High flyer who went to prison

BACK in the 1990s, the debonair businessman Nikoli Glushkov worked for Aeroflot, where he held the title deputy director in charge of finance, and also for the oligarch Boris Berezovsky’s car manufacturing company LogoVAZ.

But after falling out with Vladimir Putin, Mr Glushkov was jailed for five years on charges of money laundering and fraud.

Claims have since emerged that Mr Glushkov had discovered that the airline worked as a ‘cash cow’ to support international spying operations. Crucially, too, he was also a close friend of Mr Berezovsky, who, of course, had helped Mr Putin to power in 2000, but later turned on him, accusing him of running a gangster state.

After serving his sentence and being released in 2004, Mr Glushkov was later handed another sentence for fraud, this time two years suspended, but then fled to Britain. He remained in the UK after being granted political asylum.