Zerohedge appears to be more than a little suspicious:
Three months ago, the CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, dared utter the phrase heard around the petrodollar world, “There is no reason to pay for oil in dollars,” as we noted here. Today, RT reports the dreadful news that he was killed in a business jet crash at Vnukovo Airport in Moscow after the aircraft hit a snow-plough on take-off. The airport issued a statement confirming “a criminal investigation has been opened into the violation of safety regulations,” adding that along with 3 crewmembers on the plane, the snow-plough driver was also killed.
Total, in case you didn’t know, is “the world’s 13th biggest oil producer and Europe’s 2nd largest. It’s a little strange, however, that this accident would have occurred in Russia, as one would presume that de Margerie was there as some sort of business partner or even ally of Putin. There is, after all, a long history of Russo-French alliances contra Germany, England, and now, perhaps, the USA.
Did the defenders of the global dollar target him? Or did Putin make him an offer that he couldn’t refuse, which he neverthless refused? Who knows? We’ll probably never know. Anyhow, it’s not for we minnows to overly concern ourselves with the struggles of the mighty sharks and whales and squids and krakens in the depths. They will sort themselves out in the end.
However, this was not the only fatal accident of late:
American journalist Serena Shim has been killed in a car crash in Turkey just days after Turkish intelligence services had accused her of spying. She was reporting on the siege involving ISIS in Kobani at Syria’s border. Shim was a US citizen though she worked for Iran’s state-owned Press TV as correspondent in Turkey and other regions. She was returning her hotel in the city of Suruç when her car crashed into a ‘heavy vehicle’. The Daily Mail reports the car collided with a cement truck.
I suppose the silver lining is that even if these are targeted hits, those responsible for them still feel the need to disguise their actions. Although I have to say that banker’s “nailgun suicide” still stretches credulity. Frankly, at this point, I’m surprised that any politician is still willing to travel by plane:
The campaign plane of Eduardo Campos, a Brazilian presidential candidate and scion of a resurgent political dynasty, crashed on Wednesday in the port city of Santos, killing him and six others and shaking up an increasingly competitive race in Latin America’s largest democracy.