Ik plaats het hele artikel omdat er geen link is, het komt uit de papieren editie van de Daily Mail.
OLIGARCH WHO GAINS FROM A POWER STRUGGLE WITH PUTIN DAILY MAIL (London)
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
by Richard Pendlebury
ALEXANDER Litvinenko liked to boast that he was once asked by Vladimir Putin to assassinate the man who is now the Russian president's biggest critic.
'I refused,' the former KGB colonel would recount. 'Boris Berezovsky is my friend.'
But what kind of friend is Mr Berezovsky, the billionaire Russian oligarch living in Britain?
![]()
The balding little man, with bodyguard in tow, has already visited the stricken Litvinenko's bedside.
There are few trails which do not lead back to Mr Berezovsky. The 60-year-old who is wanted in Russia on charges of fraud finances a number of Russian factions who want Mr Putin out of the Kremlin.
Nowhere is this more evident than in a quiet, residential street in north London.
On one side of the road is the £500,000 Litvinenko family home, where the former KGB man lives with his wife and 12-year-old son.
Almost opposite is the £700,000 home of Akhmed Zakayev, who was once deputy prime minister of Chechnya and has been granted political asylum here.
Zakayev and Litvinenko would once have been deadly enemies but now, united in opposition to Mr Putin, they are close friends.
The Land Registry shows that both their homes are owned by companies based in the British Virgin Islands both of which are believed to be controlled by Mr Berezovsky, who has much to gain by their occupants' anti-Putin stance.
He gains, too, from the claims that Mr Putin tried to kill Mr Litvinenko. To gain maximum benefit, Mr Berezovsky has hired Margaret Thatcher's former chief spin doctor Lord Bell to handle the publicity. Lord Bell told the Mail that his firm was acting for Mr Berezovsky's human rights organisation, Civil Liberties Foundation, for free. It was Lord Bell's advice which led to the release of pictures of Mr Litvinenko in his hospital bed.
But why is the oligarch such a sworn enemy of the Russian leader? Mr Berezovsky was the quintessential 'New Russian' after the collapse of communism. He made his first money in the car trade and befriended president Boris Yeltsin. In 1994 his dealings had already led to one car bomb attempt on his life.
The subsequent investigation into the incident conducted by the FSB, successor to the KGB - was how Mr Berezovsky first met Mr Litvinenko.
In 1995 Mr Berezovsky was one of the entrepreneurs who benefited from the privatisation deals in which Yeltin's government sold control of Russia's state assets for a relative pittance.
Mr Berezovsky got Sibneft, the state oil firm, for perhaps a tenth of its value. He became one of the super-oligarchs and thought he could control Putin when the former KGB chief became prime minister in 1999, then president a year later.
But Putin's hardline towards the oligarchs eventually saw Mr Berezovsky move to England.
Putin's government has charged him with business fraud and he still faces attempts by the Russian government to have him extradited despite being granted asylum in 2003.
Mr Berezovsky bankrolled a candidate who stood against Putin in the 2004 presidential elections and both men accuse the other of plotting a coup.
Andrei Lugovoy, the former KGB agent, is thought to have been the last person to meet Mr Litvinenko on the day that he was poisoned. He is wanted for questioning by British police.
Records suggest that both Mr Lugovoy and the poison victim worked for the Ort TV station when it was owned by Mr Berezovsky. When asked about Mr Lugovoy, Mr Berezovsky shrugged off the question.
The Kremlin has dismissed talk of Russian government involvement in the poisoning as nonsense.
In the dark and merciless power struggle between the Russian president and the exiled oligarch, anything is possible. -----
Hier staat meer:
The Reporting Of The Attempted Assassination Of Alexander Litvinenko The Framing Of Vladimir Putin For The Poisoning Of Alexander Litvinenko The Litvinenko Poisoning (Continued) - A Good Day To Bury Bad News