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Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

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Boris Berezovsky
BornMoscow, USSR
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Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (Template:Lang-ru is a Russian businessman, mathematician, member of Russian Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his role as a Russian oligarch, media tycoon and politician during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. Berezovsky was at the height of his power in the later Yeltsin years, when he was deputy secretary of Russia's security council.

Berezovsky made his fortune during Russia's privatisation of its nationalised companies. He took ownership of the Sibneft oil company and became the main shareholder in the country's main television channel, ORT, which supported Boris Yeltsin in the run-up to the 1996 presidential election. He helped fund the party that formed Vladimir Putin 's parliamentary base.

Following the ascent of Putin to the Russian presidency, Berezovsky went into opposition and left the country. He was later granted political asylum in the United Kingdom. He has since publicly stated that he is on a mission to bring down Putin "by force". In the UK, he became associated with Akhmed Zakayev, Alexander Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb in what has become known as "the London Circle" of Russian exiles. He is a founder of International Foundation for Civil Liberties.

In 2007, a Moscow court found Berezovsky guilty of embezzlement in absentia. He was sentenced to six years in jail and ordered to repay the $9 million that the court said he had stolen from the state airline Aeroflot.


Early life and scientific research

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 filling the positions of an 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.

Business career in Russia

The foundation of his fortune lay in an arrangement Berezovski forged with the management of Avtovaz, the huge and ramshackle Russian car maker. In exchange for cutting senior management into the action, he was able to get cars straight off the assembly line for far less than the cost of production, which he then sold at immense profit through his newly founded chain of auto dealerships. The factory workers paid the difference by going without pay for months on end.

The early '90s, when Berezovsky was getting under way, was the time of the great gang wars in Moscow, as rival criminal coalitions shot it out for control of key industries and businesses. Businessmen could only ward off extortion or worse by paying one or other criminal group for a "roof"--protection. On one side in the most important war stood the Chechen mafia, much feared for their ruthlessness, and impenetrable to outsiders. On the other were the "Slavic alliance," native Russian gangsters determined to fight off the Chechen threat. It appears that Berezovsky forged an alliance with the Chechen forces, who provided his roof, a connection that would have terrible consequences in years to come. In the meantime, his fearsome allies took him through some tough times, such as the bloody gun battle on Lenin Prospekt outside one of his showrooms in 1993, or, more seriously, the detonation of a large bomb beside his passing car, which killed his bodyguard, decapitated his driver, and left him badly wounded. In a week, several people were arrested from the criminal group headed by Sergey Timofeyev (also known as "Silvestr"). The Moscow Trade Bank controlled by that group shortly returned some funds it owned to Berezovski's conglomerate. In about three months (September 14, 1994) Sergey Timofeev was killed by a car explosion, organizers of which have never been found.

By 1994, Berezovsky had moved beyond dependence on mobster protection. He had forged a more potent alliance by paying for the publication of Boris Yeltsin's memoirs, thus gaining entree to the inner circle around the grateful author/president. This court was populated with strange figures, such as the "hippie journalist" Valentin Yumashev, through whom Berezovsky obtained his entree; Yeltsin's tennis coach, who ran a large criminal empire of his own from a Kremlin office; not to mention Alexander Korzhakov, for a while the powerful chief of Yeltsin's Praetorian guard who later reported that Berezovsky had asked him to kill a business rival. Korzhakov performed great services to history by his assiduous bugging of everyone's phones, leaking the tapes when it seemed useful, and by his forthcoming reminiscences once he had fallen from his master's graces.

Once inside "the family," Berezovsky masterfully parlayed political connections into cash. Key to his modus operandi was the realization (shared by many of his peers in the rising business oligarchy) that it was not necessary to control a business, simply its cash flow. In a remarkably candid 1996 interview with Klebnikov he termed this approach the "privatization of profit" A fascinating chapter lays out in detail, complete with the transcripts of bugged phone Calls, how this method was successfully applied to the looting of Aeroflot, the formerly profitable state airline. Thanks in part to the appointment of Yeltsin's son-in-law as the company's head, Berezovsky was able to siphon off huge chunks of Aeroflot's considerable hard currency earnings through a series of shell companies in Switzerland.

From aviation, Berezovsky moved on to the really big money in Russia—oil. His entry into the oil business was facilitated by the most egregious of all the great ripoffs that have charactarized post-Soviet Russia, the "loans for shares" scheme by which our hero and his fellow oligarchs helped themselves to priceless chunks of the country's resources, for pennies on the dollar, in return for financing Yeltsin's re-election in 1996. Following that free, but hardly fair, election, the godfathers increased his political profile, taking various high-level government posts (without of course ceasing his business operations for a second). It was at this time that his interest in Chechen matters re-emerged, in the form of lavish ransom payments to kidnappers in Chechnya for the retrieval of their victims. Klebnikov points out that this flow of money to the gangs in the devastated territory effectively made it impossible for the elected Chechen leader to stabilize his country. The consequent anarchy, culminating in the invasion of Dagestan in the summer of 1999 by fundamentalist Islamist Chechens, provided the backdrop for the second Chechen war and the rise to power of Vladimir Putin. Klebnikov suspends judgment as to whether any of the leadership in Moscow had a hand in the terrorist bombings in the capital that provided the final pretext for the invasion of Chechnya last year, although George Soros has been less demure, heavily hinting in an article in the New York Review of Books that Berezovsky deliberately fomented the war in furtherance of his political intrigues.

During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin from 1991 to 1999, Berezovsky was among the businessmen who gained access to the president. He acquired stakes in state companies including AutoVAZ, Aeroflot, and several oil properties that he (together with Roman Abramovich) organized into Sibneft. Berezovsky established a bank to finance his operations and acquired several news media holdings as well. Berezovsky was a leading proponent of political and economic liberalization in Russia. He has frequently entered into politics by getting control over the media sources (his holdings included the television channels ORT and TV6 (for which he paid almost nothing but gained control over them with the help of Boris Eltsin), and newspapers Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Novye Izvestiya and Kommersant), financing political candidates, making political statements, and even seeking office himself. His media holdings provided essential support for Yeltsin's re-election in 1996. Berezovsky famously boasted how he was part of a small coterie of so-called oligarchs who owned 50 per cent of Russia's wealth.

Later, when in exile, Berezovsky had to fight legal battles over his holdings. According to New York Times, there is a suspicion that Berezovsky's later critical activities against the Russian government could simply be an attempt to orchestrate a political crisis for Putin and win political asylum in Britain as a means to protect permanently the wealth he carved out of Russia in the early days, when the pickings were easy.

Political career

Berezovsky was briefly executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and later a member of the State Duma (Russia's lower house of parliament) from 1999 to July 2000. He survived several assassination attempts,.

In the position of the deputy secretary of the Security Council of Russia, he was also involved in talks on freeing Russian and foreign hostages kidnapped in Chechnya and allegedly transferred large sums of money in exchange for hostages. Berezovsky admitted, that in 1997, he gave $2 million of his own money to Chechen field commander Shamil Basayev, who was then Prime Minister of Chechnya. The money was intended for restoration of a cement factory, he said, but he admitted it might have been used for other purposes. Berezovsky had strong ties with Chechens in Moscow. According to Paul Klebnikov book "Godfather of Kremlin Boris Berezovsky or looting of Russia", those connections came from Berezovsky's close relations with Chechen mafia, whom he paid for protection against other mafia gangs in early 90s. He said that he "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." However, Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov accused Berezovsky and the Russian government of collusion with the hostage-takers.

The first assault against Berezovsky was launched during Primakov's premiership, when Berezovsky was accused of money laundering when he was at the head of Aeroflot. However, in the event it was Primakov who was dismissed.

According to Alex Goldfarb, an associate of Berezovsky and Litvinenko, in 1999 Berezovsky secured Vladimir Putin's appointment to the Prime Minister position as a result of a secret agreement, where Putin promised his loyalty to Yeltsin and his closest circle including Berezovsky himself. In June 2000 The Times reported that Spanish police discovered Putin secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to Berezovsky on up to five different occasions in 1999. According to Ramzan Kadyrov, Berezovsky was strongly opposed to the Second Chechen War but nevertheless supported Putin's 2000 presidential campaign. Just before the March 2000 elections, The New Yorker wrote, "Berezovsky unleashed a propaganda blitz that obliterated the opposition as surely as Russia's tanks obliterated Grozny." At least two candidates who were widely felt to have a reasonable chance of winning over Putin - the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, and the former premier Yevgeny Primakov - were swiftly eliminated through an elaborate smear campaign. However, according to Goldfarb, Putin later broke the agreement with Berezovsky, allegedly when he was infuriated by the critical coverage of the Russian submarine Kursk explosion by ORT TV channel owned by Berezovsky. Putin forced Berezovsky to sell his ORT shares, partly in exchange for promising to free Nikolai Glushkov, a former manager of Aeroflot company and close associate of Berezovsky, according to Goldfarb.

Mark Kramer, Director of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies and a Senior Associate at the Davis Center for Russian Studies at Harvard University, asserts that Berezovsky is "consumed by greed and very short tempered. He is not the type of person that most people would want as a friend."

Stefanie Marsh of The Times wrote in 2007, that Berezovsky was one of the architects of Putin's rise to power and has spent the intervening years grinding an axe about his fall from grace.

Allegations and convictions of criminal activity

Crime accusations in Forbes article, murders of Paul Klebnikov and Vlad Listyev, interrogation by Russian police in 1995

A 1996 Forbes magazine article titled Godfather of the Kremlin?, by the Russian-American journalist Paul Klebnikov, portrayed Berezovsky as a mafiya boss who had his rivals murdered, and was involved in fraud, money laundering and had connections with Chechen mafia. In his article among other things Klebnikov accused Berezovsky of organizing murder of Vlad Listyev, notorious Russian anchorman whose TV show was the first one to start openly criticizing communism ideology in 1988 and was the most popular by ratings in Russia even 7 years after. Berezovsky was interrogated by police and accepted the fact, that one day before Vlad Listyev was killed he passed US$100,000 to one of the mafia leaders known as Nikolai. Berezovsky acknowledged having passed the money to mafia, but said that he passed the money to Nikolay in order to find out who arranged an assassination attempt on himself a year ago (in 1994). Berezovsky had a great influence on Boris Yeltsin whom he indirectly sponsored by donating on publishing of his autobiography and establishing friendly relationships (often by indirectly sponsoring their activities) with most people who surrounded the president, including his daughter Tatyana Dyachenko (whom he may have earned hundreds of millions of dollars), and convinced Yeltsin that he was an innocent victim of someone else's plot. President support helped Berezovsky to stop criminal investigation against him.

A few months after the article in Forbes was published, Berezovsky sued the magazine for libel (in February 1997) in British court. In 2003 the court ruled that Forbes remove one statement from the article, as it didn't have enough evidence to support the claim that Berezovsky arranged murder of famous anchorman and TV producer Vlad Listyev. The court didn't order Forbes to remove the rest of the article from the website nor acknowledge that all data contained in it was false, nor forced Forbes to pay a compensation, that Berezovsky wanted when filing his claim. The article is still available online on the Forbes website (with exception of one above mentioned statement). Some media sources controlled by Berezovsky though, such as Kommersant magazine, reported, that Forbes "lost the case" and "completely retracted their claims against Berezovsky" which actually never happened. Berezovsky never contested in court the book "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia" that Klebnikov published in 2000, which was a very extended version of the article.

On July 9, 2004, Klebnikov was attacked on a Moscow street late at night by unknown assailants who fired at least nine shots from a slowly moving car. Klebnikov was shot four times and initially survived, but he bled to death in the hospital because the ambulance took almost an hour to come, it had no oxygen bottle, and the hospital elevator that was taking him to the operating room broke. Before he died, Klebnikov described that there were 3 assasins in the car, and that he never met any of them before. The publisher of Forbes' Russian edition has said that the murder is "definitely linked to his professional activity". The paper speculated that a list of the 100 wealthiest Russians written by Klebnikov in May 2004 may have motivated the attack, though Klebnikov himself was most afraid of Boris Berezovsky according to his brother

Other early crime allegations in Russia by Alexander Lebed and Alexander Korzhakov

On October 16, 1996 Alexander Lebed, then Secretary of the Security Council, accused Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky (another oligarch, a president of the MOST financial group, who was one of Berezovsky's main rivals at the time), of making up lists of persons slated for liquidation. At about the same time Alexander Korzhakov, former Chief of Russia President's Security Service, told journalists that Berezovsky had tried to talk him into assassinating Vladimir Gusinsky, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, singer and Duma deputy Iosif Kobzon, and others (Novy vzglyad newspaper, 19 October 1996).

First probe and arrest warrant in Russia on money laundering in 1999, and start of criminal investigation in Switzerland

In 1999 after Yevgeny Primakov was appointed Prime Minister of Russia, he started fighting corruption and initiated several criminal investigations. Among those was a probe on Berezovsky for fraud and money laundering in AvtoVAZ car manufacturer and Aeroflot airline. It may be worth mentioning that at that time Vladimir Putin was not playing a significant role in Russian politics.

On April 6, 1999 an arrest order in the name of Berezovsky was issued. (on the same day another arrest warrant has been issued against Alexander Smolensky. He was charged with illegal business activities and money laundering). At the time Berezovsky was in Paris and commented, that the case was started by his political opponents and the allegations were false. The prosecutor general Sergei Stepashin allowed him to enter the country and not to be arrested despite of the warrant. The arrest warrant was quashed by the mogul's allies in Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin, and on November 5, 1999 the charges were lifted and Berezovsky reclassified from accused person to witness.

At the same time several investigations have been started in Switzerland against Russians involved in fraud and money laundering. Among those was a case against Switzerland-Albanian construction firm Mabetex which supposedly bribed Pavel Borodin (government official close to Yeltsin responsible for a lot of government property in Russia at that time). Swiss prosecutors also visited companies "Andava", "Forus" and a few others under control of Berezovsky. The bank accounts of Berezovsky, his partner in "Aeroflot" Nikolay Glushkov and a few other people were arrested with almost US$70 million frozen on them. At the end of summer the entry visa to Switzerland was rejected to Berezovsky. The investigation against Berezovsky in Switzerland is still under way. Berezovsky has been investigated by the Swiss financial authorities for money laundering and membership of a criminal organization. In 2003, the Swiss Bundesanwaltschaft (General State Prosecutor) started a criminal case against Berezovsky and, amongst others, Nikolai Glushkov, for money laundering through the Swiss firms Ovaco AG, situated at the Monbijoustrasse in Bern, and Anros SA in the Lausanne World Trade Center. Berezovsky claimed the proceedings were motivated by antisemitism. In December 2006, as news broke of the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the Bundesanwaltschaft announced that its investigations against Boris Berezovsky were still continuing.

The Federal Criminal Court of Switzerland on October 27, 2008 ruled to confiscate several million francs from bank accounts in Switzerland, one of whose beneficiaries was or is Berezovsky.

Further criminal investigation and criminal convictions in Russia

On November 1, 2000 Russia's prosecutor general demanded that Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky (at the moment outside of Russia) appeared before the court in Russia by November 13 with the threat of international arrest warrants and prison if they failed to show up. The general prosecutor office said it now had sufficient proof (in the case of Boris Berezovsky) to bring charges of large-scale theft in relation to alleged embezzlement from the state airline Aeroflot Berezovsky who was abroad, decided not to come back to Russia.

On September 20, 2001 Berezovsky was put on Russia's federal warrant list and charged in absentia with assisting fraud, hiding currency operations from Russian regulators and failing to sell on domestic market a part of foreign currency obtained from international trade as was required by currency regulation in Russia, and money laundering.

On September 5, 2007, a trial in absentia began in Moscow to examine allegations that Berezovsky had embezzled money from the Russian airline carrier Aeroflot in the 1990s. On November 29, 2007, a Moscow court found Berezovsky guilty of massive embezzlement, and sentenced him to six years in jail. The court found that he had stolen 214 million roubles (nearly $9 million) from Aeroflot through fraud, and ordered him to repay it. Berezovsky called the verdict "a farce". The judge described Berezovsky as part of an organized criminal group that included Aeroflot managers.

On June 26, 2009, he was convicted in Krasnogorsk court on another charge of stealing 5,500 cars from AvtoVAZ in 1994 and sentenced in absentia to 13 years of imprisonment. His business associate Yuli Dubov, who is also in exile in Great Britain, received a 9 years sentence. A fiction book "Bolshaya Paika", loosely based on Berezovsky and written by Dubov, which later served as basis for the movie Tycoon, was used as one of the pieces of evidence. His appeal in the Moscow Oblast court was rejected on September 17, 2009.

Allegations by Mikhail Fridman

On 28 October 2004 in a popular show «To the barrier» on NTV Russian TV channel a shareholder and CEO of Alfa Group Mikhail Fridman, was invited as a guest and was facing Andrey Vasiliev, then general director of Kommersant Publishing House, the leading source for business news in Russia at the time. In the course of the heated debates, Fridman claimed he was willing to give a loan to Kommersant minors in 1999 so that they could buy out the Publishing House from its principal owner Vladimir Yakovlev. Berezovsky, Fridman claimed, who was himself eyeing Kommersant, was “extremely displeased” and “threatening” when calling him. “Berezovsky was threatening me. In general, he was threatening everybody,” Fridman said the key phrase of the suit. On March 31, 2005 Berezovsky submitted a claim to High Court of England to Mihkail Fridman for libel and asked for compensation. Since Mikhail Fridman was unable to provide any proof that Berezovsky threatened him, on May 26 2006 the jury ordered Fridman to pay Berezovsky GBP50,000.

Criminal probe and arrest warrant in Brazil

In May 2006 Berezovsky was detained for several hours in San Paolo airport and questioned about Media Sports Investment (MSI) group financial violations, which was a sponsor of the national Corinthians football club, local media reported. He was later allowed to leave the country.

On July 12, 2007, a Brazilian 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.Berezovsky is accused of being the main financial backer of MSI. Since Berezovsky, Iranian-born Kia Joorabchian and Noyan Bedru were not in Brazil at the time, warrants for their arrest were forwarded to Interpol. Berezovsky claimed that the Brazilian investigation was a part of the Kremlin's "politicized campaign" against him. Sao Paulo court demanded the detention of Mr Berezovsky and his associates over accusations that money had been laundered through the city's Corinthians football club. The order came after a two-year investigation into large quantities of cash allegedly pumped into the club by an investment group fronted by Mr Berezovsky's long-time associate, the Iranian-born businessman, Kia Joorabchian. A warrant has also been issued for the arrest of Mr Joorabchian, who allegedly oversaw the transfer of Carlos Tevez, an Argentinian football star, from the Corinthians to West Ham United. In the summary of a 15-page report released after the investigation, the Brazilian prosecutor Mr Carneiro said: "There is enough circumstantial evidence indicating that the MSI-Corinthians partnership is being used for the laundering of money, most of which was received from Boris Berezovsky, who is wanted (by Russian authorities) for crimes committed against the Russian financial system."

Investigation in Netherlands

In August 2007, the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General announced that the Dutch tax police had visited Moscow in connection with a handling and money laundering case involving Berezovsky. As Russian media were claiming 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 he was not the object of any criminal investigation in the Netherlands, while Berezovsky himself 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, to which the Dutch prosecution officers in function refused to comment.

Search in Berezovsky's castle in France

On May 11, 2005 French Central Office for Fighting Major Financial Crime (OCRGDF) searched Cote d’-Azur castle of Berezovsky. The castle was searched in the course of investigation of Berezovsky’s suspected involvement in money laundering, AFP reported referring to the sources close to investigation.

Allegations of funding terrorism

There were persistent reports of Berezovsky sponsoring terrorists in Chechnya. In an interview to Forbes magazine Ichkeria's President Aslan Maskhadov referred to Boris Berezovsky as one of the persons most responsible for the war in the Caucasus.

Yusup Soslambekov, chairman of the Confederation of the Peoples of the Caucasus, regarded Berezovsky as his personal enemy and threatened to disclose evidence of Berezovsky's involvement with certain Chechen warlords whom he hired to help him in his shady dealings with Chechnya's oil, drug trafficking, hostage-taking and similar pursuits. Soon after Yusup Soslambekov fell victim to a contract killing in Moscow. Even before that Akmal Saidov, who had also unearthed facts about Berezovsky's criminal activities in the Caucasus, was kidnapped; his body was later found.

According to Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, Boris Berezovsky encouraged Chechen warlords Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev to kidnap people so that Berezovsky could finance them by paying ransoms. Kadyrov said he personally witnessed the agreement. "He couldn’t just give money to the militants, so he invented this mechanism. In my presence, Berezovsky suggested to Raduev and Basaev: ‘Capture people and I’ll ransom them. I’ll get good publicity and you’ll get money.’ He paid millions of dollars to Basaev", Kadyrov said in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta in April, 2009. Kadyrov also said he believed Berezovsky was behind the killing of journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

In early 2009, former Chechen separatist Bukhari Barayev, and brother of the notorious Chechen separatist field commander Arbi Barayev, who was killed in 2001, referred to Berezovsky as "the extremists' bread winner".

Berezovsky said that he had a conversation with the Chechen Islamist leader Movladi Udugov in 1999, six months before the beginning of fighting in Dagestan. A transcript of the phone conversation between Berezovsky and Udugov was leaked to one of Moscow tabloids on September 10, 1999. Udugov proposed to start the Dagestan war to provoke the Russian response, topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish a new Islamic republic of Basayev-Udugov that would be friendly to Russia. Berezovsky asserted that he refused the offer, but "Udugov and Basayev 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."

Exile in Britain

In 1999 Russia opened investigations into Berezovsky's business activities. Fearing arrest, Berezovsky fled to London in 2001, where he was granted political asylum, which infuriated the Russian authorities. He has been charged with fraud and political corruption, but British courts have rejected all three attempts to get him extradited to Russia. From his new home in the U.K., he has strongly criticized the current Russian administration.

In 2003 Boris Berezovsky formally changed his name to Platon Elenin ("Platon" being Russian for Plato, 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 Tycoon based on his life. In December 2003 he was allowed to travel under his new name to Georgia, provoking a row between Russia and Georgia.

In recent years, Berezovsky has gone into 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 speculations that the relationship may cause tension in Russo-American bilateral relations.

It has been reported that Berezovsky's funds may have depleted rapidly with the onset of the late 2000s recession. It may well be true as Berezovsky never proved his ability to manage any assets and was always best at just taking companies' cashflows under control by liaising with the senior management and making those firms which did not formally belong to him his cash cows.

On February 19, 2009, Interfax quoted another former Chechen separatist leader who switched sides, Magomed Khambiyev, as accusing Berezovsky of financing the First Deputy Prime Minister of the separatist Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Movladi Udugov, as well as the late separatist warlord Shamil Basaev, and of broadcasting "Wahabbi ideas." He alleged that Berezovsky had financed "illegal armed unit" leaders "under the guise of paying ransoms for hostages" as well as the Kavkaz television channel, which he referred to as a "Wahhabi mouthpiece." Khambiyev also alleged that Berezovsky "personally" handed Basaev $1 million upon arriving in Ingushetia after the first Chechen military campaign. He was quoted as saying "I asked Basayev why Berezovsky had given the money and why Basaev accepted it. He answered that Berezovsky was afraid of him and therefore paid the money". Khambiyev said that it later turned out that Berezovsky had actually given Basayev $2 million while in Ingushetia.

Berezovsky's exile statements

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 British newspaper The Guardian, Berezovsky declared that he is 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 struggled much 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" that many in the west held, portraying him whenever possible as a dangerously anti-democratic figure.

A teenager is carrying sign "Berezovsky, we are with you!" during police attack on a 2007 Dissenters March in Saint Petersburg; The Other Russia organizers said that this slogan was a provocation carried out by pro-government youth groups

Soon after Berezovsky's 2007 statement, Garry Kasparov, an important leader of 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 find whether his comments can be considered a "seizure of power by force", as outlined in the Russian Criminal Code. If convicted, an offender is facing up to 20 years of imprisonment. The British Foreign Office denounced Berezovsky's statements, warning him that his status of a political refugee may be reconsidered, should he continue to make similar remarks. Furthermore, Scotland Yard had announced that it would investigate whether Berezovsky's statements were in violation of 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.

Alleged assassination attempts in London

Alleged 2003 plot

According to Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) agent in London was making preparations 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". Berezovsky in turn later accused Putin of ordering the deadly poisoning of Litvinenko.

This was not the first alleged plot to murder Berezovsky that had been announced by Litvinenko. On November 17, 1998, during the period that Vladimir Putin was the head of the FSB, five high-ranking officers of FSB's Directorate for the Analysis of Criminal Organisations appeared at a press conference in the Russian Interfax news agency. The officers, including the then-Lieutenant Colonel Litvinenko, accused the head of the Directorate and his deputy of ordering them to assassinate Boris Berezovsky and the FSB officer Mikhail Trepashkin in November 1997.

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 a Chechen nationality. He was identified by Kommersant as the Chechen mobster Movladi Atlangeriyev; after returning to Russia, Atlangeriyev forcibly disappeared in January 2008 by the unknown men in Moscow.

Involvement in Alexander Litvinenko affair

Main article: Alexander Litvinenko poisoning

Many publications in Russian media suggested that the death of Alexander Litvinenko was connected to Berezovsky. Former FSB chief Nikolay Kovalev, for whom Litvinenko worked, said that the incident "looks like the hand of Berezovsky. I am sure that no kind of intelligence services participated." This involvement of Berezovsky was alleged by numerous Russian television shows. Kremlin supporters saw it as a conspiracy to smear Russian government's reputation by engineering a spectacular murder of a Russian dissident abroad.

After Litvinenko's death, traces of polonium-210 were found in an office of Berezovsky. Russian prosecutors were not allowed to investigate the office. Russian authorities have also been unable to question Berezovsky. The Foreign Ministry complained that Britain was obstructing its attempt to send prosecutors to London to interview more than 100 people, including Berezovsky.

Alleged 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, 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 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. 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.

2010 Ukraine presidential election

Berezovsky called on the Ukrainian business to support Yushchenko at 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 would request it Berezovsky would be detained after arriving in Ukraine.

See also

References

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External links

Preceded byIvan Korotchenya Executive Secretary of CIS
April 29, 1998 – March 4, 1999 		Succeeded byIvan Korotchenya (acting)
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