Boris Berezovsky, who has died aged 67 in uncertain circumstances at his home in Berkshire, was the most powerful Russian oligarch of the Yeltsin era. He projected himself as a patriot fighting for a democratic Russia against an ever more repressive President Vladimir Putin – his former protege, whom he had helped into the Kremlin. But to most Russians, Berezovsky epitomised the worst excesses of the crony capitalism that, after the collapse of communism, reduced Russia in the 1990s to impotent failure and impoverished its people.
The former general turned politician Alexander Lebed called Berezovsky "the apotheosis of sleaziness … not satisfied with stealing – he wants everybody to see that he is stealing with impunity". The American journalist Paul Klebnikov wrote in Godfather of the Kremlin (2000) of Berezovsky's rise to power: "No man profited more from Russia's slide into the abyss."
Berezovsky helped Putin to succeed Boris Yeltsin as president in 2000, but soon afterwards was forced into exile in Britain. He publicly blamed Putin for a catalogue of crimes, including the bombings of Moscow apartment buildings in 1999 that killed more than 200 people – but boosted Putin's party in elections later that year; and the polonium poisoning of a former Berezovsky associate, Alexander Litvinenko, in London in 2006. Berezovsky had supported Litvinenko and other anti-Putin exiles. Russia responded by twice convicting Berezovsky for fraud in his absence and accusing him of complicity in murder and other crimes. He was the target of at least one murder plot prevented by MI6.
In the last two years, Berezovsky had suffered a series of severe setbacks. His wealth was drained by serial, expensive and largely unsuccessful litigation and an estimated £100m settlement after his divorce from his second wife, Galina, in 2011. In 2012, he was hit with a large bill for legal costs after losing a court battle with his old business associate Roman Abramovich. Then his former partner Yelena Gorbunova obtained a freezing order on his assets.
For Berezovsky, litigation in the British courts had become war by other means to restore his finances and provide a platform to publicly embarrass the Kremlin. His gamble ended in a humiliating defeat when he was described as "dishonest" and "deluded" by the high court judge who dismissed his more than £3.7bn claim against Abramovich over shares in the Sibneft oil and Rusal aluminium groups. Other cases against former business partners were riding on the Abramovich result. They soon settled, but without the billions Berezovsky was seeking, leaving further legal bills and his reputation trashed. He was no longer a player and had no way back to Russia.
Born in Moscow, the son of a construction engineer and a nurse, Berezovsky graduated from Moscow State University to the prestigious Academy of Sciences. He earned a master's degree and PhD in mathematics, becoming a professor at the Institute of Control Sciences in Moscow. In the 1980s perestroika opened the doors to the world of business. "Science is less dynamic than business," declared Berezovsky, who saw the opportunities faster than most. He combined charm with relentless desire and drive, his motto "never stop attacking". It was a world in which, he explained, "only the most decisive could succeed".
The vehicle for Berezovsky's rise to riches was his company Logovaz and its 1989 deal with Avtovaz, Russia's largest carmaker. Russians were desperate for cars. Logovaz was to provide software to boost production. Berezovsky was not interested in the factory, with its debts and need for reinvestment, but in the cashflow from selling Ladas through Logovaz showrooms.
He pioneered the tactics that the early oligarchs used to enrich themselves. He used the Logovaz cashflow to create a network of companies inside and outside Russia, siphoning off money from Avtovaz into Swiss bank accounts to acquire other business interests, such as banks and the Russian TV channel ORT. He later repeated the Avtovaz manoeuvre at Aeroflot, establishing a Swiss company that received most of the state-owned airline's foreign currency revenues. In 2007 he was found guilty in absentia by a Russian court of embezzling £4.4m from Aeroflot, and jailed for six years. He was given a second sentence of 15 years over Avtovaz in 2009.
Berezovsky described politics as "the best investment". Yeltsin's security chief Alexander Korzhakov recalled how he was approached by the slight, non- sporting Berezovsky in the showers of the president's sports club. "He came to the club to approach the necessary people. He uses every person to the maximum. That is his principle in life."
But Berezovsky's key to the Kremlin was financing the publication of the second volume of Yeltsin's memoirs in 1993. Berezovsky was introduced by Yeltsin's ghostwriter and subsequent chief of staff Valentin Yumashev. The book deal also brought Berezovsky close to the president's influential daughter, Tatyana. For the next seven years he became what was euphemistically described as "financial adviser" to the Yeltsin family. In 1996 Yeltsin made Berezovsky deputy secretary of the Security Council and in 1998, executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Success in Russia, then and now, is not possible without a krysha or roof – protection not just from the political and security authorities but also organised crime groups, which in the 90s dominated several business sectors, including the sale of cars. Berezovsky's krysha was the Chechen crime groups who fought for control of Moscow with rival Slav gangs. A gunfight occurred outside a Logovaz showroom in 1993.
The following year, Berezovsky narrowly escaped death from a car bomb. He was later accused of helping to fund anti-Kremlin Chechen separatists. The connection to the Chechens was his Georgian business partner and fellow exile Arkadi "Badri" Patarkatsishvili. After Patarkatsishvili's death in 2008, Berezovsky launched a £3bn legal action in Gibraltar and London against his estate.
Berezovsky used money and television to ensure a Yeltsin victory in the 1996 presidential elections. In return the bankrupt government entered into the infamous loans-for-shares privatisations which saw Russia give away most of its oil, gas and metal industries. The loans could not be repaid, so Berezovsky ensured that Abramovich ended up with Sibneft for a fraction of its value after rigged auctions in 1995 and 1997. One bidder was persuaded by Patarkatsishvili to drop out. Another deliberately bid low. A third was disqualified. "It was not fixed, I just found a way" Berezovsky told the high court last year.
Berezovsky was by then Russia's richest man but the 1998 rouble crisis – which saw banks collapse and Russians lose their savings – began the erosion of his influence. When Putin came to power in the following years, he agreed not to revisit the privatisations – if the oligarchs stayed out of politics. Berezovsky was seen to have broken that pact by criticising the new president. Saying that he was the victim of politically motivated persecution, he left Russia in 2000 for France, where he had a home, then moved on to Britain. He did not return. Berezovsky claimed he had been forced to sell most of his interests to Abramovich, who had played his Kremlin cards more astutely.
Britain refused to extradite Berezovsky and angered the Kremlin further by giving asylum to its most vocal critic in 2003. The former British ambassador Sir Andrew Wood described Berezovsky as "an extremely useful channel into the Kremlin and beyond it" who had been "a demonstrative friend of British interests". That help had included obtaining the release of two British hostages of the Chechens in 1998.
In 2007 Berezovsky told the Guardian he was plotting Putin's violent overthrow. He delighted in taunting the Kremlin and pumping money into its political opponents. Berezovsky badly misjudged Putin. At their last Kremlin meeting, in August 2000, Putin told him: "You were one of those who asked me to be president, so how can you complain?" Hard to take for a man who described his hobbies as "work and power".
Berezovsky divorced his first wife Nina in 1991 to marry Galina, whom he divorced in 2011. He lived for many years with Gorbunova. He had two children from each relationship; they all survive him.
