WASHINGTON — An American stockbroker who made a fortune within the Russian market within the Nineteen Nineties and 2000s and later co-founded a complicated Moscow nightclub earlier than leaving the nation died of blunt drive accidents suffered on account of a fall from a Washington, D.C. constructing.
The findings, launched on November 16 by the Workplace of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), affirm that Dan Rapoport died on August 14 after falling from a top, however don’t conclusively clarify the circumstances main as much as his loss of life.
Washington police informed RFE/RL that an investigation into his loss of life had ended and declined additional remark. Earlier this yr, a police spokeswoman informed RFE/RL that foul play was not suspected, however that closing conclusions have been pending the post-mortem.
Washington metropolitan police discovered Rapoport’s physique on August 14 on the sidewalk exterior 2400 M Avenue, a nine-story house constructing within the northwest a part of the town.
The medical expert’s report stated Rapoport, 52, died of “a number of blunt drive accidents because of fall from top” and described the loss of life as “sudden/unexplained.” The report additionally stated the style of his loss of life was “undetermined.”
The OCME stated no different info could be instantly launched.
A preliminary police report stated officers responded to a report of a “jumper” on the night of August 14, and the person, later recognized as Rapoport, was taken to a close-by hospital, the place he was declared useless.
The house constructing has an open rooftop with a pool, working monitor, and seating space for residents.
The police report stated officers discovered $2,620 in money on Rapoport once they found his physique on the sidewalk, together with headphones, a cracked mobile phone, a Florida driver’s license, and different gadgets.
He was sporting flip-flops, maybe indicating he had been on the pool on the roof previous to falling.
Brianna Burch, a police spokesperson, informed RFE/RL in August that there didn’t seem like anybody with Rapoport on the time and there have been no listed witnesses. In follow-up correspondences with RFE/RL via early November, the police continued to say they didn’t suspect foul play.
Rapoport had not too long ago moved again to Washington after spending a number of years working in finance in Ukraine.
Whereas some pals stated they didn’t consider he would have dedicated suicide, others stated he had appeared depressed.
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A local of Latvia and a fluent Russian speaker, Rapoport emigrated along with his household to the USA in 1980. After graduating from a U.S. college, he moved to Russia within the early Nineteen Nineties as a wave of privatizations swept throughout the nation.
The sale of former state-owned corporations created a booming inventory market, minting a brand new era of millionaires, Russian and international.
Rapoport was revered inside Russian monetary circles, the place he labored for greater than a decade at a neighborhood brokerage known as CenterInvest, making his approach as much as managing associate. He claimed his shoppers included among the nation’s wealthiest tycoons.
In 2007, he opened a swanky nightclub in downtown Moscow known as Soho Rooms, which turned the go-to location for Moscow’s elite.
In 2012, he left Russia and returned to the USA, saying the inventory brokerage business that had made him a fortune “had died” as fee charges shrunk with enhancements in expertise.
However in a media interview previous to his departure, he additionally criticized the path Russia had taken and expressed help for Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny, who was jailed final yr.
“Our flight to Washington is in 12 hours. It is unhappy to depart Russia, however for considerate folks, residing right here has turn out to be insufferable and disgusting,” Rapoport wrote on his Fb web page on June 13, 2012.
He moved to Washington, the place he stated his dad and mom lived, and arrange an organization known as Rapoport Capital to advise and help expertise start-ups in addition to enterprise capital funds on fundraising choices.
In 2016, 4 years after leaving Russia, Rapaport arrange an workplace in Kyiv and opened a non-public fairness fund. In social media posts, he was a vocal supporter of Ukraine, and an outspoken critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Rapoport gained a level of publicity in January 2017, after The New York Occasions reported that the daughter and son-in-law of the then newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump had bought a mansion owned by him and his first spouse. The mansion was positioned in an unique neighborhood of the U.S. capital.
Later that very same month, Raporport’s co-founder of the Soho Rooms nightclub, Sergei Tkachenko, was discovered useless exterior a Moscow constructing. Investigators stated Tkachenko’s physique was discovered on a constructing awning “with accidents typical of a fall from an amazing top.”
In 2018, the open-source investigative group Bellingcat reported that Rapoport had been the creator of a fictional persona named David Jewberg, who was steadily quoted in Ukrainian media as a senior Pentagon analyst.
