Russian female judge is found dead after falling from a high window in Moscow

Saturday, June 8, 2024 - A Russian female judge has been found dead after falling from a high window in Moscow.

Natalia Larina, 50, had a reputation for handing down punishments to Moscow authorities and was more known for handling prominent criminal cases.

An investigation has been launched into the cause of her death close to her apartment block on 1st Mashinostroeniya Street in the Russian capital.

Larina had a young daughter, according to reports.

Investigators are understood to be checking one theory in local reports which suggested she had lost a large sum of money to 'telephone scammers'.

Shortly before her death, she allegedly reported to police that fraudsters convinced her that her bank account was under threat from people seeking to send her funds to help the armed forces of Ukraine.

She transferred her cash - said to be one million rubles (around £8,800) to another account, and in doing so became a victim of a scam.

Sources say she became upset that she was 'deceived', and left a note.

However, there is no official confirmation so far of this version of events.

Larina was a criminal judge for more than 15 years, and her death came months after she suddenly quit the Tagansky Court.

She had acted as a judge in various high-profile fraud cases.

In 2015, she remanded in custody artist Pyotr Pavlensky who set fire to a door of the FSB building in Lubyanka Square in a political protest.

Earlier she gave a judgement against the hardline National Bolsheviks. And in 2011, Larina sentenced Ministry of Transport official Vladimir Makarov, accused of sexually abusing his daughter.

Larina is not the only high-ranking Russian official whose death from falling out of a window has aroused suspicion since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

In December 2023, Vladimir Egorov, 46 - the Tobolsk City Duma - dropped to his death from a third-floor window in the city.

He was a member of Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party, and his corpse was found in the yard of his house.

In June of that same year, the glamorous vice-president of a Russian bank reportedly plunged to her death after falling from the window of her Moscow apartment.

Kristina Baikova, 28, allegedly fell from her 11th-floor apartment on Khodynsky Boulevard in the early hours. She died instantly at the scene.

In February, a top Russian defence official was found dead after plunging 160ft from a tower block window. Marina Yankina, 58, was discovered by a passerby at the entrance of a house on Zamshina Street in St Petersburg.

She is believed to have fallen from the 16th floor to her death.