Latvian-American Dan Rapoport, 52, was found in front of the 2400 M luxury apartment building in Georgetown just before 6pm on Sunday by officers responding to reports of a jumper, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) said in a statement to the Independent. Rapoport was treated at the scene by ambulance personnel and taken to hospital where he was later pronounced dead. MPD spokeswoman Brianna Burch said Mr. Rapoport’s death remains under active investigation. “We don’t suspect foul play at this time,” he said. A police report provided to The Independent newspaper indicated that Rapoport had a broken cell phone, glasses, a Florida driver’s license and $2,620 in cash when he died. The news of his death was revealed in a post on Telegram by the former editor of the Russian magazine Tatler. Yuniya Pugacheva claimed Mr Rapoport’s dog was found in a park near his home in Washington DC with a suicide note and money. However, his widow Alena Rapoport reportedly denied that her husband committed suicide. He told Russia’s RBC news agency that an investigation into his death was underway and that “there were no notes, no suicide.” “To our great regret, the husband and father of our daughter is no longer with us,” she reportedly told RBC. Putin critic Dan Rapoport has died in Washington (Facebook) Ms Rapoport, a Ukrainian virologist, also denied other claims by Ms Pugatsova that she had separated from her husband and was in London with “a group of young girls”. After fleeing Russia in 2012 due to his support for pro-democracy activist Alexei Navalny, Mr. Rapoport purchased a property in the Kalorama area of Washington, DC. Dan Rapoport and his wife Alena, who denied reports that she killed herself (Facebook) He later sold the property to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump when they moved to the US capital to take up senior adviser positions in Donald Trump’s administration in January 2017. Mr Rapoport moved to Kyiv, Ukraine after selling the property, where he met his wife Alena. “Dan evacuated us from Kyiv and went back there himself to help my country,” Alena Rapoport was quoted as saying by RBC. “Then we were supposed to meet in the US.” Bill Browder, a prominent critic of Putin, tweeted that his death was “very upsetting news”. “He was one of the first Moscow-based financiers I knew who publicly supported Alexei Navalny. RIP Dan.” Very chilling news. Exiled Putin critic Dan Rapoport has died by suicide in Washington at the age of 52. He was one of the first financiers I knew in Moscow and publicly supported Alexei Navalny. RIP Dan https://t.co/eIsaC8T6d4 — Bill Browder (@Billbrowder) August 16, 2022 Mr. Rapoport was born in Latvia when it was still part of the Soviet Union, and in 1980 his family was granted political asylum in the United States. He studied at the University of Houston before moving to Russia in the 1990s to work in finance and the natural gas industry. He co-owned a popular Moscow nightclub The Soho Rooms for a period. Mr Rapoport left Russia in 2012, reportedly because of his support for Navalny, who is serving a nine-year prison sentence after returning home in January 2021.
