Boris Berezovsky (businessman)
Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (Russian: Бори́с Абра́мович Березо́вский, born in Moscow on 23 January 1946) is a former Russian oligarch, government official and mathematician, member of Russian Academy of Sciences. 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 (first charges were brought under Primakov's government in 1999). 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 in Russia in the 1990s when the country went through privatisation of state property and "robber capitalism". He profited from gaining control over various assets, including the country's main television channel, Channel One. In 1997 Forbes magazine estimated Berezovsky's wealth at US$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 "family" (inner circle). 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.
In a 2000 article in The Washington Post, Berezovsky 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. Paul Klebnikov also extensively criticized Berezovsky, and accused him of various crimes in his articles and book. Some of the accusations though have later been dismissed in the UK courts.
From his new home in the UK, where he and associates including Akhmed Zakayev, Alexander Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb became known as "the London Circle" of Russian exiles, Berezovsky has publicly stated that he is on a mission to bring down Putin "by force" or by bloodless revolution. Berezovsky established the International Foundation for Civil Liberties, to "support the abused and the vulnerable in society – prisoners, national minorities and business people" in Russia and criticized Putin's record in the West.
In 2012 Berezovsky lost a High Court case he brought against Roman Abramovich in London over the ownership of Sibneft, where he sought over £3 billion in damages. The court judged Berezovsky as an "inherently unreliable" witness, who "regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes" and that "At times the evidence which he gave was deliberately dishonest; sometimes he was clearly making his evidence up as he went along in response to the perceived difficulty in answering the questions." The court concluded that Berezovsky had never been a co-owner of Sibneft.
Read more about Boris Berezovsky (businessman): Early Life and Scientific Research, Exile in Britain, Publications By The Subject, Works About The Subject