Russian tycoon found dead
Boris Berezovsky, an enemy of Putin, may have committed suicide
MOSCOW— Boris Berezovsky, one of the powerful post-Soviet oligarchs who helped install Vladimir Putin as president but later exiled himself to Britain after a bitter falling out, died Saturday at age 67.
Berezovsky’s death was first reported in a post on Facebook by his son-in-law Egor Schuppe and confirmed by Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer who had represented him.
Dobrovinsky, who runs a law firm with offices in Moscow and London, wrote in Russian on his own Facebook page: “Just got a call from London. Boris Berezovsky has committed suicide. The man was complex. An act of desperation? Impossible to live poor? A series of blows? I am afraid that no one will know the truth.”
British newspapers were reporting Saturday night that Berezovsky’s bodyguard had found his em- ployer dead in his bathtub in his mansion in Ascot, about an hour outside London. The Thames Valley police issued a statement saying only they were investigating the “unexplained” death of a 67-year-old man in Ascot. But Dobrovinsky told Russian state TV that his client — who had survived assassination attempts in the past — had lately been in “a horrible, terrible” emotional state. “All he had was debts,” the lawyer said. “He was practically destroyed. He was selling his paintings and other things.” When he first came to Britain, Berezovsky adopted much the same style as an oligarch back home in Russia. He was driven in chauffeured cars that were typically followed by a Range Rover bearing dark-suited bodyguards. But in recent years the one-time Kremlin powerbroker turned thorn in Putin’s side took on fights that bit into his fortune. Last August, he lost what was billed as the largest private lawsuit in history: an epic tug-of-war with another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich, over $5.1 billion related to the sale of shares in Sibneft, a Russian oil company, and other assets. The legal and other costs were estimated at $250 million. In her ruling, the judge, Elizabeth Gloster, called Berezovsky an “unimpressive and inherently unreliable witness” and at times a dishonest one. By contrast, she said Abramovich had been “a truthful, and on the whole reliable, witness.” Berezovsky’s legal troubles worsened in recent weeks with a claim by former girlfriend Elena Gorbunova that he owed her about $8 million from the sale of a house. A friend of the tycoon, who spoke anonymously, said Berezovsky had confided he was “extremely depressed” for at least six months since losing against Abramovich. “He was a great believer in British justice and he felt it let him down,” the friend said.
Berezovsky, born in Moscow on Jan. 23, 1946, was a Soviet mathematician who after the fall of communism went into business and figured out how to skim profits off what was then Russian’s largest state-owned carmaker. Along with huge wealth, he accumulated enormous political influence, becoming a close ally of Boris Yeltsin’s.
With Yeltsin’s political career fading, Berezovsky helped engineer the rise of Putin, an obscure former KGB agent and onetime aide to the mayor of St. Petersburg, who became president of Russia in 2000 and in May returned to the presidency for a third term.
After his election, Putin began a campaign of tax claims against a group of rich and powerful Russians, including Berezovsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, an oil tycoon, who remains jailed in Russia.
Berezovsky fled to London, where he eventually won political asylum and at one point raised tensions by calling for a coup against Putin.
He survived an assassination attempt in 1994, a car bombing in which his driver was killed. With files from Star wire services