years and 3 months of imprisonment.
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Nikolai Glushkov was released in the courtroom, since he had already served his sentence in the pre-trial detention centre.
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In 2006, the Savelovsky District Court terminated the prosecution of Nikolai Glushkov, and gave him a two-year suspended sentence.
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In 2017, during a trial in absentia in Russia, Nikolai Glushkov was sentenced to eight years in prison for allegedly stealing $123 million from Aeroflot.
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On 13 March 2018, friends of Nikolai Glushkov revealed that he had been found dead the night before in his home in New Malden, London.
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Nikolai Glushkov's death was initially treated by police as unexplained and came a week after the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury, which along with his reputation as a critic of the Putin government, was said to be the reason for putting the Counter Terrorism Command in charge of the investigation.
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Nikolai Glushkov reportedly feared being on Putin's hit list and expected to be a likely target.
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Nikolai Glushkov had been sharing drinks with two men from Moscow the night before at the Grand Hotel in Bristol and believed he had been poisoned with champagne.
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On 9 April 2021, a coroner with the West London Coroner's Court ruled Nikolai Glushkov was unlawfully killed, with evidence to suggest his death was made to look like a suicide, and injuries that "could be consistent with a neck-hold, applied from behind, and the assailant being behind the victim".