MOSCOW, March 17. /TASS/. Moscow will keep seeking comprehensive information from the United States on the death in Washington in November 2015 of former Russian Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday.
"We keep seeking exhaustive information on the circumstances of Mikhail Lesin’s death," Zakharova said.
"The letter by the Russian Federation’s prosecutor general addressed to the US attorney general with a request to provide investigation data was recently handed to the United States through our embassy in Washington," she said.
"The Russian embassy in Washington is in contact with the Department of State, local bodies and police. They say the investigation is not over," Zakharova said.
"Several versions of what happened are considered, the results of all expert examinations are expected, on the basis of which some conclusions will possibly be made," she said. "The information of the American side that all investigation data have been handed to Russia is untrue."
"We are in constant contact with the Americans and request all information, because sometimes it happens that our American colleagues do not know at all what their other American colleagues do," Zakharova said. "We would like information to be consolidated and would like assessments not to differ."
Touching upon the issue of cancelation of visa to Lesin a month after his death, the diplomat said the U.S. authorities have confirmed information on the standard immigration procedure regarding foreign nationals who died during their stay on U.S. territory. "So there’s no sensation," she said.
Lesin died on November 5, 2016 at the Dupont Circle in the center of the US capital at the age of 57.
The police found nothing suspicious at the scene then. The former minister’s friends in Moscow said that he was ill in recent years, underwent several operations, and, according to preliminary data, the cause of his death was a heart attack.
In early March the police and medical examiner office of Washington DC said that the death of Mikhail Lesin in the US capital last November was caused by blunt force trauma to the head.
The Washington authorities continue probing into his death, but say they see no grounds to state it was death through violence.
Lesin held the post of Russia’s Minister for the Press, TV and Radio Broadcasting and Mass Communications between July 1999 and February 2004. In 2013-2014 he was the CEO and Chairman of the Board of Gazprom-Media Holding.