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Russia’s inquiry over ex-minister’s death in US passed to Justice Department

Russian diplomats don’t comment on the US delaying official information

WASHINGTON, March 16. /TASS/. A request of the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office to provide official information on the death of Russia’s former press minister Mikhail Lesin has been submitted to the US Department of Justice, the Russian Embassy to the US confirmed on Tuesday.

Russia expects to receive the requested information within the framework of procedures envisaged in the 1999 bilateral agreement on legal assistance in criminal cases.

Russian diplomats don’t comment on the US delaying official information. "We are set to continue joint work," embassy sources 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.