Vassily Aleksanyan Dec 15 1972 – Oct 3rd 2011

When the USSR disintegrated in 1993 the Russians needed money fast, so they flogged off a Siberian state oil company called Yukos.    But no-one knew what it was worth – that was one reason the USSR disintegrated – and times were hard, so smart guys with access to credit made killings.   Soon a fellow called Mikhail Khordokovsky owned most of the shares.  Since Yukos was drilling about 2% of the world’s oil he becamevery rich.  But getting there had been messy.  A couple of Yukos executives had been accused of killing the local mayor.   One got convicted of murdering someone else.  Khordokovsky needed a good lawyer and he found Vassily Aleksanyan.

Soon Harvard graduate Aleksanyan was busy.  According to his friends, disentangling Yukos’s murky past and transforming it into a transparent modern company.  According to his enemies, laundering Khordokovsky’s ill-gotten gains.  Whatever, he did well, until he somehow got infected with HIV, and Khordokovsky fell out with President Putin.  The company was sent a multibillion dollar unpaid tax bill, Khordokovsky was imprisoned, and the rest of the Yukos board quickly went into exile.   For reasons unknown Aleksanyan stuck around until in 2006, he also was arrested.  Allegedly the authorities withheld medical treatment in an attempt to make him spill the beans.  As his health declined he became an international cause celebre with human rights activists, who eventually persuaded the Russians to release him on compassionate grounds.  Too late.  On Oct 3^rd he died.

You’re wondering about his sex life.  Me too, but the internet is silent on the topic.  You’ll have to draw your own conclusions.

An honest lawyer in bed with bad guys
Some found it paradoxical
But good looking and dead of AIDS
Was the bed not metaphorical?

Soon to appear on AO deadpool.  Jim Thornton