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Boris Berezovsky
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Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (also known as Platon Elenin) (born January 23, 1946), is a Russian Jewish business man, billionaire and former mathematician. He is best known for his role as a Russian oligarch, media tycoon and prominent politician during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. He has been described by critics as the epitome of Russian "robber capitalism", but he denies having ever taken part in the violence that tainted Russian business during that era.
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Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (also known as Platon Elenin) (born January 23, 1946), is a Russian Jewish business man, billionaire and former mathematician. He is best known for his role as a Russian oligarch, media tycoon and prominent politician during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. He has been described by critics as the epitome of Russian "robber capitalism", but he denies having ever taken part in the violence that tainted Russian business during that era. Berezovsky 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 daughter Tatyana Dyachenko, and a member of the Yeltsin inner circle, or "family".
Berezovsky made his fortune importing Mercedes cars into Russia in the 1990s and setting himself up as a middleman distributing cars made by Russia's Avtovaz. As well as taking ownership of the Sibneft oil company, he became the main shareholder in the country's main television channel, ORT, which he turned into a propaganda vehicle for Boris Yeltsin in the run-up to the 1996 presidential election. Although he helped Vladimir Putin enter the "family", and funded the party that formed Putin's parliamentary base, Putin moved to regain control of the ORT television station, and to curb the political ambitions of Russia's oligarchs, who were extremely unpopular with the average Russian.
After the ascent of Putin to the Russian presidency, Berezovsky went into opposition and fled the country after being accused of defrauding a regional government of US$13 million. 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. According to Professor Richard Sakwa, Berezovsky's behaviour is always marked by audacity and cunning.
In 2007, a Moscow court found Berezovsky guilty of massive 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. He has also been accused by Russian authorities of being involved in the murders of several leading critics of the Putin's regime, including Litvinenko and journalist Anna Politkovskaya, in an attempt to destabilize the country and discredit Putin. Arrest warrants for him have been issued in Russia and Brazil for allegations of fraud, embezzlement and money laundering, and he has been under investigation by Swiss federal prosecutors for money laundering since 2003.
Berezovsky survived an assassination attempt in 1994 unharmed. There have been several other alleged assassination attempts on him which he accuses Russian agents of carrying out.
Early life and scientific research
Berezovsky was born in 1946 in Moscow to Abram Markovich Berezovsky, a civil engineer in construction works, and Anna Gelman. Although his parents were Jewish, he adopted the Orthodox beliefs. 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 Erdos number is 4.
Business career in Russia
Berezovsky started in business in 1989 under perestroika by buying and reselling automobiles from state manufacturer AutoVAZ. A transcript of an official interview of Boris Berezovsky with The First Post mentions: "In the early 1990s, he explained, he went to Germany, bought old Mercedes saloons at DM 700 a pop, then sold them in Moscow for $25,000: "Not a bad profit." He returned to Germany with 10 friends, and built an empire." 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 as a joint-stock company with Berezovsky as its president. In four years it became one of the biggest private enterprises in Russia and in 1993 the turnover of the company exceeded US$250 million. On May 31, 1994 Logovaz became a holding company and Mr. Berezovsky was appointed the Chairman of the Board of Directors. LogoVAZ became an exclusive consignment dealer of AutoVAZ, allegedly enabling a scheme (named ReExport) in which cars were sold abroad and then bought back for sale on the internal market. In another business, May Berezovsky became head of the Automobile All-Russia alliance "?VV?" ("????" in Russian Cyrillic) and became known as the initiator of the "popular car" project (the aim was to create a small and fuel-efficient Russian car).
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 investing in the liberal media (his holdings included the television channels ORT and TV6, and newspapers Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Novye Izvestiya and Kommersant), financing liberal candidates, making political statements, and even seeking office himself. His media holdings provided essential support for Yeltsin's re-election in 1996.
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 Mr. 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). He survived several assassination attempts, including one in which a car bomb decapitated the chauffeur of his Mercedes-Benz 600 in 1994.
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 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 through their Moscow diaspora connections. 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 had 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. However Putin later broke the agreement, 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.
Exile in Britain
Russia neither welcomed Berezovsky's views on Chechnya, nor his political clout and opened investigations into Berezovsky's business activities. Fearing arrest, Berezovsky fled to London in 2001, where he was granted political asylum. 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 soccer club Arsenal F.C., for a game. There has been speculations that the relationship may cause tension in Russo-American bilateral relations.
Supposed 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 the 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.
Allegations and convictions of criminal activity
Criminal conviction in Russia
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.
Litigation with Forbes
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. Berezovsky sued the magazine for libel, 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.
Arrest warrant in Brazil
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 dismissed the Brazilian investigation as a part of the Kremlin's "politicized campaign" against him.
Allegations of handling and money laundering
Berezovsky has been investigated by the Swiss financial authorities since 1999 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.
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.
Alleged links to the assassinations of Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
On October 7 2006, prominent Russian journalist and an outspoken Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya was assassinated at her Moscow apartment in what was a suspected contract killing.
On August 28, 2007, Russia's Prosecutor-General Yury Chaika had a meeting with President Putin and the FSB director Nikolai Patrushev, during which he made an official announcement that "our investigation has led us to conclude that only people living abroad could be interested in killing Politkovskaya," and that "forces interested in de-stabilising the country, in stoking crisis...in discrediting the national leadership, provoking external pressure on the country, could be interested in this crime. Anna Politkovskaya knew who ordered her killing. She met him more than once." Chaika also said that Politkovskaya's killers are probably connected with the murders of deputy Central Bank head Andrei Kozlov and U.S. journalist Paul Khlebnikov. The person noted by Chaika as the organizer of the murder was unequivocally identified in the media as Boris Berezovsky.
The statement by Chaika was supported by the Russian businessman, politician and former KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, who had been indicted by British court with regard to the Alexander Litvinenko's murder. Lugovoy said that Berezovsky had organized the murders of Politkovskaya, Litvinenko, and the attempted murder of Yelena Tregubova. Press freedom advocates have called the timing of the announcement, just three days before Politkovskaya's birthday on August 30, suspicious. Oleg Panfilov of the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations said that the kremlin is trying to preempt the inevitable criticism that would have come if the investigation lasted a whole year without yielding results: "I think that Chaika is trying to preserve Putin's image."
On April 3 2008, the suspended head of Russia’s Investigation Committee, Dmitry Dovgy, told the press that Berezovsky was behind the murder. He said he was convinced that the murder had been carried out by "Boris Berezovsky, through Khozh-Ahmed Noukhayev," and that her death had been "advantageous" for the former Kremlin insider at that particular moment in time. Dovgy said that the murder was also aimed at undermining confidence in law and order in Russia. "She was such a strong character, in opposition to the authorities. She met with Berezovsky, and, well, they killed her. They didn't believe that we would solve the case so quickly. The organizers [of Politkovskaya's murder] wanted to show that well-known people can be killed here in broad daylight, with the law enforcement agencies seemingly unable to solve such crimes," he said.
Berezovsky dismissed the accusations in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio as an "another attempt to distract the investigation from searching for the real person behind the murder."
Alexander Litvinenko
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.
Berezovsky's exile statements
Planning of the Second Chechen War
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 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."
"Regime change" controversy
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."
Soon after Berezovsky's 2007 statement, Garry Kasparov, an important figure 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.
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 [into these claims] 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 indentified by Kommersant as the Chechen mobster Movladi Atlangeriyev; after returning to Russia, Atlangeriyev forcibly disappeared in January 2008 by the unknown men in Moscow.
See also
External links
- , TIME, Mar. 03, 1997
- , BusinessWeek, July 24 2000
- , PBS, October 2003
- , BBC News, 27 September 2005
- , The Independent, 25 November 2006
- , BBC News, 31 May 2007
- at Encyclopedia Britannica
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