Dan Rapoport

Dan Rapoport (Russian: Даниил Рапопорт; c. 1970 – 14 August 2022) was a Latvian-born American investor, financial executive, and outspoken Putin critic. His death in a fall from his apartment building is under investigation by the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.

Early life

Rapoport was born in Riga, Latvia to a Jewish family when the country was the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR.

In 1980, his family emigrated to the United States after receiving political asylum and settled in Houston, Texas.

Education

Rapoport graduated from the University of Houston in 1991, and in 2015 he earned an MBA degree from Middlesex University in London.

Employment

After graduating from the University of Houston, Rapoport returned to Russia employed by Phibro Energy. He worked as a financial analyst for the first Russian American joint venture for oil production, White Nights Joint Enterprises, which was based in Raduzhny, Siberia. After leaving Phibro, Rapoport remained in Russia, working in corporate finance, brokerage and investment banking. He held senior positions with several Russian financial institutions and completed various cross border transactions representing Russian companies and various international institutional investors.

In 1995, Rapoport joined the CentreInvest Group and in 1999 was appointed Managing Director of CentreInvest Securities, in New York. From 2003, he served as the Executive Director and head of the brokerage business in Moscow for CentreInvest Securities, a brokerage specializing in mid cap equities.

Legal issues

In 2008, while based in Moscow, Rapoport was charged by the SEC with an alleged violation of Section 15(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The SEC claimed that the alleged infraction occurred while he was Managing Director of CentreInvest Securities (Moscow) and indirectly oversaw the activities of CentreInvest Inc. in New York. Unable to serve Rapoport with due notice at his Moscow location, the SEC in 2009 entered a default order judgment. Once aware of the default judgment, Rapoport responded by filing a motion under Exchange Rule 155 (b) to vacate the default judgment. After several court decisions, in 2012, the DC District Court, Judge David Sentelle presiding, unanimously granted Rapoport's petition to vacate, quoting the SEC's failure to consistently apply its own rule.

Move to the United States and Ukraine

In June 2012, Rapoport returned to the US. It was reported that he left Russia in large part due to his support for Russia's democratic opposition, particularly his support for Alexei Navalny, an outspoken yet tolerated campaigner against Russian corporate and government corruption and the most vocal critic of Putin's regime.

In that same year, he founded Rapoport Capital.

In 2016, Rapoport and his first wife, Irina, divorced. He relocated to Kyiv, Ukraine with his second wife, Alyona. The couple remained there until Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

In a divorce settlement finalized in October 2016, Irina Rapoport became the sole owner of the Washington DC property she and Dan had owned together -- a mansion on Tracy Place in the Kalorama district of Washington, DC. On 4 January 2017, Irina sold the Kalorama property to Tracy DC Real Estate, a corporation formed on 15 December 2016  and controlled by Chilean billionaire and mining magnate Andronico Luksic Craig. The sale of the Kalorama mansion made headlines after it was revealed that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump would be Luksic's new tenants.

Death

On the evening of 14 August 2022, Rapoport was found on the street in Washington D.C. outside his luxury apartment building in West End, from which he had fallen to his death. 

According to the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia there is no suspicion of foul-play and it is initially thought to be a suicide; the police are waiting on a medical examiner's report that could take up to 90 days. "I think the circumstances of his death are extremely suspicious," says Bill Browder. "Whenever someone who is in a negative view of the Putin regime dies suspiciously, one should rule out foul play, not rule it in." David Satter said about the case "Nothing adds up ... everything we do know is very, very strange." Rapoport's wife denied it could have been a suicide. 

Ilya Ponomarev said Rapoport seemed depressed to him, but didn't seem suicidal. A friend in Washington, Yuri Somov, said he thinks the suicide story is plausible. According to Somov, Rapoport told him that it had "been a very difficult three months", which Somov observed, "From him, particularly, that's saying a lot. More than notable, it was extraordinary."