Unexplained deaths of Putin’s critics and their close links to Litvinenko
Confidante of oligarch seen as Russian president’s nemesis had consistently raised doubts over ‘suicide’
NIKOLAI GLUSHKOV was always adamant that his friend Boris Berezovsky had not taken his own life.
The idea that the oligarch and selfappointed chief nemesis of Vladimir Putin had committed suicide was, he insisted, “bull----”.
“I will never accept the idea,” he said after coroners recorded an open verdict on his fellow exile’s death in Berkshire in 2013.
Five years on, the same questions will be asked of his own death.
Glushkov, who was 68 when he died yesterday, rose to wealth in the Nineties as a lieutenant of Berezovsky, the oligarch who amassed immense wealth and influence under Boris Yeltsin’s government but fled to Britain after falling out with Mr Putin.
The two men would later become part of a London-based coterie of fugitive Russian businessmen and critics of Mr Putin that has been wracked by unexplained deaths.
They had close links not only to Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian spy assassinated in London in 2006, but also to Andrei Lugovoi – the man Scotland Yard believe carried out that murder.
Berezovsky made his fortune via a combination of sharp operating in the car dealing trade and snapping up state-owned enterprises in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse.
On his rapid rise to phenomenal power and wealth, Berezovsky had no closer confidante, said Sergei Migdal, a former Israeli secret service officer who worked in Berezovsky’s Israeli office from 2005 to 2010. “Glushkov has known Berezovsky since the Eighties. He was one of the few people who was close to Berezovsky during the Nineties and was involved in many of his business dealings. They were also very close friends,” Mr Migdal said.
Among their most prominent joint projects were AVTOVAZ, the car maker that produces the Lada, and Aeroflot, Russia’s national airline, which Glushkov ran for Berezovsky as its financial chief. Meanwhile, Berezovsky had acquired another loyal lieutenant – a KGB officer called Andrei Lugovoi who took leave to work as the oligarch’s personal bodyguard.
By the end of the Nineties, Berezovsky controlled Russia’s main television channel, Channel One, sat on Yeltsin’s security council, and is said to have been instrumental in choosing Mr Putin as Yeltsin’s successor in 1999.
But when the oligarch dramatically fell out with the new president in 2000, Glushkov’s fortunes changed too. While Berezovsky fled Russia for Glushkov was charged with defrauding Aeroflot and slung into Lefortovo prison. That led to one of the most bizarre incidents in the saga.
“The general consensus is that Glushkov was kept hostage [by the authorities] because they really wanted to
‘The general consensus is that Glushkov was kept hostage because they really wanted to get Boris’
get Boris,” said Mr Migdal. “And the suspicion was that Berezovsky asked Lugovoi to spring Glushkov from prison.”
Glushkov later denied knowledge of the botched escape attempt, which some allies of Berezovsky have claimed was staged as a pretext to extend his jail term. Whether he was in on it or not, the plan went drastically wrong, and Mr Lugovoi found himself serving time. Both men were later released. But while Mr Lugovoi stayed in Russia, Mr Glushkov joined his old boss in Britain. In 2017 Glushkov was convicted in absentia on fresh charges of defrauding Aeroflot of $123 million. He was sentenced to eight years in jail.
Berezovsky and another close associate, Yuli Dubov, had been granted asylum in Britain in 2003. The decision caused fury in the Kremlin, which saw the move as a political decision to harbour government critics.
That antagonism only increased when Berezovsky used his exile to style himself as Mr Putin’s most vociferous critic, openly saying he wanted to mount a revolution to overthrow him.
The antagonism came to a head in 2006 when Litvinenko was murdered in London with Polonium 210, in what the British government believes was an assassination “probably” ordered by Mr Putin.
Scotland Yard believes Mr Lugovoi carried out the killing, in a dramatic inversion of his former loyalties. Mr Lugovoi, who is now a Russian MP and a supporter of Mr Putin, has always denied the charge.
There followed a series of unexplained – but far less clear cut – deaths. Two years later Badri Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian businessman, collapsed at his Surrey mansion the evening after a meeting with Berezovsky, Glushkov and Mr Dubov at the offices of Lord Goldsmith QC. Berezovsky was found hanged at his own home in 2013. With Glushkov’s death, Mr Dubov is now the only survivor of that meeting.
Foul play has not been established in any of those deaths. Some close associates of Berezovsky have contested Glushkov’s insistence that it was not suicide, saying the former oligarch had become a recluse after the humiliating collapse of his attempt to sue Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich in the London High Court in 2013.