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{{Short description|Russian businessman (1946–2013)}} | |||
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{{for|pianist|Boris Berezovsky (pianist)}} | ||
{{family name hatnote|Abramovich|Berezovsky|lang=Eastern Slavic}} | |||
'''Boris Abramovich Berezovsky''' ({{lang-ru|Бори́с Абра́мович Березо́вский}}) (born ], ]), was an ], media tycoon and politician during the presidency of ]. After the ascent of ] to the Russian presidency, he went into opposition and later fled to the ] where he was granted ]. In the UK, he became associated with ], ] and ] in what has become known as ] of Russian exiles. He is a founder of ]. | |||
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2024}} | |||
{{Infobox person | |||
| name = Boris Berezovsky | |||
| image = Boris Berezovsky.jpg | |||
| caption = | |||
| native_name = {{nobold|Борис Березовский}} | |||
| birth_date = {{Birth date|df=yes|1946|1|23}} | |||
| birth_place = ], ], Soviet Union | |||
| death_date = {{death date and age|2013|03|23|1946|1|23|df=y}} | |||
| death_place = ], Berkshire, England | |||
| resting_place = ], ], Surrey, England | |||
| resting_place_coordinates = {{coord|51.299574|-0.625846|region:GB-SRY_type:landmark|display= inline|name=grave of B. Berezovsky}} | |||
| native_name_lang = ru | |||
| other_names = Platon Elenin | |||
| citizenship = {{hlist|Russia|United Kingdom}} | |||
| occupation = {{hlist|Businessman|engineer|mathematician|government official}} | |||
| years_active = | |||
| boards = | |||
| spouse = {{plainlist| | |||
* {{marriage|Nina Korotkova|1970|1991|end= divorced}}<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160528051146/http://www.litmir.net/br/?b=87058&p=166 |date=28 May 2016}}, Aleksandr Khinshtein</ref> | |||
* {{marriage|Galina Besharova|1991|2010|end=divorced}}<ref>{{cite news |last=Bowcott |first=Owen |date=22 July 2011 |title=Boris Berezovsky pays out £100m in UK's biggest divorce settlement |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/22/boris-berezovsky-divorce-record-payout |newspaper=] |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref>}} | |||
| partner = Yelena Gorbunova ({{abbr|esp.|espoused}} 1996; {{abbr|sep.|separated}} 2012)<ref>{{cite news|last= Shirbon|first= Estelle|title=Berezovsky battles in court with ex-partner over assets|url= https://news.yahoo.com/berezovsky-battles-court-ex-partner-over-assets-200442204.html|archive-url= https://archive.today/20130412060740/http://news.yahoo.com/berezovsky-battles-court-ex-partner-over-assets-200442204.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=12 April 2013|access-date=24 March 2013|newspaper=Reuters/Yahoo News |date= 24 January 2013}}</ref> | |||
| children = | |||
| relatives = | |||
}} | |||
'''Boris Abramovich Berezovsky''' ({{langx|ru|link=no|Борис Абрамович Березовский}}; 23 January 1946 – 23 March 2013),<ref>{{cite book |last= Hoffman |first= David E. |author-link= David E. Hoffman |date= 13 September 2011 |title= The Oligarchs: Wealth and power in the new Russia |url= http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/paperback/the-oligarchs/9781610390705 |location=New York |publisher= ] |page=130 |isbn=9781610390705 |access-date=9 January 2012 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150104034214/http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/book/paperback/the-oligarchs/9781610390705 |archive-date=4 January 2015 |url-status=dead |df=dmy-all }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last= Barrett |first=David |date=23 March 2013 |title=Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky found dead in his bath |url= https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9950107/Russian-oligarch-Boris-Berezovsky-found-dead-in-his-bath.html |newspaper=] |location=London |access-date=23 March 2013}}</ref> also known as '''Platon Elenin''',<ref name="Pomerantsev">{{cite journal |last=Pomerantsev |first= Peter |date=25 April 2013 |title=Berezovsky's Last Days |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n08/peter-pomerantsev/diary |journal=] |volume=35 |issue=8 |pages=38–39 |access-date=2 January 2015}}</ref> was a Russian ], government official, engineer and mathematician and a member of the ]. He had the federal state civilian service rank of ].<ref>{{cite act|type=Decree|index=430|date=29 April 1997|legislature=]|title=О присвоении квалификационных разрядов федеральным государственным служащим аппарата Совета Безопасности Российской Федерации|language=ru|url=http://pravo.gov.ru/proxy/ips/?searchres=&bpas=cd00000&a3=102000503&a3type=1&a3value=&a6=102000070&a6type=1&a6value=&a15=&a15type=1&a15value=&a7type=1&a7from=&a7to=&a7date=29.04.1997&a8=430&a8type=1&a1=&a0=&a16=&a16type=1&a16value=&a17=&a17type=1&a17value=&a4=&a4type=1&a4value=&a23=&a23type=1&a23value=&textpres=&sort=7&x=39&y=15}}</ref> | |||
Berezovsky made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, when the country implemented ] of state property.<ref name="Plotting">{{cite news |last1=Cobain |first1=Ian |author-link1= Ian Cobain |last2=Taylor |first2=Matthew |last3=Harding |first3=Luke |author-link3=Luke Harding |date= 13 April 2007 |title=I am plotting a new Russian revolution |url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/13/topstories3.russia |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> He profited from gaining control over assets, including the country's main television channel, ]. In 1997, ] estimated Berezovsky's wealth at US$3 billion.<ref> Profile on Globalsecurity.org</ref> Berezovsky helped fund ], the political party that would form ]'s first parliamentary base,<ref>{{cite news |last=Mueller |first=Andrew |author-link=Andrew Mueller |date=3 December 2005 |title=What a carve-up! |url= https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/dec/03/tvandradio.russia |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> and was elected to the ] in the ].<ref>{{cite news|last= McDermott |first=Roger |url=http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=11498&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=213 |title=Duma Seat Winner Berezovsky Sees Possibility Of "Consolidation of Power."|newspaper=Jamestown |publisher= Jamestown.org |access-date= 17 October 2011}}</ref> However, following the ], Berezovsky went into ] and resigned from the Duma.<ref>{{cite news |last=Gentleman |first=Amelia |date= 18 July 2000 |title=Tycoon resigns from duma as relations with Kremlin cool |url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jul/18/russia.ameliagentleman |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref> Berezovsky would remain a vocal critic of Putin for the rest of his life.<ref>{{cite news |last=Elder |first=Miriam |author-link= Miriam Elder |date=11 September 2011 |title=Cameron meeting Putin is a 'historical mistake', says exiled Russian tycoon |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/11/cameron-putin-meeting-boris-berezovsky |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref> | |||
] for Berezovsky have been issued in ] and ] for allegations of ], ] and ]. He is also currently under investigation by the ] Bundesanwaltschaft for money laundering. | |||
In late 2000, after the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General demanded that Berezovsky appear for questioning, he did not return from abroad and moved to the United Kingdom, which granted him ] in 2003.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.kommersant.com/p507811/r_1/The_Prosecutor_Digs_in_the_Dirt/|title= The Prosecutor Digs in the Dirt – Kommersant Moscow|publisher=Kommersant.com|access-date=17 October 2011|url-status= dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120127224508/http://www.kommersant.com/p507811/r_1/The_Prosecutor_Digs_in_the_Dirt/|archive-date=27 January 2012|df=dmy-all}}</ref> After he moved to Britain, the Russian government took over his television assets,<ref name=media/> and he divested from other Russian holdings. In Russia, Berezovsky was later convicted ] of fraud and embezzlement. The first charges had been brought during ]'s government in 1999.<ref name="Parfitt">{{cite news |last=Parfitt |first=Tom |date=30 November 2007 |title=Berezovsky jailed in absentia |url= https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/30/russia.tomparfitt |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date= 26 April 2012}}</ref> Despite an ] ] for Berezovsky's arrest, Russia repeatedly failed to obtain the ] of Berezovsky from Britain; the situation became a major point of diplomatic tension between the two countries.<ref name="Interpol">{{cite web |url= http://www.interpol.int/notice/search/wanted/1999-36430 |title=Berezovskiy, Boris |year=1999 |publisher=] |access-date=3 January 2015 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20140904141655/http://www.interpol.int/notice/search/wanted/1999-36430 |archive-date= 4 September 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.economist.com/node/10553024 |title=Russia and Britain: A love-hate relationship |newspaper=] |date=19 January 2008 |access-date= 17 October 2011}}</ref><ref name="TimesProfile">{{cite news |url= http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article2098099.ece |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080727022742/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article2098099.ece |url-status= dead |archive-date= 27 July 2008 |title=Boris Berezovsky |newspaper= The Times |location=London |access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref> | |||
==Early life and scientific research== | |||
Berezovsky was born in ]. His father was ]ish<ref name="wp001">Communist Party Leader Attacks Jews. '']'', ], ]</ref>. He studied ] and then ], receiving his ] in 1983. He did research on ] and ], publishing 16 books and articles between 1975 and 1989. He became a ] of the ] in 1991, and the chair of a laboratory in its ]. His ] is 4. | |||
In 2012, Berezovsky lost a London ] ] over the ownership of the major oil producer ], against ], in which he sought over £3 billion in damages.<ref name="PA-20120831"/> The court concluded that Berezovsky had never been a co-owner of Sibneft.<ref name="independent-20120831">{{cite news |last=Peck |first=Tom |date=31 August 2012 |title=Berezovsky humbled by verdict that leaves reputation in tatters|url= https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/berezovsky-humbled-by-verdict-that-leaves-reputation-in-tatters-8099260.html |newspaper= ] |location=London |access-date=1 September 2012}}</ref> | |||
==Business career== | |||
Berezovsky started in business in 1989 under '']'' by buying and reselling automobiles from state manufacturer ]. Officially, Berezovsky was called upon as an expert in development of optimized system of management of the enterprise. In 1992, a new middleman company, "LogoVAZ", was created with Berezovsky as its ]. LogoVAZ became an exclusive ] dealer of AutoVAZ, enabling a scheme (named "ReExport") in which cars were sold abroad and then bought back for sale on the internal market. Frequently cars also were not exported at all - all operations on export and import remained only on paper. Each car going through this scheme brought dealers an income of up to USD 1,500.{{Verify source|date=August 2007}} | |||
Berezovsky was found dead in his home, Titness Park, at ], near ] in ], on 23 March 2013.<ref name=Guard23/> A ] examination found that his death was consistent with hanging and that there were no signs of a violent struggle.<ref name="bdc" /> However, the coroner at the inquest into Berezovsky's death later recorded an ].<ref name="Coroner"> | |||
In May 1994, Berezovsky became head of the notorious Automobile All-Russia alliance "АVVА" ("АВВА" in Russian Cyrillic) and became known as the initiator of "the national car" project. | |||
{{cite news | |||
This enterprise turned out to be merely a financial ]. Shares of a nonexistent factory which has never been constructed were sold. On the data published in the Russian mass-media, the loss incurred by investors totalled USD 50 million.{{Verify source|date=August 2007}} | |||
|title= Boris Berezovsky inquest: Coroner records open verdict | |||
|url= https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-26778866 | |||
|work= BBC News |date= 27 March 2014 | |||
|access-date= 3 January 2015 | |||
}} | |||
</ref> | |||
==Early life, scientific research and engineering experience== | |||
He survived several ] attempts,<ref name=finn>{{cite news | first=Mary | last=Jordan | coauthors= Peter Finn | title=Russian Billionaire's Bitter Feud With Putin A Plot Line in Poisoning | date=] ] | publisher = ''The Washington Post'' | url= http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/08/AR2006120800446_2.html | accessdate = 2006-12-09| language = English }}</ref> including one in 1994, when a ] decapitated the ] of his Mercedes 600 SEL. Berezovsky was not injured, although he was in the rear seat of the vehicle. | |||
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born in 1946, in ], to Abram Markovich Berezovsky (1911–1979),<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://toldot.ru/life/cemetery/graves_22961.html|title=Березовский Абрам Маркович, Москва, Востряковское|website=Toldot.com — Иудаизм и евреи}}</ref> a ] ] in construction works,<ref>Vadim Joseph Rossman and the ]. ''Russian Intellectual Antisemitism in the Post-Communist Era'' (2002). ]: pp. 120–1.</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Goldman|first=Marshall I.|title=Putin and the Jewish Oligarchs: Prejudice or Politics?|journal=Revolution, Repression, and Revival: The Soviet Jewish Experience|year=2007|editor1-first=Zvi Y.|editor1-last=Gitelman|editor2-first=Yaacov|editor2-last=Ro'i|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|page=274}}</ref> and his wife, Anna Aleksandrovna Gelman (22 November 1923 – 3 September 2013).<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mt_profile/boris_berezovsky/434236.html |title=''The Moscow Times'' |publisher=Themoscowtimes.com |access-date=23 March 2013}}</ref> He studied ], receiving his doctorate in 1983.<ref name="Telegraph">{{cite news|last=Gardham |first=Duncan |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1557934/Profile-Boris-Berezovsky.html |work=The Daily Telegraph |title=Profile: Boris Berezovsky |date=19 July 2007 |access-date=23 March 2013 |location=London}}</ref> After graduating from the ] in 1968, Berezovsky worked as an engineer from 1969 until 1987, serving as ], research officer and finally the head of a department in the Institute of Control Sciences of the ].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.intelligencesquared.com/people/b/dr-boris-berezovsky|title=Intelligence Squared}}</ref> Berezovsky researched ] and ], publishing 16 books and articles between 1975 and 1989. | |||
==Political |
==Political and business career in Russia== | ||
===Accumulation of wealth=== | |||
During the 1991-1999 presidency of ], Berezovsky was among the businessmen who gained special access to the president. He used his political clout to acquire stakes in state companies including AutoVAZ itself, the state airline ], and several oil properties that he organized into ], paying a mere fraction of the companies' ]s. Berezovsky established a bank to finance his operations and acquired several news media holdings as well. These media holdings provided essential support for ] in 1996. Berezovsky's holdings included the television channels ] and ], along with the newspapers '']'', '']'', '']'' and national-patriotic '']''. | |||
] (] deputy, member of the ] faction) claimed that in 1979 Boris Berezovsky was detained by the ] authorities in ] (]) for profiteering.<ref>{{Cite news |title=Александр Хинштейн: Березовский был агентом КГБ с 1979 года |trans-title=Alexander Khinshtein: Berezovsky was a KGB agent since 1979 |first=Olga |last=Vandysheva |url=https://www.kp.ru/daily/23945.5/71120/ |publisher=] |date=2007-08-06 |accessdate=2017-11-20 |language=ru |archivedate=2017-12-01 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20171201034825/https://www.kp.ru/daily/23945.5/71120/}}</ref> In Khinshtein's opinion, Berezovsky has been a ] officer since 1979.<ref>{{cite book |last=Khinshtein |first=Alexander |author-link=Alexander Khinshtein |title=Березовский и Абрамович: олигархи с большой дороги |trans-title=Berezovsky and Abramovich: oligarchs from the highway |language=ru |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=spc8jmTWbc0C&dq=%D0%B1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9+%D0%BA%D0%B3%D0%B1&pg=PA35 |publisher=ОЛМА Медиа Групп |date=2007-01-01 |isbn=9785986750019}}</ref> | |||
In 1989, Berezovsky took advantage of the opportunities presented by ] to found LogoVAZ with ] and senior managers from Russian automobile manufacturer ]. LogoVAZ developed software for AvtoVAZ, sold Soviet-made cars and serviced foreign cars.<ref name="MT_Profile">{{Cite news|title=Boris Berezovsky Profile|newspaper=] | |||
Berezovsky is a leading proponent of political and economic ] in Russia. He has frequently entered into politics by investing in the liberal media, financing liberal candidates, making political statements, and even seeking office himself. He was briefly executive secretary of the ] (CIS) and later a member of the ]. Berezovsky had strong ties with ] through their Moscow ] connections. According to ], Berezovsky was strongly opposed to the ] but nevertheless supported ]'s ]. On ], ], '']'' reported that ] police discovered Putin had secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to Berezovsky on up to five different occasions in 1999.<ref>{{cite news | first=Giles | last=Tremlett | title=Leader's secret holidays to Spain | date=] ] | publisher ='']'' | url=http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4379.html##5 | accessdate = 2007-04-29| language =English}}</ref> | |||
|url=http://www.themoscowtimes.com/mt_profile/boris_berezovsky/434236.html}}</ref> The dealership profited from ] by taking cars on consignment and paying the producer at a later date when the money lost much of its value.<ref name="Ireland">{{cite book|last1=Ireland|first1=R.D.|last2=Hoskisson|first2=R.E.|last3=Hitt|first3=M.A.|title= Understanding business strategy: concepts and cases, pp. 142–144|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WmdsrKwYYNQC&q=avva+berezovsky&pg=RA1-PA143|publisher=South-Western College Pub|year=2005|isbn=978-0-324-28246-7}}</ref> | |||
One of Berezovsky's early endeavors was All-Russia Automobile Alliance (AVVA), a venture fund he formed in 1993 with ] (Boris Yeltsin's future Chief of Staff) and ] Chairman ].<ref name="Ireland" /> Berezovsky controlled about 30% of the company, which raised nearly US$50 million from small investors through a bonded loan to build a plant producing a "people's car". The project did not collect sufficient funds for the plant and the funds were instead invested into AvtoVAZ production, while the debt to investors was ] for equity.<ref>{{cite web | |||
In the position of the deputy secretary of the ],<ref>, NUPI, 07.11.1997</ref> Berezovsky was also involved in talks with terrorists on freeing hostages as a mediator and allegedly transferred large sums of money in exchange for hostages. | |||
|url=http://www.auto-worldwide.com/manufacturers/avtovaz/ | |||
In 1997, he delivered $2 million of governmental money in cash to ] who was then in charge of reconstruction of Chechnya. Berezovsky said that "we saved at least fifty people, who otherwise would have been killed; most of them were simple soldiers. And believe me, all of this was strictly official, with the full knowledge and consent of the Kremlin."<ref name="dissident"/> However Chechen president ] accused Berezovsky and Russian government of collusion with the hostage-takers.<ref name="dissident"/> | |||
|title=AvtoVAZ | |||
|work=Auto-worldwide.com | |||
|access-date=11 August 2011 | |||
|url-status=dead | |||
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110711205733/http://www.auto-worldwide.com/manufacturers/avtovaz/ | |||
|archive-date=11 July 2011 | |||
}}</ref><ref>{{Cite news|url=http://russiatoday.strana.ru/en/biz/business/lead_com/2222.html |title=AvtoVAZ |publisher=] |access-date=11 August 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110927152103/http://russiatoday.strana.ru/en/biz/business/lead_com/2222.html |archive-date=27 September 2011 }}</ref> By 2000, AVVA held about one-third of AvtoVAZ.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/AVTOVAZ-Joint-Stock-Company-Company-History.html|title=AVTOVAZ Joint Stock Company|publisher=]|access-date=11 August 2011}}</ref> | |||
In 1994, Berezovsky was the target of a car bombing incident, but survived the assassination attempt, in which his driver was killed and he himself was injured.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Specter |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Specter |date=10 June 1994 |title=New Moscow Mob Terror: Car Bombs |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/06/10/world/new-moscow-mob-terror-car-bombs.html |newspaper=] |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> ] led the FSB investigation into the incident and linked the crime to the resistance of the Soviet-era AvtoVaz management to Berezovsky's growing influence in the Russian automobile market.<ref name="Goldfarb">{{cite book |last1=Goldfarb |first1=Alex |author-link=Alexander Goldfarb (microbiologist) |last2=Litvinenko |first2=Marina |title=] |date=12 June 2007 |publisher=] |location=New York |isbn=9781416551652}}</ref> | |||
According to ], Berezovsky secured Putin's appointment to Prime Minister position as a result of a secret agreement, where Putin promised his loyalty to Yeltsin and his closest circle including Berezovsky himself.<ref name="dissident"/> However Putin later broke the agreement, when he was infuriated by the critical coverage of ] by ] owned by Berezovsky. Putin forced Berezovsky to sell his ORT shares, partly in exchange for promising to free ], a former manager of ] company and close associate of Berezovsky, according to Goldfarb.<ref name="dissident"/> | |||
Berezovsky's involvement in the Russian media began in December 1994, when he gained control over ORT Television (see ]) to replace the failing ]. He appointed the popular anchorman and producer ] as CEO of ORT. Three months later Listyev was assassinated amid a fierce struggle for control of advertising sales.<ref>{{Cite news |title= World News Briefs; Russian TV Chief Resigns in Protest |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/17/world/world-news-briefs-russian-tv-chief-resigns-in-protest.html |newspaper=The New York Times |date=17 March 1995 |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Stanley |first=Alessandra |date=3 March 1995 |title=Celebrity's Killing Stirs Talk of Intrigue in Russia |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/03/world/celebrity-s-killing-stirs-talk-of-intrigue-in-russia.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> Berezovsky was questioned in the police investigation, among many others, but the killers were never found.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Spinella |first=Peter |date=1 March 2015 |title=20 Years After Murder of Russian TV Boss Listyev, 'Case Still Not Closed' |url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2015/03/01/20-years-after-murder-of-russian-tv-boss-listyev-case-still-not-closed-a44333 |access-date=3 Jun 2023 |website=The Moscow Times}}</ref> | |||
] admitted that he had a conversation with ] of the ] ] ] in ], six months before the beginning of ]<ref name="Dissident">], with Marina Litvinenko '']'', The Free Press, 2007, ISBN 1-416-55165-4, page 216. </ref>. Udugov proposed to start the Dagestan war to provoke the Russian response, topple the Chechen president ] and establish new Islamic republic of Basayev-Udugov that would be friendly to Russia. Berezovsky asserted that he refused the offer, but "] and ] conspired with ] and ] to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov..., but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the ]. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war" <ref name="Dissident"/>. A transcript of the phone conversation between Berezovsky and Udugov was leaked to one of Moscow tabloids on September 10 ]. <ref> "Death of a Dissident", page 189.</ref> | |||
Under Berezovsky's stewardship, ORT became a major asset of the reformist camp as they prepared to face Communists and nationalists in the upcoming ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Stanley |first=Alessandra |date=26 July 1995 |title=Russian State TV Channel Says Let's Make a Deal |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/26/world/russian-state-tv-channel-says-let-s-make-a-deal.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> | |||
From 1995 to 1997, through the controversial ] ] auctions,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Treisman|author1-link=Daniel Treisman |first=Daniel |title='Loans for Shares' Revisited |journal=NBER Working Paper No. 15819 |date=March 2010 |doi=10.3386/w15819 |doi-access=free }}</ref><ref name="marshall">{{cite book|last=Goldman|first=Marshall I.|title=Petrostate: Putin, Power and the New Russia|publisher=]|year=2008|page=|isbn=978-0-19-534073-0|url=https://archive.org/details/petrostateputinp00gold/page/65}}</ref> Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili assisted ] in acquiring control of ], the sixth-largest Russian oil company, which constituted the bulk of his wealth.<ref>{{Citation |url=http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/OAO-Siberian-Oil-Company-Sibneft-Company-History.html|title=OAO Siberian Oil Company (Sibneft)|publisher=]|access-date=11 August 2011}}</ref><ref name="bloomberg-20120831"/> In an article in '']'' in 2000, Berezovsky revealed that financier ] declined an invitation to participate in the acquisition.<ref> '']'', 16 October 2000</ref> | |||
In 1995, he played a key role in a management reshuffle at ] and participated in its corporatization,<ref name=MT_Profile/> with his close associate ] becoming Aeroflot's CFO. In January 1998, it was announced that ] would merge with ]'s ] to create the third-largest oil company in the world.<ref> '']'' 20 January 1998</ref> The merger was abandoned five months later amid falling oil prices.<ref> '']'' 26 May 1998</ref> | |||
===Role in Yeltsin's reelection in 1996=== | |||
{{see also|Boris Yeltsin presidential campaign, 1996}} | |||
Berezovsky entered the Kremlin's inner circle in 1993 through arranging for the publication of Yeltsin's memoirs and befriended ], the President's ghost-writer.<ref>]. {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090808052239/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4332.html |date= 8 August 2009 }} ] 5 June 2000</ref><ref name="Volodarsky">{{cite book|last1=Volodarsky|first1=Boris|title=The KGB's Poison Factory: From Lenin to Litvinenko|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X4vtgWCjAuwC&q=berezovsky+valik+tatiana&pg=PA234|publisher=Zenith Press|year=2010|isbn=978-0-7603-3753-0}}{{Dead link|date=October 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref name="Stanley">{{cite news |last=Stanley |first=Alessandra |author-link=Alessandra Stanley |date=14 June 1997 |title=A Russian's Rise From Car Dealer to Tycoon |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/14/world/a-russian-s-rise-from-car-dealer-to-tycoon.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> | |||
In January 1996, at the ] at ], Berezovsky liaised with fellow oligarchs to form an alliance – which later became known as the "Davos Pact"<ref>{{cite news |last=Cowell |first=Alan |author-link=Alan Cowell |date=28 January 2007 |title=Russians work on their image at Davos |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/business/worldbusiness/28iht-ddavos.4378800.html |newspaper=] |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> – to bankroll Boris Yeltsin's campaign in the upcoming ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Soros |first=George |author-link=George Soros |date=17 April 2000 |title=The means to an end |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/apr/17/russia.features11 |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> On his return to Moscow, Berezovsky met and befriended ], Yeltsin's daughter,<ref name="Stanley"/> According to a later profile by '']'', "Berezovsky masterminded the 1996 re-election of Boris Yeltsin... He and his billionaire friends coughed up £140 million for Yeltsin's campaign".<ref>{{cite news |last=Harding |first=Luke |date=2 July 2007 |title=The richer they come ... |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/jul/02/russia.lukeharding1 |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> | |||
In the summer of 1996, Berezovsky had emerged as a key advisor to Yeltsin, allied with ], opposing a group of hardliners led by General ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Stanley |first=Alessandra |date=28 June 1996 |title=In the Kremlin, Chickens Still Come Home to Roost |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/28/world/in-the-kremlin-chickens-still-come-home-to-roost.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> One night in June, in the drawing room of Club Logovaz, Berezovsky, Chubais and others plotted the ouster of Korzhakov and other hardliners.<ref name="Stanley"/> On 20 June 1996, Yeltsin fired Korzhakov and two other hawks, leaving the reformers' team in full control of the Kremlin.<ref> '']'' 21 June 1996</ref> Firing them was controversial though, as Korzhakov a few days before caught two of Yeltsin's campaign organizers carrying US$500,000 cash without invoices out of the presidential administration building.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://articles.philly.com/1996-06-21/news/25629769_1_prime-minister-oleg-soskovets-korzhakov-and-barsukov-kremlin/2|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120915122140/http://articles.philly.com/1996-06-21/news/25629769_1_prime-minister-oleg-soskovets-korzhakov-and-barsukov-kremlin/2|url-status=dead|archive-date=15 September 2012|title=Yeltsin Purges 3 Kremlin Hard-liners The Power Struggle Threatened To Disrupt The July 3 Election. Among Those Sacked Was His Closest Adviser. – Page 2|publisher=Articles|date=21 June 1996|access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref> | |||
On 16 June 1996, Yeltsin came first in the first round of elections after forging a tactical alliance with Gen. ], who finished third. On 3 July, in the runoff vote, he beat the Communist ]. His victory was due largely to the support of the TV networks controlled by Gusinsky and Berezovsky (NTV and ORT) and the money from the business elite.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Allison|first1=Graham T.|last2=Lantz|first2=Matthew|title=Assessing Russia's Democratic Presidential Election|url= http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/2362/assessing_russias_democratic_presidential_election.html|publisher=John F. Kennedy School of Government. Harvard University|year=1996}}</ref> '']'' called Berezovsky the "public spokesman and chief lobbyist for this new elite, which moved from the shadows to respectability in a few short years".<ref name="Stanley"/> | |||
===Role in Chechen conflict=== | |||
On 17 October 1996, Yeltsin dismissed General ] from the position of National Security Advisor amid allegations that he was plotting a coup and secretly mustering a private army.<ref> ] ''Monitor''. Vol. 2, Issue 194, 17 October 1996</ref> Lebed promptly accused Berezovsky and Gusinsky of engineering his ouster, and formed a coalition with the disgraced General ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Stanley |first=Alessandra |date=18 October 1996 |title=A General on His Own |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/18/world/a-general-on-his-own.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> The dismissal of Lebed, the architect of the ], left Yeltsin's Chechen policy in limbo. On 30 October 1996, in a political bombshell, Yeltsin named ] as his new National Security Advisor and appointed Berezovsky Deputy Secretary in charge of Chechnya<ref>{{cite news |last=Stanley |first=Alessandra |date=31 October 1996 |title=Big Business And Kremlin: Togetherness Has Its Pitfalls |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/31/world/big-business-and-kremlin-togetherness-has-its-pitfalls.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> with a mandate to oversee the implementation of the ]: that is, the withdrawal of Russian forces, the negotiation of a peace treaty, and the preparation of a general election. On 19 December 1996, Berezovsky made headlines by negotiating the release of 21 Russian policeman held hostage by the warlord ] amid efforts by radicals from both sides to torpedo peace negotiations.<ref> ] ''Monitor''. Vol. 2, Issue 237, 19 December 1996</ref> | |||
On 12 May 1997, Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed the ] in the Kremlin. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Berezovsky outlined his priorities for the ] of Chechnya, particularly the construction of a pipeline for transporting Azerbaijani oil. He called upon the Russian business community to contribute to the rebuilding of the republic, revealing his own donation of US$1 million (some sources mention US$2 million) for a cement factory in Grozny.<ref> ] ''Monitor''. Vol. 3, Issue 95, 14 May 1997</ref> This payment would come to haunt him years later, when he was accused of funding Chechen terrorists.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20130201141754/http://www.russiajournal.com/node/5807 |date= 1 February 2013 }} '']'' 31 January 2002</ref> | |||
After his dismissal from the Security Council, Berezovsky vowed to continue his activities in Chechnya as a private individual<ref> ] ''Monitor''. Vol. 3, Issue 208, 6 November 1997</ref> and maintained contact with Chechen warlords. He was instrumental in the release of 69 hostages, including two Britons, Jon James and Camilla Carr, whom he flew in his private jet to ] in September 1998.<ref> ] 21 September 1998.</ref><ref>{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} '']'' (London) 21 April 2008</ref> In an interview with ] in 2005, he revealed the involvement of the British Ambassador to Russia, ], and explained that his former negotiations counterpart, the Islamic militant leader ], helped arrange the Britons' release.<ref name=deWaal> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131215122525/http://iwpr.net/report-news/berezovsky-blames-putin-chechen-war |date=15 December 2013 }} ] Report, 25 February 2005</ref> | |||
Berezovsky had a phone conversation with ] in the spring of 1999, six months before the beginning of ]. A transcript of that conversation was leaked to a Moscow tabloid on 10 September 1999 and appeared to mention the would-be militants' invasion. It has been the subject of much speculation ever since. As Berezovsky explained later in interviews to de Waal<ref name=deWaal/> and Goldfarb,<ref name="Goldfarb" /> Udugov proposed to coordinate the Islamists' incursion into Dagestan, so that a limited Russian response would topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish a new Islamic republic, which would be anti-American but friendly to Russia. Berezovsky said that he disliked the idea but reported Udugov's overture to prime-minister ]. "Udugov and Basayev," he asserted, "conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov ... but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the ]. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war."<ref name="Goldfarb"/> | |||
===Battle with "Young Reformers"=== | |||
In March 1997, Berezovsky and ] flew to ] to persuade the city's governor, ], to join Chubais' economic team,<ref name="Stanley" /> which became known as the government of ]. This was the last concerted political action of the "Davos Pact" (see above). Four months later the group split into two cliques fiercely competing for Yeltsin's favour.<ref name= Yeltsin>{{cite book|last=Yeltsin|first=Boris|title="Midnight Diaries" Memoir (translated by Catherine A. Fitzpatrick)|year=2000|publisher=PublicAffairs|location=New York|isbn=978-1-58648-011-0|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ouaAIPkPCpoC}}{{Dead link|date=October 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref> The clash was precipitated by the privatization auction of the communication utility ], in which Onexim bank of Chubais' loyalist ], backed by George Soros, competed with Gusinsky, allied with Spanish ]. An initially commercial dispute swiftly developed into a contest of political wills between Chubais and Berezovsky.<ref name= Yeltsin /> | |||
Potanin's victory unleashed a bitter media war, in which ] and ] accused the Chubais group of fixing the auction in favor of Potanin, whereas Chubais charged Berezovsky with abusing his government position to advance his business interests.<ref name="Soros2">{{cite web|url=http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4135.html#8 |title=Berezovsky. Putin. West. Bitter Thoughts with Faith in Russia |publisher=Moskovsky Novosti |work=mn.ru |access-date=6 October 2014 |author=Soros, George |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120229121754/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4135.html |archive-date=29 February 2012 }}</ref> Both sides appealed to Yeltsin, who had proclaimed a new era of "fair" privatization "based on strict legislative rules and allowing no deviations".<ref name="fair_privatization">{{cite web | url=http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1086084.html | title=Russia: Yeltsin Pledges Fair Privatization -- An Analysis | publisher=Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty | work=rferl.org | date=9 August 1997 | access-date=6 October 2014 | last1=Fossato | first1=Floriana | last2=Baker | first2=Stephanie}}</ref> In the end, both sides lost. Berezovsky's media revealed a corrupt scheme whereby a publishing house owned by Onexim Bank paid Chubais and his group hefty advances for a book that was never written. The scandal led to a purge of Chubais' loyalists from the government.<ref>{{cite news |last=Stanley |first=Alessandra |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/17/world/russian-reformer-s-credibility-undercut-by-scandal.html |title=Russian Reformer's Credibility Undercut by Scandal |newspaper=The New York Times |date=17 November 1997 |access-date=7 October 2014}}</ref> Chubais retaliated by persuading Yeltsin to dismiss Boris Berezovsky from the national security council. Berezovsky's service on the Security Council ended on 5 November 1997.<ref name="sacking_victory">{{cite web | url=http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1087164.html | title=Russia: Berezovsky's Sacking May Be A Temporary Victory For Adversaries | publisher=Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty | work=rferl.org | date=9 November 1997 | access-date=6 October 2014 | author=Fossato, Floriana}}</ref> Soros called the Berezovsky-Chubais clash a "historical event, in the reality of which I would have never believed, if I had not watched it myself. I saw a fight of the people in the boat floating towards the edge of a waterfall". He argued that the reformist camp never recovered from the wounds sustained in this struggle, setting the political stage for conservative nationalists, and eventually ].<ref name = "Soros2" /> | |||
===Philanthropy=== | |||
In 1991, Berezovsky founded the "Triumph" award, bestowed upon outstanding Russian poets, musicians, artists, directors and ballet dancers.<ref name="rbth.ru">{{cite web | url=http://rbth.ru/politics/2013/04/12/boris_berezovsky_back_to_black_24971.html | title=Boris Berezovsky: Fade to Black | publisher=Russia Beyond The Headlines | work=rbth.ru | date=12 April 2013 | access-date=7 October 2014 | author=Prilepin, Zakhar | archive-date=23 August 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130823100657/https://rbth.ru/politics/2013/04/12/boris_berezovsky_back_to_black_24971.html | url-status=dead }}</ref> | |||
It is reported in the documentary series Captive that Boris Berezovsky, in 1998, was effective in the release of two English aid workers who had been held hostage for ransom in Chechnya for 14 months | |||
===The Kremlin Family and Putin's rise to power=== | |||
In the spring of 1998, Berezovsky made an unexpected political comeback, starting with his appointment, in April 1998, to the position of executive secretary of the ].<ref>{{cite news |title=Berezovsky Back as Chief of CIS |author=Dmitry Zaks |url=http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/berezovsky-back-as-chief-of-cis/291472.html |newspaper=] |date=30 April 1998 |access-date=24 July 2015}}</ref> He emerged in the centre of a new informal power group – the "Family", a close-knit circle of advisers around Yeltsin, which included Yeltsin's daughter ] and his chief of staff, ]. It was rumoured that no important government appointment could happen without the Family's support.<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title=Yeltsin daughter helped plot cabinet sacking |url=http://www.independent.ie/world-news/yeltsin-daughter-helped-plot-cabinet-sacking-26194411.html |newspaper=] |location=Dublin |date=25 March 1998 |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> By 1999, the Family also included two of Berezovsky's associates, his former AVVA partner Alexander Voloshin, who replaced Yumashev as Yeltsin's chief of staff, and Roman Abramovich.<ref> ] ''Monitor''. Vol. 5, Issue 12, 18 June 1998</ref> | |||
The principal concern of the Family was finding an "electable" successor to Yeltsin to counter the presidential aspirations of the then–prime minister, ], who was leaning to more statist positions. Political battles between the Family and Primakov's camp dominated the two last years of Yeltsin's presidency.<ref name=Rutland> Post-Soviet Affairs (Bellwether Publishing, Ltd.) vol. 16, no. 4, December 2000</ref> | |||
In November 1998, in a televised press conference, five officers of the ], led by ] ], revealed an alleged plot by their superiors to assassinate Berezovsky.<ref> ] ''Monitor''. Vol. 4, Issue 214, 18 November 1998</ref> | |||
In April 1999, Russia's Prosecutor General, ], opened an investigation into embezzlement at Aeroflot and issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky, who called the investigation politically motivated and orchestrated by ].<ref> ], 8 April 1999</ref> ], Aeroflot's former General Director, later revealed that conflict with Primakov arose from the irritation that Berezovsky's management team caused in the Russian ], which Primakov headed before becoming prime minister, over firing of thousands of spies, who used Aeroflot as a ] in Soviet times.<ref> (in Russian) ''Kommersant'', 23 November 2000</ref><ref> ], 22 September 1983</ref><ref> ], 17 November 1981</ref> The arrest warrant was dropped a week later, after Berezovsky submitted to questioning by the prosecutors. No charges were brought.<ref> ], 18 April 1999</ref> Yeltsin sacked Primakov's government shortly thereafter and replaced him with ] as new prime-minister.<ref> '']'', 13 May 1999</ref> | |||
Vyacheslav Aminov ({{langx|ru|Вячеслав Аминов}}) supported Berezovsky and headed Berezovsky's security service.<ref>{{cite news |last=Крыльников |first=Дмитрий (Krylnikov, Dmitry) |url=http://www.compromat.ru/page_11396.htm |title="Хранитель компромата проговорился" |trans-title=Keeper of the compromising material let it slip |language=ru |work=] |date=28 December 2001 |access-date=10 August 2021 |quote= Archived at compromat.ru on 29 December 2001 as Хранитель компромата Аминов: Березовский лично контролирует около $7 млрд "семейных" долларов: Комичные обстоятельства назначения Николая Ковалева директором ФСБ (Keeper of compromising evidence Aminov: Berezovsky personally controls about $ 7 billion of "family" dollars: Comical circumstances of the appointment of Nikolai Kovalev as director of the FSB).}}</ref> | |||
]'s meteoric rise from relative obscurity to the Russian presidency in the course of a few short months of 1999 has been attributed to his intimacy with the "Family" as a protege of Berezovsky and ]. By the end of 1999, the Family had persuaded Yeltsin to name Putin his political successor and candidate for the presidency.<ref name="Paddock">{{cite news |last=Paddock |first=Richard C. |date=5 January 2000 |title=Putin Says He Tried to Dissuade Yeltsin |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-jan-05-mn-50919-story.html |newspaper=] |access-date=11 November 2015}}</ref><ref> '']'', 5 January 2000</ref> | |||
Berezovsky's acquaintance with Putin dated back to the early 1990s, when the latter, as Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg, helped Logovaz establish a car dealership.<ref name=Baker>{{cite book|last=Baker Peter and|first=Glasser Susan|title=Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution|year=2005|publisher=Simon&Schuster|location=New York|isbn=978-0-7432-8179-9|pages=52–53|url=http://www.textbooks.com/ISBN/0743281799/Baker-Peter-and-Glasser-Susan/custserv-ebooks.php?s=1&PAGE=adobe}}</ref> They enjoyed friendly relations; on occasion, Berezovsky took Putin skiing with him in Switzerland.<ref name="Paddock" /> | |||
In February 1999, when Berezovsky's political standing looked uncertain because of his clash with ] over Aeroflot, Putin, then Director of the ], made a bold gesture of friendship by showing up at a birthday party for Berezovsky's wife. "I absolutely do not care what Primakov thinks of me", Putin told Berezovsky on that night. That was the beginning of their political alliance.<ref name=Baker/> According to the Times, Spanish police discovered that on up to five occasions in 1999, Putin had secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to Berezovsky.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070509141727/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4379.html |date=9 May 2007}} '']'', 15 June 2000</ref> | |||
In mid-July 1999, the Family dispatched Berezovsky to ], where Putin was vacationing, to persuade him to accept the position of prime minister and the role of ].<ref name=Baker/><ref> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111114124705/http://www.newstatesman.com/200603270039 |date=14 November 2011}} '']'', 27 March 2006</ref> On 9 August, Yeltsin sacked the government of ] and appointed Putin prime minister, amid reports that Berezovsky had masterminded the reshuffle.<ref> ], 9 August 1999</ref> | |||
Putin's principal opponents were the former Prime Minister ] and the Mayor of Moscow ], backed by the ] alliance. To counter this group in the ], Berezovsky was instrumental in the creation, within the space of a few months, of the ] party, with no ideology other than its support for Putin.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110629131748/http://www.cdi.org/russia/Johnson/7027-17.cfm |date=29 June 2011}} '']'' (London), 21 January 2003</ref><ref name=Spotlight> '']'', 23 December 1999</ref> Later, he disclosed that the source of Unity's funding, with Putin's knowledge and consent, was ].<ref> '']'' (London), 16 November 2000</ref> In the 1999 election, Berezovsky campaigned as a Putin loyalist and won a seat in the Duma, representing the North Caucasian republic of ].<ref name=Spotlight/> | |||
During the Duma election campaign Berezovsky's ORT TV served as an extremely effective propaganda machine for the Putin camp, using aggressive attack reporting and programming to denigrate and ridicule Putin's rivals, ] and ], tactics strongly criticized as undue interference with the media.<ref>{{cite news |last=Bohlen |first=Celestine |date=15 December 1999 |title=Moscow's Mayor Fights on Against Foes in High Places |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/15/world/moscow-s-mayor-fights-on-against-foes-in-high-places.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> But ] got a surprisingly high score in the elections, paving the way for Putin's election victory in ].<ref name=Rutland /> | |||
===Conflict with Putin and emigration=== | |||
Berezovsky's disagreements with Putin became public three weeks into Putin's presidency. On 8 May 2000, Berezovsky and Abramovich were spotted together at Putin's invitation-only inauguration ball in Moscow.<ref>{{cite news |last=Wines |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Wines |date=11 May 2000 |title=Russia's New Prime Minister: A Tested Economic Liberal |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2000/05/11/world/russia-s-new-prime-minister-a-tested-economic-liberal.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> However, on 31 May, Berezovsky sharply attacked the constitutional reform proposed by the president, which would give the Kremlin the right to dismiss elected governors.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090808053145/http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4339.html%23 |date=8 August 2009}} '']'', 1 June 2000</ref> On 17 July 2000, Berezovsky resigned from the Duma, saying he "did not want to be involved in the country's ruin and the restoration of an authoritarian regime".<ref>{{cite news |last=Cockburn |first=Patrick |author-link=Patrick Cockburn |date=18 July 2000 |title=Berezovsky quits Duma at 'ruining of Russia' |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/berezovsky-quits-duma-at-ruining-of-russia-707942.html |newspaper=The Independent |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> In August, Berezovsky's media attacked Putin for the way he handled the sinking of the ], blaming the death of 118 sailors on the Kremlin's reluctance to accept foreign help.<ref> ], 28 September 2000</ref> In September, Berezovsky alleged that the Kremlin had attempted to expropriate his shares in ORT and announced that he would put his stake into a trust to be controlled by prominent intellectuals.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://archive.today/20120911083005/http://www.russiajournal.com/node/3898 |date= 11 September 2012}} '']'', 23 September 2000</ref> | |||
In an article in '']'' in 2000, Berezovsky argued that in the absence of a strong ] and ] it may sometimes be necessary for capitalists "to interfere directly in the political process" of Russia as a counterweight to ex-Communists "who hate democracy and dream of regaining lost positions."<ref> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121022063253/http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=12973 |date=22 October 2012}} '']'', 20 October 2000</ref> Berezovsky took legal action against the journalist ], who accused him of various crimes. In October, in an interview in '']'', Putin announced that he would no longer tolerate criticism of the government by media controlled by the oligarchs. "If necessary we will destroy those instruments that allow this blackmail", he declared.<ref name=Figaro20121127>{{cite news| url=http://www.rferl.org/content/article/1142270.html |title=...Warns Oligarchs about State's 'Cudgel' |publisher=] |date=27 October 2000 |access-date=27 November 2012}} (originally published in '']'', 26 October 2000)</ref> Responding to a question about Berezovsky, he warned that he had a "cudgel" in store for him. "The state has a cudgel in its hands that you use to hit just once, but on the head. We haven't used this ] yet. We've just brandished it... the day we get really angry, we won't hesitate to use it."<ref name=Figaro20121127 /> | |||
In the same month, Russian prosecutors revived the Aeroflot fraud investigation and Berezovsky was questioned as a witness.<ref>{{cite news |title=Berezovsky will appear for questioning in the Aeroflot case |publisher=] |work=Monitor |location=Washington |volume=6 |issue=192 |date=16 October 2000 |url=http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=22457 |access-date=11 August 2011}}</ref> On 7 November 2000, Berezovsky, who was travelling abroad, failed to appear for further questioning and announced that he would not return to Russia because of what he described as "constantly intensifying pressure on me by the authorities and President Putin personally. Essentially," he said, "I'm being forced to choose whether to become a political prisoner or a political emigrant." Berezovsky claimed that Putin had made him a suspect in the Aeroflot case simply because ORT had "spoken the truth" about the sinking of the submarine Kursk.<ref> ] ''Monitor'', v. 6, No. 214, 15 November 2000</ref> In early December, his associate ] was arrested in Moscow and Berezovsky dropped the proposal to put ORT stake in trust.<ref>{{cite news |title=Aeroflot director accused of fraud. |publisher=] |work=Monitor |location=Washington |volume=6 |issue=229 |date=8 December 2000 |url=http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=22627 |access-date=11 August 2011}}</ref> | |||
===Divestment from Russian holdings=== | |||
In 2001, the Russian government made a systematic takeover of privately owned television networks, in the course of which Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Patarkatsishvili lost most of their media holdings,<ref name=media> Editorial, '']'', 23 January 2002</ref> prompting one of them to warn of Russia "turning into a banana republic" in a letter to ''The New York Times''.<ref> '']'', 30 January 2002</ref> In February, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili sold their stake in ORT to Roman Abramovich, who promptly ceded editorial control to the Kremlin.<ref> '']'', 6 February 2001</ref> Berezovsky later claimed that there was a secret understanding that ] would be released from prison as part of that deal, a promise that was never fulfilled.<ref>{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}} ''The Times'', 29 April 2008</ref> In April, the government took control of ]'s ].<ref> ], 14 April 2001</ref> Berezovsky then moved to acquire a controlling stake in a smaller network, TV-6, made Patarkatsishvili its chairman, and offered employment to hundreds of locked out NTV journalists.<ref> ''The St. Petersburg Times'', 20 April 2001</ref> Almost immediately, Patarkatshishvili became a target of police investigation and fled the country.<ref> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104054110/http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=4627 |date=4 January 2015}} ''The St. Petersburg Times'', 3 July 2001</ref> In January 2002 a Russian arbitration court forced ] into liquidation. The liquidation of TV-6 was precipitated by ], a partly state-owned minority shareholder, using a piece of legislation that was almost immediately repealed.<ref>{{cite news |title=Independent Russian TV shut down |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1754828.stm |work=BBC News |date=11 January 2002 |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Wines|first=Michael |date=23 January 2002 |title=Russians Find Suspicions Fly As Network Goes Off Air |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/23/world/russians-find-suspicions-fly-as-network-goes-off-air.html |newspaper=The New York Times |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> | |||
In 2001, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili ended their involvement in ] for a US$1.3 billion fee from ].<ref name="bloomberg-20120831"/> This transaction was the subject of a later dispute in the UK commercial courts, with Berezovsky alleging that he had been put under pressure to sell his stake to Abramovich at a fraction of the true value,<ref>{{cite news|last=Allen |first=Nick |date=18 April 2008 |title=Boris Berezovsky sues Roman Abramovich for £2bn at London court |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1895965/Boris-Berezovsky-sues-Roman-Abramovich-for-2bn-at-London-court.html |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> an allegation that the court rejected.<ref name="bloomberg-20120831"/> | |||
In 2006, Berezovsky sold the '']'' ("The Businessman") newspaper and his remaining Russian assets.<ref>{{cite news|last=Belton |first=Catherine |title=Berezovsky Sells Remaining Russian Assets |url=http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=16850 |work=The St. Petersburg Times |date=22 February 2006 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140301121345/http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=16850 |archive-date=1 March 2014 }}</ref> | |||
==Exile in Britain== | ==Exile in Britain== | ||
From his new home in the UK, ], where he and associates including ], ] and ] became known as "the London Circle" of Russian exiles, Berezovsky publicly stated that he was on a mission to bring down Putin "by force" or by ].<ref name=profile>, ], 31 May 2007</ref><ref name="Paddock" /> He established the ] (IFCL), to "support the abused and the vulnerable in society – prisoners, national minorities and business people" in Russia and criticized Putin's record in the West.<ref>{{cite news |last=Gentleman |first=Amelia |date=21 December 2000 |title=Oligarch hits out at his Kremlin monster |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/dec/21/russia.ameliagentleman |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> | |||
Russia neither welcomed Berezovsky's views on ], nor his political clout and opened investigations into Berezovsky's business activities. Fearing arrest, Berezovsky fled to London in 2001, where he was granted ]. He has been charged with ] and ], but the Russian government has been unable to get him ]d. From his new home in the U.K., he has strongly criticized the current Russian administration. | |||
Berezovsky launched a concerted campaign to expose alleged misdeeds of Vladimir Putin, from suppressing freedom of speech<ref name=ads> ], 23 September 2003</ref> to committing war crimes in Chechnya.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.hot.ee/f/festivaal/press_us.htm#I1|title=Images of Genocide in Chechnya Distributed at US Congress on the Eve of Putin-Bush Talks|publisher=Hot|access-date=17 October 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120925203716/http://www.hot.ee/f/festivaal/press_us.htm#I1|archive-date=25 September 2012|df=dmy-all}}</ref> He also accused Russia's ] security service of staging the ] of 1999 in order to help Putin win the presidency.<ref> ], 6 March 2002</ref> Many of these activities were funded through the New York-based IFCL, directed by Berezovsky's friend Alex Goldfarb.{{citation needed|date=June 2020}} | |||
In 2003 Boris Berezovsky formally changed his name to Platon Elenin ("Platon" being ] for ], and Elena is the name of his wife) in the British courts. No reason has been given - but Platon is the name of the lead character in a film '']'' based on his life. In December 2003 he was allowed to travel under his new name to ], provoking a row between Russia and Georgia. | |||
Berezovsky bought a ] flat, the 125-acre Wentworth Park estate near ] in Surrey, and for a while owned the 172-acre ] estate in ].<ref>{{cite news |last=Norwood |first=Graham |date=28 February 2004 |title=Moscow on the Thames |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyadvice/propertymarket/3322492/Moscow-on-the-Thames.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604134404/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/propertyadvice/propertymarket/3322492/Moscow-on-the-Thames.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=4 June 2011 |newspaper=The Daily Telegraph |location=London |access-date=1 September 2012}}</ref> In 2012, he sold his Wentworth Park house.<ref name="independent-20120831"/> | |||
In recent years, Berezovsky has gone into business with ], the younger brother of ] ]. Berezovsky has been an investor in Bush's ], an educational software corporation, since at least 2003. In 2005, Neil Bush met with Berezovsky in ], causing tension with Russia due to Berezovsky's fugitive status.<ref>, '']'', Sep 23, 2005</ref> Neil Bush has also been seen in Berezovsky's box at the ], the home of British soccer club ], for a game.<ref>, '']'', September 5, 2006</ref> There has been speculation in the English language '']'' that the relationship may cause tension in Russo-American bilateral relations.<ref>, '']'', Ocober 06, 2005</ref> | |||
===Activities in Ukraine=== | |||
===Political asylum and extradition proceedings=== | |||
In September 2005, soon after the ] led by prime minister ] was dismissed by president ], former president of the Ukraine ] accused Berezovsky of financing Yushchenko's presidential election campaign, and provided copies of documents showing money transfers from companies he said are controlled by Berezovsky to companies controlled by Yuschenko's official backers. Berezovsky has confirmed that he met Yushchenko's representatives in London before the election, and that the money was transferred from his companies, but he refused to confirm or deny that the companies that received the money were used in Yushchenko's campaign. Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine. | |||
On 9 September 2003, Berezovsky was granted refugee status and political asylum by the British ] which he, according to Alex Goldfarb, welcomed.<ref>{{Cite web|date=2003-09-11|title=Asylum granted to Putin adversary|url=http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/sep/11/immigration.russia|access-date=2021-07-15|website=The Guardian|language=en}}</ref> | |||
On 12 September 2003, judge ] of ] in central London dropped extradition proceedings against Berezovsky, ruling that it would be pointless to pursue the case as the granting of asylum status to Berezovsky made the proceedings redundant.<ref> ''gazeta.ru'' 15 September 2003</ref> | |||
In September 2007, Berezovsky launched ]s against two Ukrainian politicians, ], a former presidential aid, and ], a former emergencies minister.<ref>, '']'', ], ].</ref> Berezovsky is suing the men for nearly $23 million US, accusing them of misusing the money he had allocated in 2004 to fund the ]. | |||
However, when Berezovsky told ] in early February 2006 that he was working on plans to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Foreign Minister ] warned the London-based Russian tycoon not to plot against the Russian President while living in Britain. His refugee status could be reviewed if he continued to make such remarks.<ref> 28 February 2006</ref> | |||
===Controversial statements=== | |||
===Convictions ''in absentia'' and investigations abroad=== | |||
In ], Berezovsky stated in an interview to a Moscow based radio station that he was working on overthrowing the administration of Vladimir Putin by force. | |||
After Berezovsky gained political asylum in Britain, the Russian authorities vigorously pursued various criminal charges against him. This culminated in two ]. From London, Berezovsky called the trial, which sentenced him to six years in prison, "a farce".<ref name="Parfitt" /> In June 2009, the ] City Court near Moscow sentenced Berezovsky to thirteen years imprisonment for defrauding AvtoVAZ of 58 million rubles (US$1.9 million) in the 1990s. Berezovsky was represented by a court-appointed lawyer.<ref> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150104054114/http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=29360 |date=4 January 2015}} '']'', 30 June 2009</ref> | |||
In spite of Berezovsky's successes in Britain in fighting off extradition requests and exposing Russian court convictions as politically motivated (see below), some other jurisdictions cooperated with Russian authorities in seizing his property and targeting his financial transactions as ]. Berezovsky succeeded in overturning some of these actions. In July 2007, Brazilian prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky in connection with his investment in the Brazilian football club ].<ref> '']'' (London), 14 July 2007</ref> However, a year later the Brazilian Supreme Court cancelled the order and stopped the investigation.<ref> '']'', 18 September 2008</ref> On Russian requests, French authorities raided his villa in Nice in search of documents,<ref> '']'', (London) 12 May 2005</ref> and seized his two yachts berthed on the ].<ref> '']'' (London) 19 February 2011</ref> However, some months later, the boats were released by a French court.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}} Swiss prosecutors have been assisting their Russian colleagues for over a decade in investigating Berezovsky's finances.<ref> ], 29 September 2009</ref> | |||
On ], ], in an interview with the British newspaper '']'', Berezovsky declared that he is plotting a new Russian revolution to overthrow the regime of Vladimir Putin by financing important people in Putin's administration: ''"We need to use force to change this regime. It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure."''<ref>, ''The Guardian'', ], ] </ref> He also admitted that during the last six years he struggled much to "destroy the positive image of Putin" and tried to portray him whenever possible as a dangerously anti-democratic figure. | |||
===Accusations and libel suits in the UK=== | |||
Berezovsky also told the Associated Press by telephone in Britain, ''"Putin has created an ] against the ]. (...) I don't know how it will happen, but authoritarian regimes only collapse by force."''<ref>, ], ], ].</ref> | |||
Berezovsky's meteoric enrichment and involvement in power struggles have been accompanied by allegations of various crimes from his opponents. After his falling out with Putin and exile to London, these allegations became the recurrent theme of official state-controlled media, earning him comparisons with ]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.barricades.ca/articles/3_2/Boris_Berezovsky.htm |title=Boris Berezovsky and Putin's Catch 22|publisher=Barricades|date=23 February 2004|access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref> and the '']'' character ].<ref>{{cite news|author=Andrei Piontkovsky |url=http://www.russiajournal.com/node/4816 |title=Season of Discontent: Are you for Putin or Berezovsky? |newspaper=The Russia Journal |date=4 May 2001 |access-date=17 October 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120915070617/http://www.russiajournal.com/node/4816 |archive-date=15 September 2012 }}</ref> | |||
In 1996, '']'', an American business magazine, published an article by ] entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" with the sub-heading "Power. Politics. Murder. Boris Berezovsky could teach the guys in Sicily a thing or two."<ref> '']'' 30 December 1996</ref> The article linked Berezovsky to corruption in the car industry, to the Chechen mafia and to the murder of ]. In 2000, the ] gave Berezovsky and ] permission to sue for libel in the UK courts. Given that only 2,000 of the 785,000 copies sold worldwide were sold in the United Kingdom, this led numerous scholars to cite '']'' as an example of ].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Delta|first1=George B.|last2=Matsuura|first2=Jeffrey H.|title=Law of the Internet|edition=3rd|volume=1|year=2008|publisher=]|isbn=978-0-7355-7559-2|pages=3–92|chapter=Jurisdictional issues in cyberspace, § 3.04|quote=Berezovsky is the leading case in what has come to be known as 'libel tourism'}}<!--|access-date=23 September 2011--></ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Crook|first=Tim|title=Comparative media law and ethics|year=2010|publisher=]|isbn=978-0-415-55161-8|pages=240–241|chapter=Defamation law}}<!--|access-date=23 September 2011--></ref><ref>{{cite journal|last=Taylor|first=Daniel C.|date=November 2010|title=Libel Tourism: Protecting Authors and Preserving Comity|journal=]|publisher=]|volume=99|page=194|issn=0016-8092|url=http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/pdf/99-1/Taylor.pdf|access-date=23 September 2011|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140102154742/http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/pdf/99-1/Taylor.pdf|archive-date=2 January 2014|df=dmy-all}}</ref><ref name="guardianmarch2010"/><ref name="shuddup"/> The case slowly proceeded until the claimants opted to settle when ''Forbes'' offered a partial retraction.<ref name="shuddup"> Economist 13 March 2003</ref> The following statement appended to the article on the ''Forbes'' website summarises: "On 6 March 2003, the resolution of the case was announced in the High Court in London. ''Forbes'' stated in open court that (1) it was not the magazine's intention to state that Berezovsky was responsible for the murder of Listiev, only that he had been included in an inconclusive police investigation of the crime; (2) there is no evidence that Berezovsky was responsible for this or any other murder; (3) in light of the English court's ruling, it was wrong to characterize Berezovsky as a mafia boss; and (4) the magazine erred in stating that Glouchkov had been convicted for theft of state property in 1982."<ref> '']'' 31 March 2003</ref> Klebnikov elaborated his allegations in his 2000 book ''Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia'' (the 2001 edition was titled ''Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism'').<ref name="pravda">{{cite news|url=http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/19-08-2005/8781-berezovsky-0/|title=US Department of State seriously interested in Russian oligarch in disgrace, Boris Berezovsky|newspaper=]|date=19 August 2005|access-date=6 January 2012}}</ref><ref name="Klebnikov_looting"/><ref name="Klebnikov_decline"/> | |||
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has launched a criminal investigation against Berezovsky to find whether his comments can be considered a "seizure of power by force", as outlined in the ]. If convicted, an offender is facing up to 20 years of imprisonment. | |||
In 2006, a UK court awarded Berezovsky £50,000 in libel damages against the Russian private bank ] and its chairman, ]. Fridman had claimed on a Russian television programme that could be watched in the UK that Berezovsky had threatened him when the two men were competitors for control of the Kommersant publishing house, and that making threats was Berezovsky's usual way of conducting business. The jury rejected the defendants' claim that Fridman's allegations were true. Berezovsky accepted the apology and withdrew his libel suit.<ref> '']'' (London), 22 December 2005</ref> | |||
The ] has denounced Berezovsky's statements, warning him that his status of a political refugee may be reconsidered, should he continue to make similar remarks. Furthermore, ] has announced that it will investigate whether Berezovsky's statements are in violation of the law.<ref>, '']'', ], ].</ref> | |||
In March 2010, Berezovsky, represented by Desmond Browne QC, won a libel case and was awarded £150,000 damages by the ] in London over allegations that he had been behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.<ref name="news.bbc.co.uk"> ] 10 March 2010</ref> The allegations had been broadcast by the Russian state channel ] in April 2007 on its programme ''Vesti Nedeli'', which could be viewed from the UK. In his judgement, Mr Justice ] stated: "I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it." Berezovsky had sued both the channel and a man called Vladimir Terluk, whom Mr Justice Eady agreed was the man who had been interviewed in silhouette by the programme under the pseudonym 'Pyotr'. Terluk had claimed that to further his UK asylum application Berezovsky had approached him to fabricate a murder plot against himself, and that Litvinenko knew of this. Mr Justice Eady accepted that Terluk had not himself alleged Berezovsky's involvement in the murder of Litvinenko, but considered that his own allegations were themselves serious and that there was no truth in any of them. As RTR did not participate in the proceedings, Terluk was left to defend the case himself, receiving significant assistance (as the judge noted) from the Russian prosecutor's office.<ref name="guardianmarch2010"/> | |||
====Other Russia response==== | |||
] carried out by pro-government youth organizations.<ref></ref>]] | |||
''The Guardian'' described the 2010 libel case as "almost anarchic at times as officials from the Russian prosecutors' office repeatedly intervened despite not being party to proceedings. So obvious was their intention that when one of their mobile phones went off in court one day, Desmond Browne quipped: 'That must be Mr Putin on the line.'"<ref name="guardianmarch2010">{{cite news |last=Pidd |first=Helen |title=Boris Berezovsky wins libel case over Litvinenko murder |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/mar/10/boris-berezovsky-wins-libel-litvinenko-murder |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=10 March 2010}}</ref> The defendants appealed to the Court of Appeal but the appeal was dismissed, ] giving a judgment with which the ] and ] agreed. The Lord Justice described a witness statement of ], newly adduced by the defendants, as 'not sensibly capable of belief'.<ref name="judgement">{{cite web|url=http://www.carter-ruck.com/Documents//Boris_Berezovsky-Court_of_Appeal-Judgment-151211.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120402123526/http://www.carter-ruck.com/Documents//Boris_Berezovsky-Court_of_Appeal-Judgment-151211.pdf |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 April 2012 |title=Approved Judgment of Vladimir Terluk v. Boris Berezovsky |publisher=Royal Courts of Justice |date=15 December 2011 |access-date=7 October 2014}}</ref> | |||
Soon after Berezovsky's statement (see above), ], an important figure of ] and leader of the ] political movement, wrote the following on his official website: | |||
<blockquote>''Berezovsky has lived in emigration for many years and no longer has significant influence upon the political processes which take place in Russian society. His extravagant proclamations are simply a method of attracting attention. Furthermore, for the overwhelming majority of Russians he is a political symbol of the 90s, one of the "bad blokes" enriching themselves behind the back of president Yeltsin. The informational noise around Berezovsky is specifically beneficial for the Kremlin, which is trying to compromise Russia's real opposition. Berezovsky has not had and does not have any relation to Other Russia or the United Civil Front.''</blockquote> | |||
===High Court case against Abramovich=== | |||
Berezovsky responded in ] by saying that "there is not one significant politician in Russia whom he has not financed" and that this included members of Other Russia. The managing director of the United Civil Front, in turn, said that the organization would consider suing Berezovsky over these allegations.<ref></ref> | |||
{{main|Berezovsky v Abramovich}} | |||
In 2011, Berezovsky brought a civil case against Roman Abramovich in the ] in London, accusing Abramovich of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract, and seeking over £3 billion in damages.<ref name="PA-20120831"/> This became the largest civil court case in British legal history.<ref name="telegraph-20120831">{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/9509975/Abramovich-wins-biggest-private-court-case-in-history.html |title=Abramovich wins biggest private court case in history |author=Duncan Gardham |work=The Daily Telegraph |date=31 August 2012 |access-date=31 August 2012 |location=London}}</ref> | |||
Berezovsky's claimed past ownership of ] – which constituted the bulk of his fortune – was put into question by Abramovich, who in a statement to the High Court in London asserted that Berezovsky had never owned shares in Sibneft, and that US$1.3 billion paid in 2001 ostensibly for his stake in the company was actually in recognition of Berezovsky's "political assistance and protection" during the creation of Sibneft in 1995.<ref>{{cite news |last=Neate |first=Rupert |title=Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich set for court showdown with Boris Berezovsky over Sibneft |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/8344173/Chelsea-FC-owner-Roman-Abramovich-set-for-court-showdown-with-Boris-Berezovksy-over-Sibneft.html |work=The Daily Telegraph |location=London |date=23 February 2011}}</ref> The hearings, which started on 3 October 2011, examined Berezovsky's US$5.5 billion claim against Abramovich for damages arising from the sale of his assets under alleged "threats and intimidation".<ref> ''Time'', 3 October 2011</ref> | |||
===Alleged and reported assassination attempts in London=== | |||
====Alleged 2003 plot==== | |||
In ], ], an associate of Berezovsky's who was a ] ] and a British citizen, died after he was fatally poisoned with the ] ]. Before his death Litvinenko accused Putin of ordering his murder, and British police believes he was killed by ], a ] and former ] officer.<ref name="foil" /><ref name="police" /> Berezovsky also accused Putin of ordering ] of his fellow ] and close associate Litvinenko, saying had no doubts that Russian authorities were behind the poisoning.<ref>, '']'', 19/11/2006</ref> | |||
On 31 August 2012, the High Court found for Abramovich.<ref name="Berezovsky-v-Abramovich-summary">{{cite report|url=http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/berezovsky-abramovich-summary.pdf |title=Executive Summary of the Full Judgment of Gloster J in Berezovsky v Abramovich |publisher=High Court of Justice |id=Berezovsky v Abramovich Action 2007 Folio 942 |date=31 August 2012 |access-date=31 August 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120905133145/http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/Resources/JCO/Documents/Judgments/berezovsky-abramovich-summary.pdf |archive-date=5 September 2012 }}</ref> The High Court judge stated that because of the nature of the evidence, the case hinged on whether to believe Berezovsky or Abramovich's evidence. In her ruling, the judge observed: "On my analysis of the entirety of the evidence, I found Mr. Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes. ... I regret to say that the bottom line of my analysis of Mr. Berezovsky's credibility is that he would | |||
According to Alex Goldfarb, another Russian ] agent in London was making preparations to assassinate Berezovsky with a ] in ]. This alleged plot was discovered by then alive Alexander Litvinenko and reported to British police.<ref name="dissident"> ] and Marina Litvinenko. '']: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB'', The Free Press (2007) ISBN 1-416-55165-4 </ref> However, in a statement to the ], ], then a ] Minister, said that inquiries made were "unable to either substantiate this information or find evidence of any criminal offences having been committed". | |||
have said almost anything to support his case."<ref name="PA-20120831">{{cite news|url=https://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jHmUh7mdoYCEo-ueq8KT6AK3SjNg?docId=N0289921346369684515A |title=Berezovsky loses Abramovich claim |agency=Press Association |date=31 August 2012 |access-date=31 August 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120901014033/https://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5jHmUh7mdoYCEo-ueq8KT6AK3SjNg?docId=N0289921346369684515A |archive-date=1 September 2012}}</ref><ref name="bbc-20120831">{{cite news |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19433325 |title=Roman Abramovich wins court battle against Berezovsky |publisher=BBC |date=31 August 2012 |access-date=31 August 2012}}</ref><ref name="Berezovsky-v-Abramovich-summary" />{{rp|16–18}} She ruled that the monies paid represented a final payment in discharge of all obligations.<ref name="Berezovsky-v-Abramovich-summary" /><ref name="bloomberg-20120831">{{cite news |url=http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-M99HCA6KLVRB01-3KCRSUMC6RCK16JT40CJRN98LU |title=Abramovich Wins Battle of Oligarchs Over 'Unreliable' Berezovsky |publisher=Bloomberg/Washington Post |date=31 August 2012 |access-date=31 August 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140329095007/http://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-M99HCA6KLVRB01-3KCRSUMC6RCK16JT40CJRN98LU |archive-date=29 March 2014 |df=dmy-all}}</ref> | |||
===Business and personal activities in exile=== | |||
====Reported 2007 plot==== | |||
Berezovsky conducted business with ], the younger brother of the ] ]. Berezovsky was an investor in Bush's ], an educational software corporation, since at least 2003. In 2005, Neil Bush met with Berezovsky in ], causing tension with Russia due to Berezovsky's fugitive status.<ref>, ''Times'', 23 September 2005</ref> Neil Bush was also seen with Berezovsky in his box at an ] match at the ] in London.<ref>, '']'' (London), 5 September 2006</ref> There had been speculation that the relationship had become a cause of tension in Russo-American bilateral relations.<ref> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061102002017/http://www.ncrp.org/AR-100605-MoscowTimes.asp |date=2 November 2006 }}, '']'', 6 October 2005</ref> | |||
In June 2007 Berezovsky fled Britain on the advice of ], amid reports that he was the target of an assassination | |||
attempt by a suspected Russian ]. On ] ] the alleged would-be assassin was captured by the police at the ] in ].<ref name="foil">, ''The Times'', July 18, 2007</ref> The suspect, arrested by the anti-terrorist police after being tracked for a week by ], was ] back to Russia when no weapons were found and there was not enough evidence to charge him with any offence.<ref>, '']'', 29 November 2007</ref> In addition, British police placed a squad of uniformed officers around the Chechen dissident ]'s house in north London, and also phoned Litvinenko's widow, Marina, to urge her to take greater security precautions.<ref name=g>, ''The Guardian'', July 22, 2007</ref> | |||
It had been speculated that Berezovsky's wealth was depleted with the onset of the ]. According to the ], in 2011 his net worth was about US$900 million. | |||
Berezovsky said he was told the assassin would be someone he knew, who would shoot him in the head and then surrender to the police. He again accused Vladimir Putin of being behind a plot to assassinate him.<ref>, '']'', 23/07/200</ref> The Kremlin has denied similar claims in the past.<ref name="police">, ''The Moscow Times'', July 19, 2007</ref> | |||
===Appeals for regime change=== | |||
According to ], there is speculation that Berezovsky leaked details of the alleged attempt to kill him to the media to antagonise Moscow, once the British authorities had returned the suspected killer to Moscow. The timing of the story has also been seen as suspicious, coming in the middle of a row over Britain's attempts to charge a Russian businessman, Andrei Lugovoi, with Litvinenko's murder.<ref name=g/> | |||
In September 2005, Berezovsky said in an interview with the BBC: "I'm sure that Putin doesn't have the chance to survive, even to the ]. I am doing everything in my power to limit his time frame, and I am really thinking of returning to Russia after Putin collapses, which he will."<ref name="Paddock" /><ref> ]. Retrieved 5 April 2008</ref> In January 2006, Berezovsky stated in an interview to a Moscow-based radio station that he was working on overthrowing the administration of Vladimir Putin by force.<ref>{{in lang|ru}} , ], 25 January 2006</ref> Berezovsky also accused Putin of being "a gangster"<ref>, '']'', 4 September 2008</ref> and the "terrorist number one".<ref> European Viewpoint, 14 September 2004</ref> | |||
Berezovsky declared that he was plotting the overthrow of President Putin on 13 April 2007 during an interview ''The Guardian'' conducted: "We need to use force to change this regime. It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure."<ref name="Plotting" /> He also admitted that during the last six years he had struggled hard to "destroy the positive image of Putin" and said that "Putin has created an ] against the ]. ... I don't know how it will happen, but authoritarian regimes only collapse by force."<ref>, ], 13 April 2007</ref> | |||
==Allegations of corruption and subversive activity== | |||
===Litigation with Forbes=== | |||
A 1996 '']'' magazine article titled ''] of ]?'', by the Russian-American journalist ], portrayed Berezovsky as a ] boss who had his rivals murdered. Berezovsky sued the magazine for ], and the dispute was ultimately settled with the magazine retracting both claims. Klebnikov expanded the article into a book, ''Godfather of the Kremlin'', that Berezovsky did not contest in court. Klebnikov was eventually murdered in 2004. | |||
] in ]; The Other Russia organizers said that this slogan was a ] carried out by pro-government youth groups<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.apn-spb.ru/news/print560.htm|title=Новые подробности по Маршу несогласных.|website=www.apn-spb.ru}}</ref>]] | |||
===Russian arrest warrant=== | |||
Soon after Berezovsky's 2007 statement, ], a figure in the opposition movement ] and leader of the ], wrote the following on his website: "Berezovsky has lived in emigration for many years and no longer has significant influence upon the political processes which take place in Russian society. His extravagant proclamations are simply a method of attracting attention. Furthermore, for the overwhelming majority of Russian people he was a political symbol of the 90s, one of the 'bad blokes' enriching themselves behind the back of president Yeltsin. The informational noise around Berezovsky was specifically beneficial for the Kremlin, which was trying to compromise Russia's real opposition. Berezovsky has not had and does not have any relation to Other Russia or the United Civil Front."<ref>{{in lang|ru}} , ], 18 April 2007</ref> Berezovsky responded in June 2007 by saying that "there is not one significant politician in Russia whom he has not financed" and that this included members of Other Russia. The managing director of the United Civil Front, in turn, said that the organization would consider suing Berezovsky over these allegations,{{citation needed|date=March 2023}} but the lawsuit has never been brought before the court. | |||
After his self-exile, prosecutors in Russia had accused Berezovsky of a host of crimes, including ] and preparing a violent overthrow of Putin's government. Berezovsky denies all the allegations.<ref name=finn/> On ], ], a trial '']'' began in Moscow. Berezovsky is accused of ] money from the Russian airline carrier ] in the 1990s.<ref>, '']'', ], ].</ref> | |||
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office had launched a criminal investigation against Berezovsky to determine whether his comments could be considered a "seizure of power by force", as outlined in the ]. If convicted, an offender faces up to twenty years imprisonment. The ] denounced Berezovsky's statements, warning him that his status of a political refugee might be reconsidered, should he continue to make similar remarks. Furthermore, ] had announced that it would investigate whether Berezovsky's statements violated the law.<ref> {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070430081549/http://www.kommersant.com/p-10534/Berezovsky/ |date=30 April 2007}}, '']'', 14 April 2007</ref><ref>, '']'' (London), 14 April 2007</ref> However, in the following July, the ] announced that Berezovsky would not face charges in the UK for his comments. Kremlin officials called it a "disturbing moment" in ].<ref>, '']'' (London), 20 March 2008</ref> | |||
===Allegations of handling and money laundering=== | |||
===Involvement in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election=== | |||
Boris Berezovsky has been investigated by the Swiss financial authorities since 1999 for ] and membership of a criminal organization. In 2003, the Swiss Bundesanwaltschaft started a criminal case against Berezovsky and, amongst others, ], for money laundering through the Swiss firms Ovaco AG, situated at the Monbijoustrasse in ], and Anros SA in the ] World Trade Center. <ref>, article by Daniel Ammann in the ''Weltwoche'', Switzerland, 2003. </ref> Berezovsky claimed the proceedings were motivated by ]. <ref>, ''20 Minuten'', Switzerland, 2006. </ref> In December 2006, as news broke of the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the Bundesanwaltschaft announced that its investigations against Boris Berezovsky were still continuing. | |||
In September 2005, the former president of Ukraine, ], accused Berezovsky of having financed ]'s ] campaign, and provided copies of documents showing money transfers from companies he claimed were controlled by Berezovsky to companies controlled by Yuschenko's official backers.<ref name=TJTBmonOR/> Berezovsky claimed that he met Yushchenko's representatives in London before the election, and that the money was transferred from his companies, but he declined to confirm or deny that the companies that received the money were used in Yushchenko's campaign. Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine.{{citation needed|date=February 2020}} In November 2005, Berezovsky also claimed he had heavily financed Ukraine's ] (that had followed the presidential election).<ref>{{cite news |last=Osborn |first=Andrew |date=12 November 2005 |title=Berezovsky 'funded revolution' |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/berezovsky-funded-revolution-514948.html |newspaper=The Independent |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> In September 2007, Berezovsky launched lawsuits against two Ukrainian politicians, ], a former presidential aid, and David Zhvaniya, a former emergencies minister.<ref name=UNIAN>, ], 3 September 2007</ref> Berezovsky was suing the men for nearly US$23 million, accusing them of misusing the money he had allocated in 2004 to fund the Orange Revolution.<ref name=UNIAN /> Yushchenko has denied Berezovsky financed his election campaign.<ref name=TJTBmonOR>, ] (19 September 2005)</ref> | |||
Berezovsky called on Ukrainian business to support Yushchenko in the ] of January 2010 as a guarantor of ] of property redistribution after the election.<ref name=welcome> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110131213611/http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/54792/ |date=31 January 2011 }}, ] (10 December 2009)</ref> On 10 December 2009, the ] ] stated that if the ] requested it, Berezovsky would be detained upon arriving in Ukraine.<ref name=welcome/> | |||
On ], ], a ]ian judge issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky and a number of other British and Brazilian suspects in connection with an investigation against the Media Sports Investments group, which is suspected of money laundering.<ref>, ''The Guardian'', ], ].</ref> Berezovsky is accused of being the main financial backer of MSI. Since Berezovsky, Iranian-born ] and ] were not in Brazil at the time, warrants for their arrest were forwarded to ]. Berezovsky dismissed the Brazilian investigation as a part of the Kremlin's "politicized campaign" against him.<ref>, ], ], ].</ref> | |||
In February 2012, in an interview for the independent Russian ] channel Berezovsky reiterated that he had personally provided approximately $50 million to the ]. {{Interlanguage link|Давид Важаевич Жвания|lt=David Zhvania|ru}} ({{Langx|ru|Давид Важаевич Жвания}}) and ] were among the ones who allegedly received money.<ref>{{Citation|title=Борис Березовский: "Я считаю, что Навальный - герой"| date=2 February 2012 |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPsKrjGHf60 |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/youtube/20211221/kPsKrjGHf60 |archive-date=2021-12-21 |url-status=live|language=en|access-date=2021-07-15}}{{cbignore}}</ref> | |||
In ], the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General announced that the ] tax police had visited Moscow in connection with a ] and money laudering case involving Berezovsky. As Russian media were claiming <ref>, ''Kommersant'', ], ].</ref> that a criminal case had been initiated against Berezovsky in the Netherlands on a charge of money laundering, the Dutch prosecuting office or "Openbaar Ministerie" hastened to announce that Boris Berezovsky was not the object of any criminal investigation in the Netherlands and Berezovsky responded by saying that he had no business in the Netherlands. Several Dutch newspapers counterclaimed that the name Boris Berezovsky was in fact mentioned in the handling and money laundering dossier <ref>, ''Haarlems dagblad'', ], ]. </ref>, to which the Dutch prosecution officers in function refused to comment. | |||
===''Persona non-grata'' in Latvia since October 2005=== | |||
In October 2005, Latvian Prime Minister ] signed a decree placing Berezovsky on the list of '']''. The exact reasons for blacklisting Berezovsky were not disclosed. Kalvitis called Berezovsky a "threat" to national security. Previously, the National Security Council of Latvia took the decision to recommend that Berezovsky be barred from travelling to Latvia. The decision to bar the one-time Russian oligarch came swiftly after Berezovsky's trip to ] in September 2005.<ref name=latvia>, by Aaron Eglitis, baltictimes.com, 26 October 2005</ref> Berezovsky was in Riga along with Neil Bush to discuss a project with Latvian businessmen.<ref name=latvia2>, baltictimes.com, 9 September 2005</ref> | |||
The ] quoted Berezovsky saying that he believes Latvia's decision to declare him ''persona non-grata'' was the result of intense pressure by Russia and structures linked with ], the US business magnate who had had acrimonious relations with Berezovsky. Kalvitis however denied the theory that the banning came on pressure from the ] or the ].<ref name=latvia3>, baltictimes.com, 26 October 2005</ref> | |||
==Alleged assassination attempts in London== | |||
===Alleged 2003 plot=== | |||
According to ], a Russian ] (FSB) officer in London was preparing to assassinate Berezovsky with a ] in September 2003. This alleged plot was reported to British police.<ref name="dissident">] and Marina Litvinenko. '']: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB'', The Free Press (2007) {{ISBN|1-4165-5165-4}}</ref> ], then a ] Minister, said that inquiries made were "unable to either substantiate this information or find evidence of any criminal offences having been committed".<ref>, ], 13 January 2004</ref> | |||
===Alleged 2007 plot=== | |||
In June 2007, Berezovsky said he fled Britain on the advice of ], amid reports that he was the target of an assassination attempt by a suspected Russian ]. On 18 July 2007, the British ] '']'' reported that the alleged would-be assassin was captured by the police at the ] in ].<ref name="foil">{{dead link|date=September 2024|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}, '']'', 18 July 2007</ref><ref name=ooo>, ], 18 July 2007</ref> They reported that the suspect, arrested by the anti-terrorist police after being tracked for a week by ], was ] back to Russia when no weapons were found and there was not enough evidence to charge him with any offence. In addition, they said British police placed a squad of uniformed officers around ]'s house in north London, and also phoned Litvinenko's widow, Marina, to urge her to take greater security precautions.<ref name="Doward">{{cite news |last=Doward |first=Jamie |date=22 July 2007 |title=Police feared assassination for two Russian dissidents |url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/jul/22/russia.world |newspaper=] |location=London |access-date=3 January 2015}}</ref> | |||
Berezovsky again accused Vladimir Putin of being behind a plot to assassinate him. The Kremlin had denied similar claims in the past.<ref name="police"> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070824130508/http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/07/19/001.html |date=24 August 2007}}, '']'', 19 July 2007</ref> | |||
According to the interview given by a high-ranking British security official on ] in July 2008, the alleged Russian agent, known as "A", was of Chechen nationality.<ref>{{in lang|pl}} {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080711195927/http://www.tvn24.pl/12691,1556489,0,1,rosjanie-to-nie-my-zabilismy-litwinienke,wiadomosc.html |date=11 July 2008 }}, ], 8 July 2008</ref> He was identified by ''Kommersant'' as the Chechen ] Movladi Atlangeriyev; after returning to Russia, Atlangeriyev was ] in January 2008 by unknown men in Moscow.<ref> {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081122041852/http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/600/42/368821.htm |date=22 November 2008}}, '']'', 9 July 2008</ref> | |||
==Death of friends and associates in London== | |||
===Death of Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006=== | |||
<!-- Image with inadequate rationale removed: ]]] --> | |||
{{Main|Alexander Litvinenko poisoning}} | |||
], one of Berezovsky's closest associates, was murdered in London in November 2006 with a rare radioactive poison, ]. The British authorities charged a former ] officer and head of security at ORT, ], with the murder and requested his extradition, which Russia refused.<ref> {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151018131218/http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/07/05/russia-britain-litvinenko-idUSL0536765420070705 |date=18 October 2015 }} ] 5 July 2007</ref> Several Russian diplomats were expelled from the UK over the case.<ref> '']'' (London), 17 July 2007</ref> The UK government has not publicly expressed a view on the matter, but allegations that the murder was sponsored by the Russian state have been expressed by "sources in the UK government", according to the ],<ref> ] 7 July 2008</ref> and by officials of the US Department of State, as revealed by ];<ref>{{cite news |last=Harding |first=Luke |title=WikiLeaks cables: Alexander Litvinenko murder 'probably had Putin's OK' |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cables-alexander-litvinenko-murder |work=The Guardian |location=London |date=1 December 2010}}</ref> they were reflected in a 2008 resolution by the US Congress.<ref> '']'', 1 April 2008, Page H1839–H1841.</ref> The intricate details of the murder, the relationship between Litvinenko and Berezosvsky, and the implications of the case have been described in the 2007 book, ''Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB'' by ] with ].<ref name="Goldfarb A 2007 1–369">{{cite book|last=Goldfarb A|first=Litvinenko M|title=Death of a Dissident – The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB|year=2007|publisher=Free Press|isbn=978-1416551652|pages=|url=https://archive.org/details/deathofdissident00gold/page/1}}</ref> | |||
An alternative, more dubious narrative – that the murder was orchestrated by Berezovsky and his associate Alex Goldfarb with the aim of "framing" the Russian government and discrediting it on the global stage – has aired in Russian state-funded media<ref> '']'', 29 November 2006</ref> by Lugovoy,{{citation needed|date=February 2020}} by Litvinenko's Italy-based father,{{citation needed|date=February 2020}} by Nikita Chekulin<ref>{{cite book |last1=Chekulin |first1=Nikita |script-title=ru:Березовский - не своя игра |date=2011 |publisher=Издательский дом "Питер" |script-chapter=ru:Факты из жизни и смерти Александра Литвиненко в Лондоне, мои переводы его встреч с МИ5 |isbn=978-5-4237-0203-8 |url=https://www.e-reading.club/chapter.php/1001383/7/Chekulin_Nikita_-_Berezovskiy_-_ne_svoya_igra.html|language=ru |via=e-reading.club}}</ref> and by Russian officials.<ref> '']'' 10 December 2006</ref> Berezovsky won a UK libel suit against Russian State Television over these allegations in 2010 (see above), following which he commented, "I trust the conclusions of the British investigators that the trail leads to Russia and I hope that one day justice will prevail."<ref name="news.bbc.co.uk" /> | |||
===Death of Badri Patarkatsishvili in February 2008=== | |||
In the evening of Tuesday, 12 February 2008, ]'s richest man, billionaire ], a close friend and long-time ] of Berezovsky, collapsed and died in his bedroom after a family dinner at Downside Manor, his ] in ], ], England, at the age of 52.<ref name="Downside Manor 1">, ''Vanity Fair'', 30 September 2009</ref> | |||
Patarkatsishvili, who as a presidential candidate had also been campaigning to oust Georgia's President ], spent his last day in the ] office of international law firm ]. He was preparing along with his ] ] ] and fellow exiles, the Russians ] and Yuli Dubov. Shortly after dining at Downside Manor, Patarkatsishvili told his family he felt unwell and went upstairs to his bedroom where he was found unconscious after a ].<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.kommersant.com/p852637/r_538/Badri_Patarkatsishvili_died_in_London_this_Wednesday |title=Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Death Too Strange & Sudden - Kommersant Moscow<!-- Bot generated title --> |access-date=3 January 2016 |archive-date=6 January 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160106021133/http://www.kommersant.com/p852637/r_538/Badri_Patarkatsishvili_died_in_London_this_Wednesday |url-status=dead }}</ref> Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful.<ref name="Downside Manor 2">{{cite web|url=https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/02/15/georgian-billionaire-badri-patarkatsishvili-had-severe-heart-disease-inquest-hears-89520-20320519/ |title=Georgian billionaire Badri Patarkatsishvili had severe heart disease, inquest hears - Mirror.co.uk |website=] |access-date=3 January 2016 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080218090027/http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/02/15/georgian-billionaire-badri-patarkatsishvili-had-severe-heart-disease-inquest-hears-89520-20320519/ |archive-date=18 February 2008}}, ''Daily Mirror'', 15 February 2008</ref> As in any other case of unexpected death, ] treated the case as "suspicious" and launched an official investigation.<ref>{{cite news |title=Georgia tycoon death 'suspicious' |work=BBC News |date=13 February 2008 |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7242234.stm |access-date=13 February 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080217233911/http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7242234.stm|archive-date=17 February 2008 |url-status=live}}</ref> Preliminary reports indicated a heart attack as the cause of death. | |||
Berezovsky described the death of his closest friend as "a terrible tragedy".<ref name="Downside Manor 4">{{Cite journal|title=I am a target: police probe death of billionaire who warned of assassination|author=Robert Booth |date=14 February 2008|journal=]|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/feb/14/georgia.ukcrime }}</ref> | |||
==Death== | |||
] in 2016]] | |||
On 23 March 2013, Berezovsky was found dead at his home,<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boris-berezovsky-inquest-mystery-fingerprint-3288908|title=Boris Berezovsky inquest: Mystery fingerprint found in bathroom where Russian oligarch's body was discovered|last=Stretch|first=Euan|date=26 March 2014|website=mirror|access-date=2019-10-24}}</ref> Titness Park, at Sunninghill, near ] in ].<ref name="Guard23">{{cite news |author=Cobain |first1=Ian |last2=Townsend |first2=Mark |last3=Goodley |first3=Simon |last4=Amos |first4=Howard |last5=Elder |first5=Miriam |date=23 Mar 2013 |title=Boris Berezovsky found dead at his Berkshire home |newspaper=The Guardian |location=London |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/23/boris-berezovsky-found-dead-berkshire-home |url-status=live |access-date=3 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230714185641/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/23/boris-berezovsky-found-dead-berkshire-home |archive-date=14 July 2023 }}</ref> His body was found by a bodyguard in a locked bathroom, with a ligature around his neck.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21963080 |work=BBC News |title=Boris Berezovsky 'found with ligature around his neck' |date=28 March 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|title=Boris Berezovsky: 'My friend Boris would not have taken his own life'|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9962460/Boris-Berezovsky-My-friend-Boris-would-not-have-taken-his-own-life.html |location=London |work=The Daily Telegraph|first1=Patrick|last1=Sawer|first2=Tom|last2=Parfitt|date=31 March 2013}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/25/world/europe/europe-berezovsky-death/ |title=Russian tycoon's death 'consistent with hanging' |first=Matt |last=Smith |author2=Holly Yan |work=CNN |date=25 March 2013 |access-date=25 March 2011}}</ref> | |||
His death was announced in a post on Facebook, by his son-in-law. Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer who had represented Berezovsky, wrote that he may have committed suicide,<ref>{{cite news|title=Russian Oligarch and Sharp Critic of Putin Dies in London|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/world/europe/boris-a-berezovsky-a-putin-critic-dies-at-67.html|work=The New York Times|access-date=23 March 2013|first=David M.|last=Herszenhorn|date=23 March 2013}}</ref> adding that Berezovsky had fallen into debt after losing the lawsuit against Abramovich, and had spent the final few months of his life selling his possessions to cover his court costs.<ref name="cbrn investigate">{{cite news|title=UK police probe death of Russian oligarch Berezovsky|url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-24/russian-oligarch-boris-berezovsky-dies/4590756|work=ABC News|publisher=]|date=24 March 2013|access-date=24 March 2013}}</ref> Berezovsky was also said to have recently been depressed and to have isolated himself from friends.<ref name="gazeta depressed">{{cite journal|title=Умер Борис Березовский|date=23 March 2013|url=http://www.gazeta.ru/business/news/2013/03/23/n_2814141.shtml|journal=Gazeta.ru}}</ref><ref name="BBC depression">{{cite news|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21913356|title=Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky found dead|work=BBC News|date=23 March 2013|access-date=23 March 2013}}</ref> He reportedly suffered from depression and was taking antidepressant drugs; a day prior to his death he told a reporter in London that he had nothing left to live for.<ref name="behar-klebnikov">{{cite news|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/03/24/did-boris-berezovsky-kill-himself-more-compelling-did-he-kill-forbes-editor-paul-klebnikov/? |title=Did Boris Berezovsky Kill Himself? More Compelling, Did He Kill Forbes Editor Paul Klebnikov |first=Richard |last=Behar |work=Forbes |date=24 March 2013 |access-date=23 May 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130523104111/http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/03/24/did-boris-berezovsky-kill-himself-more-compelling-did-he-kill-forbes-editor-paul-klebnikov/ |archive-date=23 May 2013 }}</ref> | |||
The ] classified his death as "unexplained" and launched a formal investigation into the circumstances behind it. Specialists in ] were deployed to Berezovsky's home as a "precaution".<ref name="cbrn investigate"/> These specialists later "found nothing of concern".<ref>{{cite news|title=No radiation found in Berezovsky home |url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-24/police-find-27nothing27-in-radiation-search-of-berezovsky-home/4591558 |work=] |date=25 March 2013 |access-date=25 March 2013}}</ref> | |||
Berezovsky was buried on 8 May 2013 in a private ceremony at ] in ]. The burial timing had been changed on several occasions to try to avoid interest from the Russian media.<ref>{{cite news|last=Finnerty |first=Joe |date=10 May 2013 |title=Russian tycoon buried at Brookwood Cemetery |url=http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/russian-tycoon-buried-brookwood-cemetery-4721731 |newspaper=] |location=Guildford |access-date=11 November 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160106021133/http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/local-news/russian-tycoon-buried-brookwood-cemetery-4721731 |archive-date= 6 January 2016 }}</ref> | |||
A post-mortem examination carried out by the Home Office pathologist found the cause of death was consistent with hanging and there was nothing pointing to a violent struggle.<ref name="bdc">{{cite news|title=Berezovsky death consistent with hanging: police|url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-russia-berezovsky-postmortem-idUSBRE92O12320130325|work=Reuters|access-date=26 March 2013|date=25 March 2013|archive-date=26 March 2013|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130326011214/http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/25/us-britain-russia-berezovsky-postmortem-idUSBRE92O12320130325|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="ap-post-mortem">{{cite news|title=Post-mortem shows Russian tycoon died from hanging |url=http://bigstory.ap.org/article/post-mortem-shows-russian-tycoon-died-hanging |agency=Associated Press |access-date=26 March 2013 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130328102213/http://bigstory.ap.org/article/post-mortem-shows-russian-tycoon-died-hanging |archive-date=28 March 2013 }}</ref> At the March 2014 inquest into the death, however, Berezovsky's daughter Elizaveta introduced a report by German pathologist ], with whom she had shared the autopsy photos, noting that the ] mark on her father's neck was circular rather than V-shaped as is commonly the case with hanging victims, and called the coroner's attention to a statement by one of the responding paramedics who found it strange that Berezovsky's face was purple, rather than pale as hanging victims usually are. The body also had a fresh wound on the back of the head and a fractured rib (injuries police believed Berezovsky could have suffered in the process of falling as he hanged himself). An unidentified fingerprint was found near the body, and one paramedic's radiation alarm sounded as they entered the house.<ref name="Telegraph inquest story">{{cite news|last=Duffin|first=Claire|title=Billionaire critic of Putin may have been murdered, rules coroner|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/10728908/Billionaire-critic-of-Putin-may-have-been-murdered-rules-coroner.html |newspaper=]|date=28 March 2014|access-date=18 June 2017}}</ref> Pathologist ] said that he did not believe that the marks on Berezovsky's neck were a result of hanging.<ref>{{cite news |title=Boris Berezovsky inquest: Tycoon 'feared he had been poisoned' |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-26764343 |access-date=6 July 2024 |work=BBC News |date=27 March 2014}}</ref> Following the inquest the coroner, Peter Bedford, recorded an open verdict commenting, "I am not saying Mr Berezovsky took his own life, I am not saying Mr Berezovsky was unlawfully killed. What I am saying is that the burden of proof sets such a high standard it is impossible for me to say."<ref>{{cite news |title=Boris Berezovsky inquest: Coroner records open verdict |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-berkshire-26778866 |access-date=6 July 2024 |work=BBC News |date=27 March 2014}}</ref> | |||
===Apology to Putin=== | |||
After Berezovsky's death, a spokesman for President Putin reported that Berezovsky had sent a letter to the Russian president, asking for permission to return to Russia and asking "forgiveness for his mistakes".<ref>{{Cite web |date=2013-03-26 |title=Berezovsky was 'down' but wouldn't bow to Putin: allies |url=https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/03/26/world/berezovsky-was-down-but-wouldnt-bow-to-putin-allies/ |access-date=2023-03-25 |website=The Japan Times |agency=Associated Press}}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/23/boris-berezovsky-found-dead-berkshire-home |first1=Ian |last1=Cobain |first2=Mark |last2=Townsend |first3=Simon |last3=Goodley |first4=Howard |last4=Amos |first5=Miriam |last5=Elder |title=Boris Berezovsky found dead at his Berkshire home |work=] |date=23 March 2013 |access-date=6 April 2023}}</ref> Some of Berezovsky's associates doubted the letter's existence, claiming that it was out of character. However, his girlfriend at the time, Katerina Sabirova, later confirmed in an interview that he did in fact send the letter:<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/9966671/Boris-Berezovsky-sought-Putins-permission-to-return-to-Moscow.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130407045435/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/russia/9966671/Boris-Berezovsky-sought-Putins-permission-to-return-to-Moscow.html |archive-date=2013-04-07 |title=Boris Berezovsky 'sought Putin's permission' to return to Moscow |work=] |date=2 April 2013 |first=Tom |last=Parfitt |access-date=6 April 2023}}</ref> | |||
{{blockquote|I said that they will publish it and you will look bad. And that it won't help. He answered that it was all the same to him, that in any case all sins were blamed on him and that this was his only chance.}} | |||
It was claimed by anonymous sources that rival Roman Abramovich delivered the letter to Putin personally, having received an apology from Berezovsky himself. Both Putin's chief of staff, ], and Abramovich's spokesman alluded to the letter being passed by a "certain person", but did not go into details due to the personal nature of the issue.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9970193/Roman-Abramovich-passed-Boris-Berezovsky-apology-to-Vladimir-Putin.html |first=Tom |last=Parfitt |date=3 April 2013 |title=Roman Abramovich 'passed Boris Berezovsky apology to Vladimir Putin |work=] |access-date=6 April 2023}}</ref> | |||
==Publications by Berezovsky== | |||
Berezovsky was a ] and author of many academic papers and studies such as "Binary relations in multi-criteria optimizations" and "Multi-criteria optimization: mathematical aspects". In the mathematical review index MathSciNet, B. A. Berezovsky is credited with 16 publications from 1975 to 1989 on operations research and mathematical programming, earning 9 citations in other publications. Most cited is the book ''The Problem of Optimal Choice'' with A. V. Gnedin (Nauka, Moscow 1984), devoted to ]s. | |||
Aside from his academic publications, he frequently authored articles and gave interviews; these are collected in ''The Art of the Impossible'' (3 volumes). He continued to contribute articles while in exile, taking a highly critical view of Russia's political leaders.<ref name="Plotting" /><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=12973 |newspaper=The St. Petersburg Times |title=Oligarchs as Nation's Saviors? Berezovsky Justifies Himself |date=20 October 2000 |access-date=17 October 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121022063253/http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=12973 |archive-date=22 October 2012 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news|author=Berezovsky, Boris|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3598544/The-West-should-realise-that-Putin-is-becoming-a-dictator.html |title=The West should realise that Putin is becoming a dictator |work=The Daily Telegraph |access-date=17 October 2011 |location=London |date=6 November 2003}}</ref><ref>{{cite news|author=Berezovsky, Boris |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3639898/Why-modern-Russia-is-a-state-of-denial.html |title=Why modern Russia is a state of denial |work=The Daily Telegraph |access-date=17 October 2011 |location=London |date=15 May 2007}}</ref> | |||
==Works about Berezovsky== | |||
In 1996, the Russian-American journalist ] wrote a highly critical article entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?"<ref name="Godfather">{{cite magazine |url=https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1996/1230/5815090a.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050108155721/http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1996/1230/5815090a.html |archive-date=2005-01-08 |title=Godfather of the Kremlin? |magazine=Forbes |date=30 December 1996 |access-date=6 April 2023}}</ref> on Berezovsky and the state of Russia more generally, in response to which Berezovsky sued '']'' in the UK;<ref name="Godfather"/>{{rp|7}} in 2001, he expanded his article into a book entitled ''Godfather of the Kremlin'', alternatively subtitled ''The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism'' and ''Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia''.<ref name="Klebnikov_looting">{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/godfatherofkreml00kleb|url-access=registration|title=Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia |first=Paul |last=Klebnikov |publisher=Harcourt |date=2000|isbn=9780151006212 |access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref><ref name="Klebnikov_decline">{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Rj1FDe5IevYC |title=Godfather of the Kremlin: The decline of Russia in the age of gangster capitalism |author=Paul Klebnikov |publisher=Harcourt |date=2000|isbn=9780156013307 |access-date=6 April 2023}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.economist.com/node/2921517 |title=Obituary: Paul Klebnikov |magazine=The Economist |date=15 July 2004 |access-date=6 April 2023}}</ref> On 9 July 2004, while leaving the ''Forbes'' office in Moscow, unknown assailants fired at Klebnikov from a slowly moving car. He was shot four times and died later in hospital. The same day Berezovsky, in the words of investigative journalist ], "whipped out his tongue from its holster and publicly called the 41-year-old editor of Forbes Russia 'a dishonest reporter{{'"}}.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/03/24/did-boris-berezovsky-kill-himself-more-compelling-did-he-kill-forbes-editor-paul-klebnikov/ |title=Did Boris Berezovsky Kill Himself? More Compelling, Did He Kill Forbes Editor Paul Klebnikov? |first=Richard |last=Behar |magazine=Forbes |date=24 March 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130523104111/http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/03/24/did-boris-berezovsky-kill-himself-more-compelling-did-he-kill-forbes-editor-paul-klebnikov/ |access-date=6 April 2023|archive-date=23 May 2013 }}</ref> The books ''Secret Diary of a Russian Oligarch'' and ''How to get rid of an Oligarch or Who Beat Berezovsky'' by Sasha Nerozina (friend of the Berezovsky family and a spokeswoman of Berezovsky's wife Galina) were published in Russia and other former Soviet states in 2013 and 2014 by Olma Media Publishing House. | |||
Yuli Dubov, a close business associate of Berezovsky, wrote a novel based on Berezovsky's life which provided the basis for the 2002 film ]. Like Berezovsky, he fled to London and successfully fought extradition to Russia.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3177832.stm |title=Tycoons' asylum angers Moscow |last=Rainsford |first=Sarah |work=BBC News |date=9 October 2003 |access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/detail/2567877|title=Britain Grants Political Asylum To Russian Fugitive Yuli Dubov | 2567877|publisher=Getty Images |date=7 October 2003|access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref> Judge ] of ] in central London dropped extradition proceedings against Yuly Dubov in October 2003.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/tmt/235394.html |title=After Berezovsky, Dubov Granted Asylum in U.K. |last=Wagner |first=Thomas |work=The Moscow Times |date=8 October 2003|access-date=25 December 2015}}</ref> | |||
Alex Goldfarb, a microbiologist and activist who became acquainted with Berezovsky in the 1990s and later worked for him, provides snapshots of Berezovsky at crucial moments as background to his 2007 account of the Litvinenko murder case, co-written with Marina Litvinenko, '']''.<ref name="Goldfarb" /> ] of '']'' wrote ''The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia'', which provides a comparative treatment of Berezovsky and several of his fellow so-called ].<ref>{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f-vU59IvHmAC|title=The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia |first=David |last=Hoffman |publisher=PublicAffairs |date=2011 |isbn=9781610391115 |access-date=17 October 2011}}</ref> Ben Mezrich wrote ''Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs—A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder'', which provides a comparative narrative of Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich through their careers, friendship, and ultimate rivalry.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://books.simonandschuster.com/Once-Upon-a-Time-in-Russia/Ben-Mezrich/9781476771892 |title=Once Upon a Time in Russia The Rise of the Oligarchs—A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder |date=2 June 2015 |publisher=Simon & Schuster |isbn=9781442387188 |access-date=3 September 2015}}</ref> | |||
In 2017, the Russian book ''The age of Berezovsky'' (also known as ''The time of Berezovsky'') was published by Corpus (an ] of ]), in which ] – a friend of Berezovsky – interviewed various people who were close to Berezovsky at different times, including Leonid Boguslavsky, Yuli Dubov, Galina Besharova, Yelena Gorbunova, ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ] and ]. In the book Aven made an opinion that Berezovsky "played a particularly important role in two episodes of new Russian history: the 1996 | |||
election and the struggle against Primakov and Luzhkov in | |||
1999".<ref>{{cite book |publisher=Corpus |url=https://www.corpus.ru/products/petr-aven-vremja-berezovskogo.htm |first=Petr |last=Aven |script-title=ru:Время Березовского |trans-title=Time of Berezovsky |year=2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |work=Stunning Viral |url=http://www.stunningviral.com/creative/just-a-dirty-game-the-chapter-from-the-book-of-peter-aven-time-of-berezovsky/ |title=Just a dirty game: the chapter from the book of Peter Aven 'Time of Berezovsky' |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180129004413/http://www.stunningviral.com/creative/just-a-dirty-game-the-chapter-from-the-book-of-peter-aven-time-of-berezovsky/ |archive-date=2018-01-29 |date=29 January 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book| script-title=ru:"Время Березовского"| trans-title=The age of Berezovsky| url=https://petr-aven-books.com/| format=Text online| language=en| publisher=Corpus| year=2017| access-date=14 March 2024}}</ref> | |||
A documentary about Berezovsky's efforts to undermine Putin from his exile in UK was shown on BBC Two in December 2005.<ref>{{cite news |first=Nancy |last=Banks-Smith |url=https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/dec/09/broadcasting.tvandradio |title=Last night's TV: Russian Godfathers |work=The Guardian |location=London |access-date=6 April 2023 |date=9 December 2005}}</ref> | |||
Berezovsky features in a painting by the Russian artist ], displayed in Moscow's Ilya Glazunov Gallery. According to the Rough Guide, "''The Market of Our Democracy'' shows Yeltsin waving a conductor's baton as two lesbians kiss and the oligarch Berezovsky flaunts a sign reading 'I will buy Russia', while charlatans rob a crowd of refugees and starving children."<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.roughguides.com/travel/europe/russia/moscow/the-beliy-gorod/the-glazunov-gallery.aspx |title=The Glazunov Gallery – Sights in Moscow |publisher=Rough Guides |access-date=17 October 2011 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111113160313/http://www.roughguides.com/travel/europe/russia/moscow/the-beliy-gorod/the-glazunov-gallery.aspx |archive-date=13 November 2011}}</ref> | |||
Berezovsky also features as a character in the opera '']'' by Alexander Woolf to a libretto by ], which was premiered in July 2021 at ].<ref>Grange Park Opera (2021), "The Spaced Season: Programme Book 2021" (Handbook for 2021 season). p. 91</ref>{{better source needed|reason=hard to verify an ephemeral source such as a theatre programme|date=April 2023}} | |||
] premiered at the ] in ], London, in May 2022, following the life of Berezovsky from the president's inner circle to public enemy number one. ] played Berezovsky. The play was written by ] and directed by ]. It played a limited run from 2 July 2022 until 20 August.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Patriots |url=https://almeida.co.uk/whats-on/patriots/2-jul-2022-20-aug-2022 |access-date=2022-05-25 |website=Almeida Theatre}}</ref> It transferred to the West End in 2023.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Patriots the Play |url=https://patriotstheplay.com/ |access-date=2023-08-10 |website= |language=en-GB}}</ref> | |||
In the 2022 ] miniseries '']'', Berezovsky was portrayed by Nikolai Tsankov.<ref>{{cite web |title=When is David Tennant's Litvinenko drama out and who else is in the cast? |url=https://metro.co.uk/2022/12/18/when-is-david-tennants-litvinenko-out-and-who-else-is-in-the-cast-17911525/ |website=] |access-date=6 August 2023 |date=18 December 2022}}</ref> | |||
==See also== | ==See also== | ||
{{portal|Biography|Business and economics|Russia|United Kingdom}} | |||
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==References== | ==References== | ||
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==External links== | |||
{{wikiquote|Boris Berezovsky}} | |||
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* Berezovsky, Boris (2004). | |||
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Latest revision as of 03:42, 17 November 2024
Russian businessman (1946–2013) For pianist, see Boris Berezovsky (pianist). In this name that follows Eastern Slavic naming customs, the patronymic is Abramovich and the family name is Berezovsky.
Boris Berezovsky | |
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Борис Березовский | |
Born | (1946-01-23)23 January 1946 Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union |
Died | 23 March 2013(2013-03-23) (aged 67) Sunninghill, Berkshire, England |
Resting place | Brookwood Cemetery, Brookwood, Surrey, England 51°17′58″N 0°37′33″W / 51.299574°N 0.625846°W / 51.299574; -0.625846 (grave of B. Berezovsky) |
Other names | Platon Elenin |
Citizenship |
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Occupations |
|
Spouses |
|
Partner | Yelena Gorbunova (esp. 1996; sep. 2012) |
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (Russian: Борис Абрамович Березовский; 23 January 1946 – 23 March 2013), also known as Platon Elenin, was a Russian business oligarch, government official, engineer and mathematician and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He had the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.
Berezovsky made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, when the country implemented privatization of state property. He profited from gaining control over assets, including the country's main television channel, Channel One. In 1997, Forbes estimated Berezovsky's wealth at US$3 billion. Berezovsky helped fund Unity, the political party that would form Vladimir Putin's first parliamentary base, and was elected to the Duma in the 1999 Russian legislative election. However, following the Russian presidential election in March 2000, Berezovsky went into opposition and resigned from the Duma. Berezovsky would remain a vocal critic of Putin for the rest of his life.
In late 2000, after the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General demanded that Berezovsky appear for questioning, he did not return from abroad and moved to the United Kingdom, which granted him political asylum in 2003. After he moved to Britain, the Russian government took over his television assets, and he divested from other Russian holdings. In Russia, Berezovsky was later convicted in absentia of fraud and embezzlement. The first charges had been brought during Primakov's government in 1999. Despite an Interpol Red Notice for Berezovsky's arrest, Russia repeatedly failed to obtain the extradition of Berezovsky from Britain; the situation became a major point of diplomatic tension between the two countries.
In 2012, Berezovsky lost a London High Court case he brought over the ownership of the major oil producer Sibneft, against Roman Abramovich, in which he sought over £3 billion in damages. The court concluded that Berezovsky had never been a co-owner of Sibneft.
Berezovsky was found dead in his home, Titness Park, at Sunninghill, near Ascot in Berkshire, on 23 March 2013. A post-mortem examination found that his death was consistent with hanging and that there were no signs of a violent struggle. However, the coroner at the inquest into Berezovsky's death later recorded an open verdict.
Early life, scientific research and engineering experience
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born in 1946, in Moscow, to Abram Markovich Berezovsky (1911–1979), a Jewish civil engineer in construction works, and his wife, Anna Aleksandrovna Gelman (22 November 1923 – 3 September 2013). He studied applied mathematics, receiving his doctorate in 1983. After graduating from the Moscow Forestry Engineering Institute in 1968, Berezovsky worked as an engineer from 1969 until 1987, serving as assistant research officer, research officer and finally the head of a department in the Institute of Control Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Berezovsky researched optimization and control theory, publishing 16 books and articles between 1975 and 1989.
Political and business career in Russia
Accumulation of wealth
Alexander Khinshtein (State Duma deputy, member of the United Russia faction) claimed that in 1979 Boris Berezovsky was detained by the OBKhSS authorities in Makhachkala (Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) for profiteering. In Khinshtein's opinion, Berezovsky has been a KGB officer since 1979.
In 1989, Berezovsky took advantage of the opportunities presented by perestroika to found LogoVAZ with Badri Patarkatsishvili and senior managers from Russian automobile manufacturer AvtoVAZ. LogoVAZ developed software for AvtoVAZ, sold Soviet-made cars and serviced foreign cars. The dealership profited from hyperinflation by taking cars on consignment and paying the producer at a later date when the money lost much of its value.
One of Berezovsky's early endeavors was All-Russia Automobile Alliance (AVVA), a venture fund he formed in 1993 with Alexander Voloshin (Boris Yeltsin's future Chief of Staff) and AvtoVAZ Chairman Vladimir Kadannikov. Berezovsky controlled about 30% of the company, which raised nearly US$50 million from small investors through a bonded loan to build a plant producing a "people's car". The project did not collect sufficient funds for the plant and the funds were instead invested into AvtoVAZ production, while the debt to investors was swapped for equity. By 2000, AVVA held about one-third of AvtoVAZ.
In 1994, Berezovsky was the target of a car bombing incident, but survived the assassination attempt, in which his driver was killed and he himself was injured. Alexander Litvinenko led the FSB investigation into the incident and linked the crime to the resistance of the Soviet-era AvtoVaz management to Berezovsky's growing influence in the Russian automobile market.
Berezovsky's involvement in the Russian media began in December 1994, when he gained control over ORT Television (see Channel One (Russia)) to replace the failing Soviet TV Channel 1. He appointed the popular anchorman and producer Vladislav Listyev as CEO of ORT. Three months later Listyev was assassinated amid a fierce struggle for control of advertising sales. Berezovsky was questioned in the police investigation, among many others, but the killers were never found.
Under Berezovsky's stewardship, ORT became a major asset of the reformist camp as they prepared to face Communists and nationalists in the upcoming presidential elections.
From 1995 to 1997, through the controversial loans-for-shares privatisation auctions, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili assisted Roman Abramovich in acquiring control of Sibneft, the sixth-largest Russian oil company, which constituted the bulk of his wealth. In an article in The Washington Post in 2000, Berezovsky revealed that financier George Soros declined an invitation to participate in the acquisition.
In 1995, he played a key role in a management reshuffle at Aeroflot and participated in its corporatization, with his close associate Nikolai Glushkov becoming Aeroflot's CFO. In January 1998, it was announced that Sibneft would merge with Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos to create the third-largest oil company in the world. The merger was abandoned five months later amid falling oil prices.
Role in Yeltsin's reelection in 1996
See also: Boris Yeltsin presidential campaign, 1996Berezovsky entered the Kremlin's inner circle in 1993 through arranging for the publication of Yeltsin's memoirs and befriended Valentin Yumashev, the President's ghost-writer.
In January 1996, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Berezovsky liaised with fellow oligarchs to form an alliance – which later became known as the "Davos Pact" – to bankroll Boris Yeltsin's campaign in the upcoming presidential elections. On his return to Moscow, Berezovsky met and befriended Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin's daughter, According to a later profile by The Guardian, "Berezovsky masterminded the 1996 re-election of Boris Yeltsin... He and his billionaire friends coughed up £140 million for Yeltsin's campaign".
In the summer of 1996, Berezovsky had emerged as a key advisor to Yeltsin, allied with Anatoly Chubais, opposing a group of hardliners led by General Alexander Korzhakov. One night in June, in the drawing room of Club Logovaz, Berezovsky, Chubais and others plotted the ouster of Korzhakov and other hardliners. On 20 June 1996, Yeltsin fired Korzhakov and two other hawks, leaving the reformers' team in full control of the Kremlin. Firing them was controversial though, as Korzhakov a few days before caught two of Yeltsin's campaign organizers carrying US$500,000 cash without invoices out of the presidential administration building.
On 16 June 1996, Yeltsin came first in the first round of elections after forging a tactical alliance with Gen. Alexander Lebed, who finished third. On 3 July, in the runoff vote, he beat the Communist Gennady Zyuganov. His victory was due largely to the support of the TV networks controlled by Gusinsky and Berezovsky (NTV and ORT) and the money from the business elite. The New York Times called Berezovsky the "public spokesman and chief lobbyist for this new elite, which moved from the shadows to respectability in a few short years".
Role in Chechen conflict
On 17 October 1996, Yeltsin dismissed General Alexander Lebed from the position of National Security Advisor amid allegations that he was plotting a coup and secretly mustering a private army. Lebed promptly accused Berezovsky and Gusinsky of engineering his ouster, and formed a coalition with the disgraced General Alexander Korzhakov. The dismissal of Lebed, the architect of the Khasavyurt peace accord, left Yeltsin's Chechen policy in limbo. On 30 October 1996, in a political bombshell, Yeltsin named Ivan Rybkin as his new National Security Advisor and appointed Berezovsky Deputy Secretary in charge of Chechnya with a mandate to oversee the implementation of the Khasavyurt Accord: that is, the withdrawal of Russian forces, the negotiation of a peace treaty, and the preparation of a general election. On 19 December 1996, Berezovsky made headlines by negotiating the release of 21 Russian policeman held hostage by the warlord Salman Raduev amid efforts by radicals from both sides to torpedo peace negotiations.
On 12 May 1997, Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed the Russian–Chechen Peace Treaty in the Kremlin. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Berezovsky outlined his priorities for the economic reconstruction of Chechnya, particularly the construction of a pipeline for transporting Azerbaijani oil. He called upon the Russian business community to contribute to the rebuilding of the republic, revealing his own donation of US$1 million (some sources mention US$2 million) for a cement factory in Grozny. This payment would come to haunt him years later, when he was accused of funding Chechen terrorists.
After his dismissal from the Security Council, Berezovsky vowed to continue his activities in Chechnya as a private individual and maintained contact with Chechen warlords. He was instrumental in the release of 69 hostages, including two Britons, Jon James and Camilla Carr, whom he flew in his private jet to RAF Brize Norton in September 1998. In an interview with Thomas de Waal in 2005, he revealed the involvement of the British Ambassador to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood, and explained that his former negotiations counterpart, the Islamic militant leader Movladi Udugov, helped arrange the Britons' release.
Berezovsky had a phone conversation with Movladi Udugov in the spring of 1999, six months before the beginning of fighting in Dagestan. A transcript of that conversation was leaked to a Moscow tabloid on 10 September 1999 and appeared to mention the would-be militants' invasion. It has been the subject of much speculation ever since. As Berezovsky explained later in interviews to de Waal and Goldfarb, Udugov proposed to coordinate the Islamists' incursion into Dagestan, so that a limited Russian response would topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish a new Islamic republic, which would be anti-American but friendly to Russia. Berezovsky said that he disliked the idea but reported Udugov's overture to prime-minister Stepashin. "Udugov and Basayev," he asserted, "conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov ... but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the Terek River. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war."
Battle with "Young Reformers"
In March 1997, Berezovsky and Tatyana Dyachenko flew to Nizhniy Novgorod to persuade the city's governor, Boris Nemtsov, to join Chubais' economic team, which became known as the government of Young Reformers. This was the last concerted political action of the "Davos Pact" (see above). Four months later the group split into two cliques fiercely competing for Yeltsin's favour. The clash was precipitated by the privatization auction of the communication utility Svyazinvest, in which Onexim bank of Chubais' loyalist Vladimir Potanin, backed by George Soros, competed with Gusinsky, allied with Spanish Telefónica. An initially commercial dispute swiftly developed into a contest of political wills between Chubais and Berezovsky.
Potanin's victory unleashed a bitter media war, in which ORT and NTV accused the Chubais group of fixing the auction in favor of Potanin, whereas Chubais charged Berezovsky with abusing his government position to advance his business interests. Both sides appealed to Yeltsin, who had proclaimed a new era of "fair" privatization "based on strict legislative rules and allowing no deviations". In the end, both sides lost. Berezovsky's media revealed a corrupt scheme whereby a publishing house owned by Onexim Bank paid Chubais and his group hefty advances for a book that was never written. The scandal led to a purge of Chubais' loyalists from the government. Chubais retaliated by persuading Yeltsin to dismiss Boris Berezovsky from the national security council. Berezovsky's service on the Security Council ended on 5 November 1997. Soros called the Berezovsky-Chubais clash a "historical event, in the reality of which I would have never believed, if I had not watched it myself. I saw a fight of the people in the boat floating towards the edge of a waterfall". He argued that the reformist camp never recovered from the wounds sustained in this struggle, setting the political stage for conservative nationalists, and eventually Vladimir Putin.
Philanthropy
In 1991, Berezovsky founded the "Triumph" award, bestowed upon outstanding Russian poets, musicians, artists, directors and ballet dancers.
It is reported in the documentary series Captive that Boris Berezovsky, in 1998, was effective in the release of two English aid workers who had been held hostage for ransom in Chechnya for 14 months
The Kremlin Family and Putin's rise to power
In the spring of 1998, Berezovsky made an unexpected political comeback, starting with his appointment, in April 1998, to the position of executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States. He emerged in the centre of a new informal power group – the "Family", a close-knit circle of advisers around Yeltsin, which included Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana and his chief of staff, Yumashev. It was rumoured that no important government appointment could happen without the Family's support. By 1999, the Family also included two of Berezovsky's associates, his former AVVA partner Alexander Voloshin, who replaced Yumashev as Yeltsin's chief of staff, and Roman Abramovich.
The principal concern of the Family was finding an "electable" successor to Yeltsin to counter the presidential aspirations of the then–prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, who was leaning to more statist positions. Political battles between the Family and Primakov's camp dominated the two last years of Yeltsin's presidency.
In November 1998, in a televised press conference, five officers of the FSB, led by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, revealed an alleged plot by their superiors to assassinate Berezovsky.
In April 1999, Russia's Prosecutor General, Yury Skuratov, opened an investigation into embezzlement at Aeroflot and issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky, who called the investigation politically motivated and orchestrated by Primakov. Nikolai Glushkov, Aeroflot's former General Director, later revealed that conflict with Primakov arose from the irritation that Berezovsky's management team caused in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, which Primakov headed before becoming prime minister, over firing of thousands of spies, who used Aeroflot as a front organization in Soviet times. The arrest warrant was dropped a week later, after Berezovsky submitted to questioning by the prosecutors. No charges were brought. Yeltsin sacked Primakov's government shortly thereafter and replaced him with Sergey Stepashin as new prime-minister.
Vyacheslav Aminov (Russian: Вячеслав Аминов) supported Berezovsky and headed Berezovsky's security service.
Vladimir Putin's meteoric rise from relative obscurity to the Russian presidency in the course of a few short months of 1999 has been attributed to his intimacy with the "Family" as a protege of Berezovsky and Yumashev. By the end of 1999, the Family had persuaded Yeltsin to name Putin his political successor and candidate for the presidency.
Berezovsky's acquaintance with Putin dated back to the early 1990s, when the latter, as Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg, helped Logovaz establish a car dealership. They enjoyed friendly relations; on occasion, Berezovsky took Putin skiing with him in Switzerland.
In February 1999, when Berezovsky's political standing looked uncertain because of his clash with Primakov over Aeroflot, Putin, then Director of the FSB, made a bold gesture of friendship by showing up at a birthday party for Berezovsky's wife. "I absolutely do not care what Primakov thinks of me", Putin told Berezovsky on that night. That was the beginning of their political alliance. According to the Times, Spanish police discovered that on up to five occasions in 1999, Putin had secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to Berezovsky.
In mid-July 1999, the Family dispatched Berezovsky to Biarritz, where Putin was vacationing, to persuade him to accept the position of prime minister and the role of heir apparent. On 9 August, Yeltsin sacked the government of Sergei Stepashin and appointed Putin prime minister, amid reports that Berezovsky had masterminded the reshuffle.
Putin's principal opponents were the former Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov and the Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, backed by the Fatherland-All Russia alliance. To counter this group in the Duma elections of 1999, Berezovsky was instrumental in the creation, within the space of a few months, of the Unity party, with no ideology other than its support for Putin. Later, he disclosed that the source of Unity's funding, with Putin's knowledge and consent, was Aeroflot. In the 1999 election, Berezovsky campaigned as a Putin loyalist and won a seat in the Duma, representing the North Caucasian republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia.
During the Duma election campaign Berezovsky's ORT TV served as an extremely effective propaganda machine for the Putin camp, using aggressive attack reporting and programming to denigrate and ridicule Putin's rivals, Primakov and Luzhkov, tactics strongly criticized as undue interference with the media. But Unity got a surprisingly high score in the elections, paving the way for Putin's election victory in spring 2000.
Conflict with Putin and emigration
Berezovsky's disagreements with Putin became public three weeks into Putin's presidency. On 8 May 2000, Berezovsky and Abramovich were spotted together at Putin's invitation-only inauguration ball in Moscow. However, on 31 May, Berezovsky sharply attacked the constitutional reform proposed by the president, which would give the Kremlin the right to dismiss elected governors. On 17 July 2000, Berezovsky resigned from the Duma, saying he "did not want to be involved in the country's ruin and the restoration of an authoritarian regime". In August, Berezovsky's media attacked Putin for the way he handled the sinking of the Kursk submarine, blaming the death of 118 sailors on the Kremlin's reluctance to accept foreign help. In September, Berezovsky alleged that the Kremlin had attempted to expropriate his shares in ORT and announced that he would put his stake into a trust to be controlled by prominent intellectuals.
In an article in The Washington Post in 2000, Berezovsky argued that in the absence of a strong civil society and middle class it may sometimes be necessary for capitalists "to interfere directly in the political process" of Russia as a counterweight to ex-Communists "who hate democracy and dream of regaining lost positions." Berezovsky took legal action against the journalist Paul Klebnikov, who accused him of various crimes. In October, in an interview in Le Figaro, Putin announced that he would no longer tolerate criticism of the government by media controlled by the oligarchs. "If necessary we will destroy those instruments that allow this blackmail", he declared. Responding to a question about Berezovsky, he warned that he had a "cudgel" in store for him. "The state has a cudgel in its hands that you use to hit just once, but on the head. We haven't used this cudgel yet. We've just brandished it... the day we get really angry, we won't hesitate to use it."
In the same month, Russian prosecutors revived the Aeroflot fraud investigation and Berezovsky was questioned as a witness. On 7 November 2000, Berezovsky, who was travelling abroad, failed to appear for further questioning and announced that he would not return to Russia because of what he described as "constantly intensifying pressure on me by the authorities and President Putin personally. Essentially," he said, "I'm being forced to choose whether to become a political prisoner or a political emigrant." Berezovsky claimed that Putin had made him a suspect in the Aeroflot case simply because ORT had "spoken the truth" about the sinking of the submarine Kursk. In early December, his associate Nikolai Glushkov was arrested in Moscow and Berezovsky dropped the proposal to put ORT stake in trust.
Divestment from Russian holdings
In 2001, the Russian government made a systematic takeover of privately owned television networks, in the course of which Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Patarkatsishvili lost most of their media holdings, prompting one of them to warn of Russia "turning into a banana republic" in a letter to The New York Times. In February, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili sold their stake in ORT to Roman Abramovich, who promptly ceded editorial control to the Kremlin. Berezovsky later claimed that there was a secret understanding that Nikolai Glushkov would be released from prison as part of that deal, a promise that was never fulfilled. In April, the government took control of Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV. Berezovsky then moved to acquire a controlling stake in a smaller network, TV-6, made Patarkatsishvili its chairman, and offered employment to hundreds of locked out NTV journalists. Almost immediately, Patarkatshishvili became a target of police investigation and fled the country. In January 2002 a Russian arbitration court forced TV-6 (Russia) into liquidation. The liquidation of TV-6 was precipitated by LUKoil, a partly state-owned minority shareholder, using a piece of legislation that was almost immediately repealed.
In 2001, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili ended their involvement in Sibneft for a US$1.3 billion fee from Roman Abramovich. This transaction was the subject of a later dispute in the UK commercial courts, with Berezovsky alleging that he had been put under pressure to sell his stake to Abramovich at a fraction of the true value, an allegation that the court rejected.
In 2006, Berezovsky sold the Kommersant ("The Businessman") newspaper and his remaining Russian assets.
Exile in Britain
From his new home in the UK, Stanley House, where he and associates including Akhmed Zakayev, Alexander Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb became known as "the London Circle" of Russian exiles, Berezovsky publicly stated that he was on a mission to bring down Putin "by force" or by bloodless revolution. He established the International Foundation for Civil Liberties (IFCL), to "support the abused and the vulnerable in society – prisoners, national minorities and business people" in Russia and criticized Putin's record in the West.
Berezovsky launched a concerted campaign to expose alleged misdeeds of Vladimir Putin, from suppressing freedom of speech to committing war crimes in Chechnya. He also accused Russia's FSB security service of staging the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 in order to help Putin win the presidency. Many of these activities were funded through the New York-based IFCL, directed by Berezovsky's friend Alex Goldfarb.
Berezovsky bought a Belgravia flat, the 125-acre Wentworth Park estate near Virginia Water in Surrey, and for a while owned the 172-acre Hascombe Court estate in Godalming. In 2012, he sold his Wentworth Park house.
Political asylum and extradition proceedings
On 9 September 2003, Berezovsky was granted refugee status and political asylum by the British Home Office which he, according to Alex Goldfarb, welcomed.
On 12 September 2003, judge Timothy Workman of Bow Street Magistrates' Court in central London dropped extradition proceedings against Berezovsky, ruling that it would be pointless to pursue the case as the granting of asylum status to Berezovsky made the proceedings redundant.
However, when Berezovsky told Reuters in early February 2006 that he was working on plans to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw warned the London-based Russian tycoon not to plot against the Russian President while living in Britain. His refugee status could be reviewed if he continued to make such remarks.
Convictions in absentia and investigations abroad
After Berezovsky gained political asylum in Britain, the Russian authorities vigorously pursued various criminal charges against him. This culminated in two trials in absentia. From London, Berezovsky called the trial, which sentenced him to six years in prison, "a farce". In June 2009, the Krasnogorsk City Court near Moscow sentenced Berezovsky to thirteen years imprisonment for defrauding AvtoVAZ of 58 million rubles (US$1.9 million) in the 1990s. Berezovsky was represented by a court-appointed lawyer.
In spite of Berezovsky's successes in Britain in fighting off extradition requests and exposing Russian court convictions as politically motivated (see below), some other jurisdictions cooperated with Russian authorities in seizing his property and targeting his financial transactions as money laundering. Berezovsky succeeded in overturning some of these actions. In July 2007, Brazilian prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky in connection with his investment in the Brazilian football club Corinthians. However, a year later the Brazilian Supreme Court cancelled the order and stopped the investigation. On Russian requests, French authorities raided his villa in Nice in search of documents, and seized his two yachts berthed on the French Riviera. However, some months later, the boats were released by a French court. Swiss prosecutors have been assisting their Russian colleagues for over a decade in investigating Berezovsky's finances.
Accusations and libel suits in the UK
Berezovsky's meteoric enrichment and involvement in power struggles have been accompanied by allegations of various crimes from his opponents. After his falling out with Putin and exile to London, these allegations became the recurrent theme of official state-controlled media, earning him comparisons with Leon Trotsky and the Nineteen Eighty-Four character Emmanuel Goldstein.
In 1996, Forbes, an American business magazine, published an article by Paul Klebnikov entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" with the sub-heading "Power. Politics. Murder. Boris Berezovsky could teach the guys in Sicily a thing or two." The article linked Berezovsky to corruption in the car industry, to the Chechen mafia and to the murder of Vladislav Listyev. In 2000, the House of Lords gave Berezovsky and Nikolai Glushkov permission to sue for libel in the UK courts. Given that only 2,000 of the 785,000 copies sold worldwide were sold in the United Kingdom, this led numerous scholars to cite the case as an example of libel tourism. The case slowly proceeded until the claimants opted to settle when Forbes offered a partial retraction. The following statement appended to the article on the Forbes website summarises: "On 6 March 2003, the resolution of the case was announced in the High Court in London. Forbes stated in open court that (1) it was not the magazine's intention to state that Berezovsky was responsible for the murder of Listiev, only that he had been included in an inconclusive police investigation of the crime; (2) there is no evidence that Berezovsky was responsible for this or any other murder; (3) in light of the English court's ruling, it was wrong to characterize Berezovsky as a mafia boss; and (4) the magazine erred in stating that Glouchkov had been convicted for theft of state property in 1982." Klebnikov elaborated his allegations in his 2000 book Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia (the 2001 edition was titled Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism).
In 2006, a UK court awarded Berezovsky £50,000 in libel damages against the Russian private bank Alfa-Bank and its chairman, Mikhail Fridman. Fridman had claimed on a Russian television programme that could be watched in the UK that Berezovsky had threatened him when the two men were competitors for control of the Kommersant publishing house, and that making threats was Berezovsky's usual way of conducting business. The jury rejected the defendants' claim that Fridman's allegations were true. Berezovsky accepted the apology and withdrew his libel suit.
In March 2010, Berezovsky, represented by Desmond Browne QC, won a libel case and was awarded £150,000 damages by the High Court in London over allegations that he had been behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The allegations had been broadcast by the Russian state channel RTR Planeta in April 2007 on its programme Vesti Nedeli, which could be viewed from the UK. In his judgement, Mr Justice Eady stated: "I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it." Berezovsky had sued both the channel and a man called Vladimir Terluk, whom Mr Justice Eady agreed was the man who had been interviewed in silhouette by the programme under the pseudonym 'Pyotr'. Terluk had claimed that to further his UK asylum application Berezovsky had approached him to fabricate a murder plot against himself, and that Litvinenko knew of this. Mr Justice Eady accepted that Terluk had not himself alleged Berezovsky's involvement in the murder of Litvinenko, but considered that his own allegations were themselves serious and that there was no truth in any of them. As RTR did not participate in the proceedings, Terluk was left to defend the case himself, receiving significant assistance (as the judge noted) from the Russian prosecutor's office.
The Guardian described the 2010 libel case as "almost anarchic at times as officials from the Russian prosecutors' office repeatedly intervened despite not being party to proceedings. So obvious was their intention that when one of their mobile phones went off in court one day, Desmond Browne quipped: 'That must be Mr Putin on the line.'" The defendants appealed to the Court of Appeal but the appeal was dismissed, Lord Justice Laws giving a judgment with which the Chancellor of the High Court and Lady Justice Rafferty agreed. The Lord Justice described a witness statement of Andrei Lugovoi, newly adduced by the defendants, as 'not sensibly capable of belief'.
High Court case against Abramovich
Main article: Berezovsky v AbramovichIn 2011, Berezovsky brought a civil case against Roman Abramovich in the High Court of Justice in London, accusing Abramovich of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract, and seeking over £3 billion in damages. This became the largest civil court case in British legal history.
Berezovsky's claimed past ownership of Sibneft – which constituted the bulk of his fortune – was put into question by Abramovich, who in a statement to the High Court in London asserted that Berezovsky had never owned shares in Sibneft, and that US$1.3 billion paid in 2001 ostensibly for his stake in the company was actually in recognition of Berezovsky's "political assistance and protection" during the creation of Sibneft in 1995. The hearings, which started on 3 October 2011, examined Berezovsky's US$5.5 billion claim against Abramovich for damages arising from the sale of his assets under alleged "threats and intimidation".
On 31 August 2012, the High Court found for Abramovich. The High Court judge stated that because of the nature of the evidence, the case hinged on whether to believe Berezovsky or Abramovich's evidence. In her ruling, the judge observed: "On my analysis of the entirety of the evidence, I found Mr. Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes. ... I regret to say that the bottom line of my analysis of Mr. Berezovsky's credibility is that he would have said almost anything to support his case." She ruled that the monies paid represented a final payment in discharge of all obligations.
Business and personal activities in exile
Berezovsky conducted business with Neil Bush, the younger brother of the US President George W. Bush. Berezovsky was an investor in Bush's Ignite! Learning, an educational software corporation, since at least 2003. In 2005, Neil Bush met with Berezovsky in Latvia, causing tension with Russia due to Berezovsky's fugitive status. Neil Bush was also seen with Berezovsky in his box at an Arsenal F.C. match at the Emirates Stadium in London. There had been speculation that the relationship had become a cause of tension in Russo-American bilateral relations.
It had been speculated that Berezovsky's wealth was depleted with the onset of the late 2000s recession. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, in 2011 his net worth was about US$900 million.
Appeals for regime change
In September 2005, Berezovsky said in an interview with the BBC: "I'm sure that Putin doesn't have the chance to survive, even to the next election in 2008. I am doing everything in my power to limit his time frame, and I am really thinking of returning to Russia after Putin collapses, which he will." In January 2006, Berezovsky stated in an interview to a Moscow-based radio station that he was working on overthrowing the administration of Vladimir Putin by force. Berezovsky also accused Putin of being "a gangster" and the "terrorist number one".
Berezovsky declared that he was plotting the overthrow of President Putin on 13 April 2007 during an interview The Guardian conducted: "We need to use force to change this regime. It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." He also admitted that during the last six years he had struggled hard to "destroy the positive image of Putin" and said that "Putin has created an authoritarian regime against the Russian constitution. ... I don't know how it will happen, but authoritarian regimes only collapse by force."
Soon after Berezovsky's 2007 statement, Garry Kasparov, a figure in the opposition movement The Other Russia and leader of the United Civil Front, wrote the following on his website: "Berezovsky has lived in emigration for many years and no longer has significant influence upon the political processes which take place in Russian society. His extravagant proclamations are simply a method of attracting attention. Furthermore, for the overwhelming majority of Russian people he was a political symbol of the 90s, one of the 'bad blokes' enriching themselves behind the back of president Yeltsin. The informational noise around Berezovsky was specifically beneficial for the Kremlin, which was trying to compromise Russia's real opposition. Berezovsky has not had and does not have any relation to Other Russia or the United Civil Front." Berezovsky responded in June 2007 by saying that "there is not one significant politician in Russia whom he has not financed" and that this included members of Other Russia. The managing director of the United Civil Front, in turn, said that the organization would consider suing Berezovsky over these allegations, but the lawsuit has never been brought before the court.
The Russian Prosecutor General's Office had launched a criminal investigation against Berezovsky to determine whether his comments could be considered a "seizure of power by force", as outlined in the Russian Criminal Code. If convicted, an offender faces up to twenty years imprisonment. The British Foreign Office denounced Berezovsky's statements, warning him that his status of a political refugee might be reconsidered, should he continue to make similar remarks. Furthermore, Scotland Yard had announced that it would investigate whether Berezovsky's statements violated the law. However, in the following July, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Berezovsky would not face charges in the UK for his comments. Kremlin officials called it a "disturbing moment" in Anglo-Russian relations.
Involvement in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election
In September 2005, the former president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, accused Berezovsky of having financed Viktor Yushchenko's 2004 Ukrainian presidential election campaign, and provided copies of documents showing money transfers from companies he claimed were controlled by Berezovsky to companies controlled by Yuschenko's official backers. Berezovsky claimed that he met Yushchenko's representatives in London before the election, and that the money was transferred from his companies, but he declined to confirm or deny that the companies that received the money were used in Yushchenko's campaign. Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine. In November 2005, Berezovsky also claimed he had heavily financed Ukraine's Orange Revolution (that had followed the presidential election). In September 2007, Berezovsky launched lawsuits against two Ukrainian politicians, Oleksandr Tretyakov, a former presidential aid, and David Zhvaniya, a former emergencies minister. Berezovsky was suing the men for nearly US$23 million, accusing them of misusing the money he had allocated in 2004 to fund the Orange Revolution. Yushchenko has denied Berezovsky financed his election campaign.
Berezovsky called on Ukrainian business to support Yushchenko in the 2010 presidential election of January 2010 as a guarantor of debarment of property redistribution after the election. On 10 December 2009, the Ukrainian minister of interior affairs Yuriy Lutsenko stated that if the Russian interior ministry requested it, Berezovsky would be detained upon arriving in Ukraine.
In February 2012, in an interview for the independent Russian TV Rain channel Berezovsky reiterated that he had personally provided approximately $50 million to the Ukrainian Orange revolution. David Zhvania [ru] (Russian: Давид Важаевич Жвания) and Oleksandr Tretiakov were among the ones who allegedly received money.
Persona non-grata in Latvia since October 2005
In October 2005, Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis signed a decree placing Berezovsky on the list of personae non gratae. The exact reasons for blacklisting Berezovsky were not disclosed. Kalvitis called Berezovsky a "threat" to national security. Previously, the National Security Council of Latvia took the decision to recommend that Berezovsky be barred from travelling to Latvia. The decision to bar the one-time Russian oligarch came swiftly after Berezovsky's trip to Riga in September 2005. Berezovsky was in Riga along with Neil Bush to discuss a project with Latvian businessmen.
The Baltic News Service quoted Berezovsky saying that he believes Latvia's decision to declare him persona non-grata was the result of intense pressure by Russia and structures linked with George Soros, the US business magnate who had had acrimonious relations with Berezovsky. Kalvitis however denied the theory that the banning came on pressure from the Kremlin or the White House.
Alleged assassination attempts in London
Alleged 2003 plot
According to Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer in London was preparing to assassinate Berezovsky with a binary weapon in September 2003. This alleged plot was reported to British police. Hazel Blears, then a Home Office Minister, said that inquiries made were "unable to either substantiate this information or find evidence of any criminal offences having been committed".
Alleged 2007 plot
In June 2007, Berezovsky said he fled Britain on the advice of Scotland Yard, amid reports that he was the target of an assassination attempt by a suspected Russian hitman. On 18 July 2007, the British tabloid The Sun reported that the alleged would-be assassin was captured by the police at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. They reported that the suspect, arrested by the anti-terrorist police after being tracked for a week by MI5, was deported back to Russia when no weapons were found and there was not enough evidence to charge him with any offence. In addition, they said British police placed a squad of uniformed officers around Akhmed Zakayev's house in north London, and also phoned Litvinenko's widow, Marina, to urge her to take greater security precautions.
Berezovsky again accused Vladimir Putin of being behind a plot to assassinate him. The Kremlin had denied similar claims in the past.
According to the interview given by a high-ranking British security official on BBC Two in July 2008, the alleged Russian agent, known as "A", was of Chechen nationality. He was identified by Kommersant as the Chechen mobster Movladi Atlangeriyev; after returning to Russia, Atlangeriyev was forcibly disappeared in January 2008 by unknown men in Moscow.
Death of friends and associates in London
Death of Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006
Main article: Alexander Litvinenko poisoningAlexander Litvinenko, one of Berezovsky's closest associates, was murdered in London in November 2006 with a rare radioactive poison, Polonium 210. The British authorities charged a former FSB officer and head of security at ORT, Andrey Lugovoy, with the murder and requested his extradition, which Russia refused. Several Russian diplomats were expelled from the UK over the case. The UK government has not publicly expressed a view on the matter, but allegations that the murder was sponsored by the Russian state have been expressed by "sources in the UK government", according to the BBC, and by officials of the US Department of State, as revealed by leaked diplomatic cables; they were reflected in a 2008 resolution by the US Congress. The intricate details of the murder, the relationship between Litvinenko and Berezosvsky, and the implications of the case have been described in the 2007 book, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB by Alex Goldfarb with Marina Litvinenko.
An alternative, more dubious narrative – that the murder was orchestrated by Berezovsky and his associate Alex Goldfarb with the aim of "framing" the Russian government and discrediting it on the global stage – has aired in Russian state-funded media by Lugovoy, by Litvinenko's Italy-based father, by Nikita Chekulin and by Russian officials. Berezovsky won a UK libel suit against Russian State Television over these allegations in 2010 (see above), following which he commented, "I trust the conclusions of the British investigators that the trail leads to Russia and I hope that one day justice will prevail."
Death of Badri Patarkatsishvili in February 2008
In the evening of Tuesday, 12 February 2008, Georgia's richest man, billionaire Arkady "Badri" Patarkatsishvili, a close friend and long-time business partner of Berezovsky, collapsed and died in his bedroom after a family dinner at Downside Manor, his mansion in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, at the age of 52.
Patarkatsishvili, who as a presidential candidate had also been campaigning to oust Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, spent his last day in the City of London office of international law firm Debevoise and Plimpton. He was preparing along with his lawyer Lord Goldsmith QC and fellow exiles, the Russians Nikolai Glushkov and Yuli Dubov. Shortly after dining at Downside Manor, Patarkatsishvili told his family he felt unwell and went upstairs to his bedroom where he was found unconscious after a heart attack. Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful. As in any other case of unexpected death, Surrey police treated the case as "suspicious" and launched an official investigation. Preliminary reports indicated a heart attack as the cause of death.
Berezovsky described the death of his closest friend as "a terrible tragedy".
Death
On 23 March 2013, Berezovsky was found dead at his home, Titness Park, at Sunninghill, near Ascot in Berkshire. His body was found by a bodyguard in a locked bathroom, with a ligature around his neck.
His death was announced in a post on Facebook, by his son-in-law. Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer who had represented Berezovsky, wrote that he may have committed suicide, adding that Berezovsky had fallen into debt after losing the lawsuit against Abramovich, and had spent the final few months of his life selling his possessions to cover his court costs. Berezovsky was also said to have recently been depressed and to have isolated himself from friends. He reportedly suffered from depression and was taking antidepressant drugs; a day prior to his death he told a reporter in London that he had nothing left to live for.
The Thames Valley Police classified his death as "unexplained" and launched a formal investigation into the circumstances behind it. Specialists in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials were deployed to Berezovsky's home as a "precaution". These specialists later "found nothing of concern".
Berezovsky was buried on 8 May 2013 in a private ceremony at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. The burial timing had been changed on several occasions to try to avoid interest from the Russian media.
A post-mortem examination carried out by the Home Office pathologist found the cause of death was consistent with hanging and there was nothing pointing to a violent struggle. At the March 2014 inquest into the death, however, Berezovsky's daughter Elizaveta introduced a report by German pathologist Bernd Brinkmann, with whom she had shared the autopsy photos, noting that the ligature mark on her father's neck was circular rather than V-shaped as is commonly the case with hanging victims, and called the coroner's attention to a statement by one of the responding paramedics who found it strange that Berezovsky's face was purple, rather than pale as hanging victims usually are. The body also had a fresh wound on the back of the head and a fractured rib (injuries police believed Berezovsky could have suffered in the process of falling as he hanged himself). An unidentified fingerprint was found near the body, and one paramedic's radiation alarm sounded as they entered the house. Pathologist Bernd Brinkmann said that he did not believe that the marks on Berezovsky's neck were a result of hanging. Following the inquest the coroner, Peter Bedford, recorded an open verdict commenting, "I am not saying Mr Berezovsky took his own life, I am not saying Mr Berezovsky was unlawfully killed. What I am saying is that the burden of proof sets such a high standard it is impossible for me to say."
Apology to Putin
After Berezovsky's death, a spokesman for President Putin reported that Berezovsky had sent a letter to the Russian president, asking for permission to return to Russia and asking "forgiveness for his mistakes". Some of Berezovsky's associates doubted the letter's existence, claiming that it was out of character. However, his girlfriend at the time, Katerina Sabirova, later confirmed in an interview that he did in fact send the letter:
I said that they will publish it and you will look bad. And that it won't help. He answered that it was all the same to him, that in any case all sins were blamed on him and that this was his only chance.
It was claimed by anonymous sources that rival Roman Abramovich delivered the letter to Putin personally, having received an apology from Berezovsky himself. Both Putin's chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, and Abramovich's spokesman alluded to the letter being passed by a "certain person", but did not go into details due to the personal nature of the issue.
Publications by Berezovsky
Berezovsky was a doctor of technical sciences and author of many academic papers and studies such as "Binary relations in multi-criteria optimizations" and "Multi-criteria optimization: mathematical aspects". In the mathematical review index MathSciNet, B. A. Berezovsky is credited with 16 publications from 1975 to 1989 on operations research and mathematical programming, earning 9 citations in other publications. Most cited is the book The Problem of Optimal Choice with A. V. Gnedin (Nauka, Moscow 1984), devoted to secretary problems.
Aside from his academic publications, he frequently authored articles and gave interviews; these are collected in The Art of the Impossible (3 volumes). He continued to contribute articles while in exile, taking a highly critical view of Russia's political leaders.
Works about Berezovsky
In 1996, the Russian-American journalist Paul Klebnikov wrote a highly critical article entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" on Berezovsky and the state of Russia more generally, in response to which Berezovsky sued Forbes in the UK; in 2001, he expanded his article into a book entitled Godfather of the Kremlin, alternatively subtitled The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism and Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia. On 9 July 2004, while leaving the Forbes office in Moscow, unknown assailants fired at Klebnikov from a slowly moving car. He was shot four times and died later in hospital. The same day Berezovsky, in the words of investigative journalist Richard Behar, "whipped out his tongue from its holster and publicly called the 41-year-old editor of Forbes Russia 'a dishonest reporter'". The books Secret Diary of a Russian Oligarch and How to get rid of an Oligarch or Who Beat Berezovsky by Sasha Nerozina (friend of the Berezovsky family and a spokeswoman of Berezovsky's wife Galina) were published in Russia and other former Soviet states in 2013 and 2014 by Olma Media Publishing House.
Yuli Dubov, a close business associate of Berezovsky, wrote a novel based on Berezovsky's life which provided the basis for the 2002 film Tycoon. Like Berezovsky, he fled to London and successfully fought extradition to Russia. Judge Timothy Workman of Bow Street Magistrates' Court in central London dropped extradition proceedings against Yuly Dubov in October 2003.
Alex Goldfarb, a microbiologist and activist who became acquainted with Berezovsky in the 1990s and later worked for him, provides snapshots of Berezovsky at crucial moments as background to his 2007 account of the Litvinenko murder case, co-written with Marina Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB. David E. Hoffman of The Washington Post wrote The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia, which provides a comparative treatment of Berezovsky and several of his fellow so-called business oligarchs. Ben Mezrich wrote Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs—A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder, which provides a comparative narrative of Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich through their careers, friendship, and ultimate rivalry.
In 2017, the Russian book The age of Berezovsky (also known as The time of Berezovsky) was published by Corpus (an imprint of AST), in which Petr Aven – a friend of Berezovsky – interviewed various people who were close to Berezovsky at different times, including Leonid Boguslavsky, Yuli Dubov, Galina Besharova, Yelena Gorbunova, Yuri Shefler, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Fridman, Valentin Yumashev, Sergey Dorenko, Eugene Shvidler, Vladimir Posner, Alexander Goldfarb, Alexander Voloshin, Stanislav Belkovsky and Yuri Felshtinsky. In the book Aven made an opinion that Berezovsky "played a particularly important role in two episodes of new Russian history: the 1996 election and the struggle against Primakov and Luzhkov in 1999".
A documentary about Berezovsky's efforts to undermine Putin from his exile in UK was shown on BBC Two in December 2005.
Berezovsky features in a painting by the Russian artist Ilya Glazunov, displayed in Moscow's Ilya Glazunov Gallery. According to the Rough Guide, "The Market of Our Democracy shows Yeltsin waving a conductor's baton as two lesbians kiss and the oligarch Berezovsky flaunts a sign reading 'I will buy Russia', while charlatans rob a crowd of refugees and starving children."
Berezovsky also features as a character in the opera The Life and Death of Alexander Litvinenko by Alexander Woolf to a libretto by David Pountney, which was premiered in July 2021 at Grange Park Opera.
Patriots premiered at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, London, in May 2022, following the life of Berezovsky from the president's inner circle to public enemy number one. Tom Hollander played Berezovsky. The play was written by Peter Morgan and directed by Rupert Goold. It played a limited run from 2 July 2022 until 20 August. It transferred to the West End in 2023.
In the 2022 ITVX miniseries Litvinenko, Berezovsky was portrayed by Nikolai Tsankov.
See also
References
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Archived at compromat.ru on 29 December 2001 as Хранитель компромата Аминов: Березовский лично контролирует около $7 млрд "семейных" долларов: Комичные обстоятельства назначения Николая Ковалева директором ФСБ (Keeper of compromising evidence Aminov: Berezovsky personally controls about $ 7 billion of "family" dollars: Comical circumstances of the appointment of Nikolai Kovalev as director of the FSB).
{{cite news}}
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{{cite web}}
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- Boris Berezovsky (businessman)
- 1946 births
- 2013 deaths
- 1st class Active State Councillors of the Russian Federation
- 20th-century Russian businesspeople
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