Dmitry Obretetsky, 49, is the latest of a string of Russians who have died in mysterious circumstances in the UK – although it is unclear if foul play is suspected in this case.
Surrey Police are appealing for witnesses and dashcam footage after dad-of-three Mr Obretetsky was mown down near his home on November 25.
He died in hospital five days later. His dog Oscar was also killed in the crash in leafy Oxshott.
Up to three cars were said to be involved, according to reports. There have been no arrests.
Police did not identify the victim but he was named today in reports in Moscow.
A Russian friend and associate questioned whether he was deliberately killed.
Pavel Borovkov said Mr Obretetsky was a longtime resident of Britain who returned regularly to Russia on business.
He was quoted by Life as saying: “You know, people drive cars very carefully in (Britain).
“I don’t exclude that he was specially knocked down.”
‘WONDERFUL FRIEND’
Obretetsky was reported to be a billionaire who made his fortune in Volgograd after the fall of the Soviet Union before moving to Surrey with his wife and children – with several Chelsea FC stars as neighbours.
He founded a household chemicals retail company and was owner of Magnat Trade Enterprise, official distributor for Mars, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble in Russia.
He became an iconic hero with football fans during Euro 2008 when he was pictured among a sea of Dutch fans waving a huge flag when Russia beat Holland 3-1 in the quarter-final.
His consulting company LLC Advant said: “We know very little about what happened.
“Of course, this is a great loss and tragedy for all of us.”
Mr Borovkov paid tribute to the tycoon as “a wonderful friend and colleague, an understanding and friendly person”.
He added: “Dmitry was a man of diverse interests – he did not focus only on business.
“We remember how at the famous quarter-final of Euro 2008 he proudly, completely alone in a crowd of Dutch fans, held a large Russian flag with the inscription ‘Volgograd’.
“He loved contemporary music – hard rock. He was a fan of Ozzy Osbourne.”
Obretetsky’s son Ilya, thought to be 22, is a UK citizen who attended posh Millfield School.
He also had two daughters at school in England.
His death comes amid fears an elite band of assassins are knocking off Vladimir Putin’s enemies on British soil and around the world.
Yesterday German Chancellor Angela Merkel ordered the expulsion of two Russian “diplomats” – thought to be spies – after a dissident was gunned down in Berlin by a hitman on an electric bicyle.
Prosecutors said there was “sufficient factual evidence” Moscow arranged the contract killing of Chechen war veteran Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in August.
Today it emerged the chief suspect applied for a visa by fax from a company owned by Russia’s defence ministry, and that after the killing Russian officials vouched for a passport he was given in a false name.
‘KREMLIN HIT SQUAD’
It also emerged intelligence agencies discovered a secret base in the French Alps used by 15 Russian spies – including the bungling GRU agents behind the Novichok nerve agent attack in Salisbury last year.
Last month British ex-Army officer James Le Mesurier, who founded the White Helmets rescue group in Syria, was found dead in mysterious circumstances in Istanbul.
Days earlier Russia had condemned him as a spy after his organisation was paid millions by the US government.
Meanwhile a succession of Russian emigres to Britain have died in suspicious circumstances in recent years.
US intelligence is said to have linked at least 14 deaths to the Kremlin, including four pals dubbed the Ring of Death.
Investigative journalist Heidi Blake’s book, From Russia with Blood: Putin’s Ruthless Killing Campaign And Secret War On The West, which is being serialised in the Mail on Sunday, claims Putin’s lust for revenge, or forces linked to him, has led to the deaths of more than a dozen people in the UK.
Ms Blake says there are “good grounds for suspicion” of Moscow involvement in Mr Le Mesurier’s death.
She says Russian scientists have been developing to trigger heart attacks, cancer and even extreme mental anguish – which could be enough to make people kill themselves.
Here we examine some of the past mysterious deaths and assassination attempts:
Alexander Litvinenko
The former KGB agent fled to the UK fearing he would be killed after he refused an order to kill oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
In exile in London he was a paid consultant for MI6 and was also a strong critic of Putin’s regime, accusing it of staging terrorist bombings and other acts to bolster its power.
Litvinenko died three weeks after drinking tea laced with polonium-210 at a meeting with two Russians at a Mayfair hotel in 2006.
On his deathbed aged 44 he accused Putin of murdering him, and a public inquiry later ruled the Russian president had probably approved the hit.
Boris Berezovsky
Russian exile and oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a high profile opponent of Putin, was found dead at his home, Titness Park, at Sunninghill, near Ascot in Berkshire on March 2013.
A post-mortem found he was hanged but an inquest recorded an open verdict.
Before his death he had repeatedly expressed fears of state-sponsored killing and was to be a key witness at the inquest of poisoned spy Alexander Litvinenko, whom he helped finance his friend Litvinenko when he claimed political asylum in Britain.
Berezovsky is said to have survived at least two assassination attempts in the UK.
It was reported he had sought a truce with Putin shortly before he was found hanged in his Berkshire mansion in 2013, aged 67.
Friends have long suspected a Kremlin hit, but in 2016 a Russian intelligence expert claimed he was killed by British spies after threatening to expose pornographic photos of Prince Philip.
Scot Young
In December 8 2014 Scottish property developer Scot Young was found impaled on spiked railings 60ft beneath a £2million flat.
But just eight minutes earlier, Young had conducted a perfectly normal and cheery phone call with his daughter.
His family has always maintained the 52-year-old must have been forced out the window of his fourth floor apartment in Marylebone, central London, in December 2014, and that it was no accident or suicide.
Curiously he had worked as a fixer for Berezovsky and amassed a rumoured £400million fortune in his own right.
The flashy tycoon was later jailed for contempt after a judge said he was hiding his wealth in divorce proceedings.
Yet he said his fortune had vanished in a mysterious Moscow property deal, and told friends he was being targeted by a team of Russian hitmen.
After his death a pal revealed mafia mobsters had dangled Young from a hotel balcony two years earlier.
The friend said: “I do not believe for one minute he committed suicide. I believe he was murdered. He owed a lot of money to the wrong people.”
He was the ninth member of a circle of friends and business associates to die in suspicious circumstances.
Badri Patarkatsishvili
The Georgian businessman was Berezovsky’s business partner and an associate of
He was 52 when he dropped dead of an apparent heart attack at his home in Leatherhead, Surrey, in 2008.
Cops tested the property for radioactive materials, but came up empty handed.
An inquiry found FSB agent Andrei Lugovoi had met Patarkatsishvili in the days before the 2006 polonium attack on Litvinenko.
Lugovoi was named as prime suspect in the poisoning.
Patarkatsishvili told police their meeting was to discuss outdoor advertising in Moscow.
But after he died, his friends and family suspected another poisoning ordered by Putin.
Nikolai Glushkov
Russian airline mogul Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was found with “strangulation marks” at his home in New Malden, South West London by his daughter Natalia on March 12 2018.
is death wa
s initially treated by police as unexplained.
His death came a week after the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in Salisbury.
This along with his reputation as a Putin critic government prompted the Counter Terrorism Command in charge of the investigation.
Glushkov reportedly feared being on Putin’s hit list and expected to be a likely target.[14]
On 16 March 2018, the Metropolitan Policestated they were now treating his death as murder but said “at this stage there is nothing to suggest any link to the attempted murders in Salisbury”.[
Counter-terrorism investigators maintain a lead role in the investigation into the unsolved case.
It was reported after his death that Glushkov may have been poisoned by two Russian men five years earlier in Bristol after he collapsed in his room.
The night before he had been sharing drinks with two men from Moscow the night before at the Grand Hotel. Some suspect the champagne he was drinking was poisoned.
Alexander Perepilichny
Alexander Perepilichny, who had been working to expose died suddenly in Surrey on November 10 2012 while out running near his luxury home.
He was alleged to have been killed under directed orders from the Kremlin as part of the conspiracy to cover up the Mafia theft of £177 million from the Treasury of Russia. Putin has long been suspected to have links with organised crime in country.
The 44-year-old’s death in 2012 was originally put down to natural causes but
traces of a chemical found in the poisonous plant gelsemium elegans – known
as heartbreak grass – were later found in his stomach.
But the official view is that Perepilichny died of natural causes.
Gareth Williams
On August 23 2010 GCHQ codebreaker, who was believed to have been seconded to M16, was found dead in a padlocked holdall in a bath at a security services safe house in Pimlico, West London.
The coroner at the subsequent inquest, his death was likely a “criminally mediated” unlawful killing, though it was “unlikely” to be satisfactorily explained.
Police believed it was sex game gone wrong.
But in 2015 a Russian defector claimed Williams had been exterminated by Russian intelligence agencies because he refused to become a double agent and knw allegedly knew of the identity of a Kremlin spy working in GCHQ.
Yuri Golubev
Golubev, the co-founder of oil giant Yukos, once one of Russia’s biggest companies.
He died aged 64 in London in 2007.
Police said he died of natural causes and it was “not suspicious”.
But American spy agencies have intelligence suggesting he was murdered and cops ignored links to Russian hitmen, Buzzfeed claimed last year.
Paul Castle
Millionaire property tycoon Paul Castle, 54, was another member of Young and Elichaoff’s group of friends.
The polo-playing friend of Prince Charles died after falling under a train at Bond Street Underground station in 2010.
Friends said he had received threats and was worried about money.
Robert Curtis
Robert Curtis, who once dated model Caprice, made millions from a London property business in the early 2000s.
The jetsetting playboy had a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce and a personalised number plate.
But in 2012 he was penniless and living in a Travelodge when he fell under a Jubilee line train in North West London aged 47. He had taken painkillers and cocaine, an inquest heard.
US intelligence agencies added the four friends’ apparent suicides to files on suspected Russia-linked assassinations, Buzfeed reported.
Stephen Curtis
Lawyer Stephen Curtis — who was no relation to Robert — introduced Scot Young and two of his Ring of Death pals to Russian contacts in the early 2000s.
He was killed when his brand new £1.5million helicopter crashed a mile from Bournemouth airport in 2004.
A week before the fatal crash Curtis is said to have told a friend: “If anything happens to me in the next few weeks, it will not be an accident.”
Stephen Curtis was named in US intelligence files as the possible victim of a Russian hit.
Stephen Moss
Another lawyer who may have become a target after helping Russian oligarchs funnel money into Britain, according to the Buzzfeed report.
Stephen Moss died of an apparent heart attack aged 46 in 2003.
He was also named in the US intelligence files.
Security sources have said Russian scientists can produce untraceable toxins that trigger cardiac arrest.
Badri Patarkatsishvili
The Georgian businessman was Berezovsky’s business partner and an associate of Litvinenko.
He was 52 when he dropped dead of an apparent heart attack at his home in Leatherhead, Surrey, in 2008.
Cops tested the property for radioactive materials, but came up empty handed.
An inquiry found FSB agent Andrei Lugovoi had met Patarkatsishvili in the days before the 2006 polonium attack on Litvinenko.
Lugovoi was named as prime suspect in the poisoning.
Patarkatsishvili told police their meeting was to discuss outdoor advertising in Moscow.
But after he died, his friends and family suspected another poisoning ordered by Putin.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Workman
On January 2004 Robert Workman was shot dead when he opened his door of his home in Furneux Pelham
The murder was a mystery, although the Mail on Sunday reported police made made a connection.
It was theorised that Mr Workman shared a surname with the extradition judge who had refused to send a Putin’s critici, Boris Berezovsky back to Moscow.
The gunman later proved to be a local man who described himself to a cellmate as a “modern day hitman”, although he has never revealed who paid him to carry out the killing.
Sergei Skripal
In March 2018 double agent Colonel Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, are critically ill after being “exposed to an unknown substance” in Salisbury, Wilts.
The former Soviet military intelligence officer Skripal, who was living in the UK after a spy swap, and his daughter Yulia were fighting for their lives after being poisoned by a deadly Russian nerve agent, Novichok, which had been smeared on the door handle of his home in Salisbury.
They have since recovered.
