Russian millionaire, ex-Putin adviser found dead in D.C. hotel

Yamiche Alcindor | USA TODAY

A former adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin found dead in a Washington hotel was being remembered Saturday as one of the most influential and controversial figures in Russian media.

Mikhail Lesin, the former head of media affairs for the Russian government, was found dead Thursday. A Russian Embassy official who declined to identify himself on Saturday confirmed the 57-year-old prominent Russian millionaire’s death and referred additional questions to local police.

Lesin, who's been accused of curtailing the country's press freedoms, had been staying at Hotel Dupont when he was found Thursday, ABC News reports. It's unclear why Lesin would have been in the U.S. His relatives say he suffered from a disease and died because of a heart attack.

Washington's Metropolitan Police Department said the incident was under investigation and that the identity of the victim could not yet be confirmed, Lt. Sean Conboy, a spokesman for the department's public information office, said Saturday.

Police first got the call about the death Thursday morning at about 11:34 a.m. ET, Officer Sean Hickman, another spokesman, said Friday night.

Since Lesin's death, focus has turned to the role he played in the media. As Putin expressed his condolences over the former press minister's passing, the president said he "appreciates the enormous contribution made by Mikhail Lesin to the formation of the contemporary Russian media," Sputnik News reports.

"In the West, Lesin is most widely known for his role in conceiving Russia Today (now RT), a state-run English-language television network which offers an alternative, non-Western view of global events," Putin's press office said in a statement. "Since its launch in 2005, RT has expanded across continents, broadcasting in multiple languages, and successfully presenting the Russian point of view on world events, something even its harshest critics have admitted. Lesin's role in RT's creation is arguably his greatest accomplishment."

Inside Russia, Lesin was known as one of the leading figures of contemporary Russia's media market, serving as press minister (from 1999-2004) and as the head of Gazprom Media Holding (October 2013-January 2015), a group which owns several major Russian television and radio stations, movie studios, as well as online and print publications, Sputnik News reports.

RIA Novosti, a state news agency Lesin worked for in the early 1990s, remembered him as "a talented manager and a powerful official, who would suddenly disappear from the media space, and just as suddenly return, giving impetus to the development of the industry with new ideas," Sputnik News reported.

However, in a recent interview, the former editor of RIA Novosti, Svetlana Mironyuk, claimed Lesin was one of two people behind her sacking in 2013, according to AFP Mironyuk told the Russian edition of Forbes she was let go after she became a student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, with Kremlin officials telling her a media executive of her stature should not study in the United States.

BBC News reported Lesin was also accused of trying to force a radio station in which he was a shareholder to cut an interview with Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny. Mississippi senator Roger Wicker wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, saying Lesin "led the Kremlin's effort to censor Russia's independent television outlets."

Last year, Wicker also called for an investigation into Lesin, saying his fortune "raises serious questions," BBC News reported. Wicker said Lesin bought property worth $28 million in Los Angeles for his family after finishing work as a civil servant. The senator asked how a former civil servant would have been able to buy and maintain expensive property, and expressed concern their purchase may have involved people and groups on a U.S. sanctions list.

Meanwhile, last year Lesin told Forbes that he thought it was okay that most television channels in Russia were state-controlled, according to AFP.

"I am a state man," he said.

Contributing: Kevin Johnson, Mike James and Jessica Estepa