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Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (Template:Lang-ru, born in Moscow on 23 January 1946) is a Russian businessman, mathematician, member of Russian Academy of Sciences, and a former government official and Deputy in the Duma. He is often described as a Russian oligarch. Although once a supporter of Vladimir Putin, Berezovsky clashed with the new president soon after his election in 2000 and remains a vocal critic. 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 UK, which granted him political asylum in 2003. In Russia he was later convicted in absentia of economic crimes Russia has repeatedly failed to obtain the extradition of Berezovsky from Britain, which has become a major point of diplomatic tension between the two countries.

Berezovsky made his fortune during Russia's privatisation of state property. He took ownership of the Sibneft oil company and became the principal shareholder in the country's main television channel, ORT. In 1997 Forbes Magazine estimated Berezovsky's wealth at $3 billion.

He was at the height of his power in the later Yeltsin years, when he was deputy secretary of Russia's security council, a friend of Boris Yeltsin's influential daughter Tatyana, and a member of the Yeltsin inner circle, or "family". Berezovsky helped fund Unity - the political party, which formed Vladimir Putin's parliamentary base, and was elected to the Duma on Putin's slate. However, following the Russian presidential election in March 2000, Berezovsky went into opposition and resigned from the Duma. After he moved to Britain, the government took over his television assets, and he divested from other Russian holdings.

Berezovsky's political credo was laid out in a 2000 article in Washington Post, in which he proclaimed the right of "oligarchs" to meddle in the nation's politics arguing that in the absence of civil society it is acceptable - indeed, necessary - to interfere directly in the political process in order to protect democracy. A prominent critic on the global stage was George Soros, who compared Russian oligarchs with the American Robber Barons of late 19th century and blamed them for the failure of reforms in Russia .

From his new home in the UK, where he and associates including Akhmed Zakayev, Alexander Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb became known as the "the London Circle" of Russian exiles, Berezovsky has publicly stated that he is on a mission to bring down Putin "by force". Berezovsky established the International Foundation for Civil Liberties claiming that it will give grants to human rights groups in Russia and campaign against Putin.

Early life and scientific research

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Berezovsky was born in 1946 in Moscow to Abram Markovich Berezovsky, a Jewish civil engineer in construction works, and his wife Anna Gelman. He studied forestry and then applied mathematics, receiving his doctorate in 1983. After graduating from the Moscow Forestry Engineering Institute in 1968, Berezovsky worked as an engineer, from 1969 till 1987 serving as assistant research officer, research officer and finally the head of a department in the Institute of Management Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Berezovsky did research on optimization and control theory, publishing 16 books and articles between 1975 and 1989; his Erdős number is 4.

Political and business career in Russia

Accumulation of wealth

In 1989 Berezovsky took advantage of the opportunities presented by perestroika to found LogoVAZ with Badri Patarkatsishvili and senior managers from AvtoVAZ. LogoVAZ developed software for AvtoVAZ, sold Soviet-made cars and serviced foreign cars. In the early 1990s LogoVaz achieved huge profits by taking advantage of the chaos of the collapsing planned economy: the cars were purchased at the government-subsidized export price and then "re-exported" to be sold at a much higher price on domestic market. The dealership also 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 endeavours was AVVA (All-Russia Automobile Aliance), a venture fund which he formed in 1993 with Alexander Voloshin (Yeltsin’s future Chief of Staff) and AvtoVAZ Chairman Vladimir Kadannikov. Berezovsky controlled about 30% of the company, which raised nearly $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 the first ever car bombing incident in Russia, but survived the assassination attempt, in which his driver was killed and he 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 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.

Between 1995 and 1997, through the controversial loans-for-shares privatisation auctions (see Privatisation in Russia), Berezovsky together with Patarkatsishvili and Roman Abramovich acquired control of Sibneft, the sixth-largest Russian oil company, which constituted the bulk of his wealth. In a 2000 article in Washington Post Berezovsky revealed that American 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 1996 reelection

Berezovsky 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 "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 Guardian, "Berezovsky masterminded the 1996 re-election of Boris Yeltsin... He and his billionaire friends coughed up £140m for Yeltsin's campaign".

By the summer of 1996, Berezovsky had emerged as a key advisor to Yeltsin, allied with Anatoly Chubais, opposing a group of hardliners led by Gen. 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 June 20, 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 with carrying USD500,000 cash without invoices out of presidential administration building

On June 16, 1996 Yeltsin came first in the first round of elections after forging a tactical alliance with Gen. Alexander Lebed, who finished third. On July 3, 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, freeing of hostages

On October 17, 1996 Yeltsin dismissed Gen. 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 Gen. Alexander Korzhakov. The dismissal of Lebed, the architect of the Khasavyurt peace accord, left Yeltsin’s Chechen policy in limbo. On October 30, 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 Khasavyurt Accord: that is, the withdrawal of Russian forces, the negotiation of a peace treaty, and the preparation of a general election. On December 19, 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 May 12, 1997 Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed 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 Russian business community to contribute to the rebuilding of the republic, revealing his own donation of $ 1 million (some sources mention $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 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 the RAF Brize Norton in September 1998.In a 2005 interview with Thomas de Waal, he revealed the involvement of British Ambassador Sir Andrew Wood and explained that his former negotiations counterpart, the leader of islamic militants Movladi Udugov helped arrange the Britions' release.

Battle with "Young Reformers"

In March 1997 Berezovsky and Tatyana Dyachenko flew to Nizhniy Novgorod to persuade 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 November 5, 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.

The Kremlin Family

In the Spring of 1998, Berezovsky 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 appointments 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 co-owner of Sibneft. .

In November 1998, five officers of FSB led by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, in a televised press-conference revealed an alleged plot by their superiours to assassinate Berezovsky in November 1997.

Berezovsky's control of the Russian media increased with his acquisition of the Kommersant publishing house in 1999.

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 his foe, Prime-minister Yevgeny Primakov. The warrant was dropped a week later, after Berezovsky submitted to questioning by the prosecutors. No charges were brought.

Perhaps the most controversial and least understood episode in Berezovsky's activities in this period was his 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 September 10, 1999 and appeared to mention the would-be militants’ invasion. It has been 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 with Russia, 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 ouverture 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."

Conflict with Putin and emigration

Berezovsky's disagreements with Putin became public three weeks into Putin's presidency. On May 8, 2000 Berezovsky and Abramovich were spotted together at Putin's invitation-only inauguration ball in Moscow. But on May 31 Berezovsky sharply attacked the constitutional reform proposed by the president, which would give the Kremlin the right to dismiss elected governors. In an open letter to Putin published in Kommersant Berezovsky, then a Duma deputy, said that he would be obliged to vote against the president's legislative project, which was "directed toward changing the state's structure" and represented a "threat to Russia's territorial integrity and democracy." On July 17, Berezovsky resigned from the Duma, saying 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 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 November 7, 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

2001 was the year of systematic takeover by the government of privately-owned television networks, in the course of which Berezovsky, Gusinski 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, Patarkatshishvily 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 sold their stake in Sibneft to Roman Abramovich for $1.3 billion. This transaction is the subject of a 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.

In 2006 Berezovsky sold Kommersant and his remaining Russian assets.

In a postscript to Berezovsky's business history, his past ownership of Sibneft - which constituted the bulk of his fortune - was put into question by Roman Abramovich, who in a statement to the High Court in London asserted that Berezovsky had never owned shares in Sibneft, and that $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 case will be heard in October 2011. The Daily Mail reported that Berezovsky only succeeded in serving a writ on Abramovich when both men happened to be shopping on Sloane Street, with Berezovsky dashing from Dolce and Gabbana to confront Abramovich in Hermes.

Exile in Britain

Once in Britain, 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.. Much of these activities were funded through the New York based International Foundation for Civil Liberties directed by Berezovsky's friend Alex Goldfarb.

Convictions in absentia and investigations abroad

After Berezovsky gained political asylum in Britain, the Russian authorities vigorously pursued various criminal charges agaist him. This culminated in two trials in absentia. A Moscow trial in November 2007 found him guilty of embezzling nearly 215m roubles (£4.3m) from Aeroflot.The court said that in the 1990s Berezovsky was a member of an "organised criminal group" that stole the airline's foreign currency earnings. From London, Berezovsky called the tial, 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 for 58 million rubles ($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 succeded 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 have raided his villa in Nice in search of documents, and seized his two yachts parked at the French Riviera. However, some months later, the boats were released by a French court Swiss prosecutors have been assissting their Russian colleagues for over a decade in investigating Berezovsky's finances.

Libel suits in 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 Orwellian character Emmanuel Goldstein. While he successfully defended himself in the West in four consecutive libel suites, his image in his homeland is that of an incarnation of evil, "the most hated man" in Russia.

In 1996 Forbes, an American business magazine, published an article by Paul Klebnikov entitled 'Godfather of the Kremlin?' with the kicker 'Power. Politics. Murder. Boris Berezovsky could teach the guys in Sicily a thing or two.' The article, which Klebnikov subsequently expanded into a book (see below), fulfilled the promise of these phrases by linking Berezovsky to corruption in the car industry, to the Chechen mafia, and to the murder of Vladislav Listyev. The decision of Berezovsky and Nikolai Glushkov to sue for libel has been called an example of libel tourism, given that only 2,000 of the 785,000 copies sold worldwide were sold in the United Kingdom. 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.

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.

In June 2006 the Guardian apologised to Berezovsky over an article published on 2005 about the Russia's attempt to have him extradited to face fraud charges in Russia. The article described Berezovsky as a "wanted defrauder of the Russian region of Samara". In a statement read out in open court, the Guardian accepted that granting him political asylum in 2003 meant that the British government had concluded that there were no "serious reasons for considering that he has committed a serious non-political crime" in Russia. The Guardian accepted that its description of Berezovsky was unjustified and apologised for its error. 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 UK High Court 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 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 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, Browne quipped: "That must be Mr Putin on the line."

Business activities in exile

In recent years, Berezovsky has done business with Neil Bush, the younger brother of the U.S. President George W. Bush. Berezovsky has been 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 has also been seen in Berezovsky's box at the Emirates Stadium, the home of British football club Arsenal F.C., for a game. There has been speculation that the relationship may cause tension in Russo-American bilateral relations.

It has been reported that Berezovsky's wealth may have been depleted with the onset of the late 2000s recession. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, in 2011 his net worth was about $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 has also publicly accused Putin of being "a gangster" and the "terrorist number one".

On April 13, 2007, in an interview with The Guardian, Berezovsky declared that he was plotting the violent overthrow of President Putin by financing and encouraging coup plotters in Moscow: "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." Berezovsky said he had dedicated much of the last six years to "trying to destroy the positive image of Putin" held by many in the West by portraying him whenever possible as a dangerously anti-democratic figure.

Soon after Berezovsky's 2007 statement, Garry Kasparov, an significant 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 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." 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 has launched a criminal investigation against Berezovsky to determine whether his comments can 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 Ukraine presidential election

In September 2005, soon after the Ukrainian government led by prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was dismissed by president Viktor Yushchenko, a former president of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk accused Berezovsky of financing Yushchenko's 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 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. In September 2007, Berezovsky launched lawsuits against two Ukrainian politicians, Oleksandr Tretyakov, a former presidential aid, and David Zhvaniya, a former emergencies minister. Berezovsky is suing the men for nearly US$23 million, accusing them of misusing the money he had allocated in 2004 to fund Ukraine's Orange Revolution.

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 December 10, 2009 the Ukrainian minister of interior affairs Yuriy Lutsenko stated that if the Russian interior ministry requested it Berezovsky would be detained after arriving in Ukraine.

Alleged assassination attempts in London

Alleged 2003 plot

According to Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) agent 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 July 18, 2007, 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 the Chechen dissident Akhmed Zakayev's house in north London, and also phoned Litvinenko's widow, Marina, to urge her to take greater security precautions. Russia's ambassador to the UK, Yuri Fedotov, said he was not aware of any such plot and told BBC Radio 4's Today programme there was "nothing that could confirm" the plot, although British police did confirm that they had arrested a suspect in an alleged murder plot.

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. The Kremlin has denied similar claims in the past. According to The Guardian, 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 hitman 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 and former security agent, Andrei Lugovoi, with Litvinenko's murder.

According to the interview given by a high-ranking British security official to the BBC2 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.

Alexander Litvinenko's death

Alexander 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 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 Wikileaks; they were reflected in a 2008 resolution by the US Congress. An alternative theory - that the murder was orchestrated by Berezovsky with the aim of "framing" the Russian government and discrediting it on the global stage - has been aired in the Russian state-controlled media, by Lugovoy, and 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."

Writings

Aside from his academic publications, Berezovsky has frequently authored articles and given interviews; these are collected in The Art of the Impossible (3 vols.). He has continued to contribute articles while in exile, taking a highly critical view of Russia's political leaders.

Major writings and works of art about Berezovsky

In 1996 the Russian-American journalist Paul Klebnikov wrote a highly critical article on Berezovsky and the state of Russia more generally, in response to which Berezovsky sued Forbes in the UK (see above); 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. When Klebnikov was murdered in 2004 obituaries praised his dedicated journalism but noted concerns about a strain of anti-semitism in his reporting of prominent Jewish figures such as Berezovsky. Comparing Yuli Dubov's fictionalised treatment of Berezovsky, The Big Slice, with Godfather of the Kremlin Anna Isakova judged that, 'In Klebnikov's book, Berezovsky is depicted as a leech that depleted the homeland of all its riches. He represents absolute evil and is the primary enemy of the people. The facts are no different from those in Dubov's book; the only difference is their interpretation. Klebnikov sees malicious damage in Berezovsky's every action. Although Klebnikov assiduously avoids the word "Jew," an aroma of old, almost religious, anti-Semitism emerges from each page in the book.' Dubov, whose book provided the basis for a film (see Tycoon (2002 film)), was a close business associate of Berezovsky who also fled to London and successfully fought extradition to Russia.

Alex Goldfarb, a microbiologist and activist who became acquainted with Berezovsky in the 1990s and has subsequently 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. Reviews tended to combine comment on Goldfarb's partisan status with gratitude for his insider account: 'The real value of Death of a Dissident is to explain the background to the titanic struggle that has pitted Berezovsky against the Russian president since they fell out, after the tycoon helped secure the presidency for Putin in 2000. Goldfarb, a former Soviet dissident, is a man with an agenda. He read out the deathbed statement of Litvinenko, accusing Putin of responsibility for his murder.' A less contentious book is The Oligarchs: wealth and Power in the new Russia by David Hoffman of the Washington Post, which provides a comparative treatment of Berezovsky and several of his fellow so-called business oligarchs.

A documentary about Berezovsky's efforts to undermine Putin from his exile in UK was shown on the BBC in December 2005.

Berezovsky features in a painting by the popular 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.'

See also

• Roman Abramovich - former business partner sued by Berezovsky for approximately $4 billion over the Sibneft share-and business blackmail affair.
• Badri Patarkatsishvili - important intermediary between Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich who was reportedly paid $500 million by Abramovich for protecting him.
• International Foundation for Civil Liberties
• List of Russian billionaires
• Russian oligarchs
• Vladislav Listyev

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66. "Berezovsky's Letter Dominates News" Moscow Times June 1, 2000
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External links

• Boris Berezovsky, TIME, Mar. 03, 1997
• Boris Berezovsky: Tycoon under Siege, BusinessWeek, July 24, 2000
• Boris Berezovsky: Russia's Fallen Oligarch, PBS, October 2003
• Losing power: Boris Berezovsky, BBC News, 27 September 2005
• Boris Berezovsky: The first oligarch, The Independent, 25 November 2006
• Profile: Boris Berezovsky, BBC News, 31 May 2007
• Boris Berezovsky at Encyclopædia Britannica
• http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/3505 Berezovsky on Charlie Rose talk show.

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