Russian billionaire, crypto businessman dies in helicopter crash in France

Russian businessman Vyacheslav Taran, founder of Forex Club and head of Libertex Group, has died in a helicopter crash in Southeast France.

The 53-year-old billionaire was the only passenger in the aircraft piloted by a 35-year-old French national who was also killed, Bitcoin.com reports.

Taran was travelling 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 November 28, 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.

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 September 10.

At least 10 top executives have reportedly died this year either by suicide or in strange accidents, with half associated with two of Russia’s energy giants, the state-run Gazprom and the privately owned Lukoil. As another example, the oil company’s Chairman Ravil Maganov, 67, died after reportedly falling out of a window of a Moscow hospital, also in September.

Taran’s Forex Club, a group of companies specialising in contracts for difference and foreign exchange trading in the retail market, lost its Russian license in 2018 and was forced to close down by the Central Bank of Russia. Founded in 1997, it was one of the largest such platforms in the country.