I’m talking about Britain’s new best friend, Boris Berezovsky, who arrived on these shores in 2001 and has been wanted for extradition by his former friends at the Kremlin ever since. The four-times-married «original Russian billionaire» famously boasted in the 1990s about how he was part of a small coterie of so-called oligarchs who owned 50 per cent of Russia’s wealth. Despite this, the British people now happily accept that a man who became seriously rich in the turbulent, shadowy periods of recent Russian history has now been born again as a democracy-loving human rights campaigner, as he insists. When, further, it emerges that an attempt on his life has apparently been made we unquestioningly accept this as fact, as if real life in 2007 does in fact exactly mirror the plot of an Ian Fleming novel.
Let’s go through that «assassination attempt» again. What happened was this. The first version posited that a Russian man known to M15, armed with a gun and using a child as a decoy, was about to take aim at Berezovsky in the Park Lane Hilton when British Secret Service agents dramatically saved the day by apprehending the gunman. Subsequent reports present a less exciting scenario. The would-be assassin was actually staying at the Hilton and there was no gun. Oh, and Berezovsky was out of the country. Finally, who do you fancy was the primary source for the stories? It was our ё800 million hero, of course. According to Berezovsky, he’s spent his whole time in Britain dodging bullets, which may be true but raises more questions. First, what was he doing last month giving a talk at Miller’s Academy, a lecture hall in West London with the security standards of a village town hall? Secondly, if it really is the life ambition of every former communist trained assassin to kill this man, why isn’t he locked up in a safe house, as Salman Rushdie was? Why, instead, was he granted a British passport? And in what way will this passport save his life? We rang the Home Office, but it wouldn’t tell us.
In Russia Berezovsky is wanted on a long list of charges, including embezzlement and financing Chechen guerrillas. Some of these allegations are undoubtedly part of a larger smear campaign, but are they all? And before you switch off to rant some more about that evil Campbell, here are some more questions, which concern you. Why do we in Britain think that Berezovsky is in any position to foment this revolution of his?
Ask anyone in his homeland about how popular he is there and they’ll tell you that he is almost universally loathed. Even Gary Kasparov – whom Britain erroneously believes also constitutes a threat to Putin’s power (when the champion chess player holds his protest rallies around Russia a couple of hundred people turn up) – has publicly derided Berezovsky and angrily denies that he helped to fund Kasparov’s opposition party.
What we must bear in mind about this undoubtedly intelligent, charismatic and occasionally charming man is that he knows the game, having had his finger in several influential media pies. In the period leading up to Putin’s election, Berezovsky controlled, among other publicity vehicles, Kommersant, then Russia’s main business newspaper, as well as OTV, its main television channel. He was one of the architects of Putin’s rise to power and has spent the intervening years grinding an axe about his fall from grace.
It’s not clear what exactly his aim in life now is, other than to destabilise Russia or dream idly of using «force to change this regime». To that end, he seems to realise how susceptible we British are to a bit of prejudiced speculation. Say bad things about the Kremlin and, parrot-like, British journalists and intelligence agents will start talking about the «new cold war».
Berezovsky obtained British citizenship after he changed his name to Platon Elenin. Why he changed it has never been explained. The Brazilian authorities have issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of money-laundering.
Does it matter? Think back to 2000, when Mohamed Al Fayed lost his attempt for British citizenship. Judges at the Court of Appeal ruled against it on the ground that he was not of «good character». But Al Fayed provides thousands of British jobs and has poured millions of pounds into various charities. He also pays British taxes.
By contrast, Berezovsky pays no tax in the UK on foreign earnings, while the legal cost of fighting Russia’s extradition request is running into millions. In this canny multi-millionaire, has the Home Office finally found a human form of that previously mythical creature, the shadowy tycoon with a heart of gold?
