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Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (''Бори́с Абра́мович Березо́вский'') a.k.a. '''Platon Elenin''' (born January 23 , 1946 ) is a Russia n Billionaire . After the investigation on his business activities had been started in Russia he fled to the UK in 2001, where he was granted Political Asylum . His family now lives in Israel and he holds both Russian and Israeli citizenships. EARLY LIFE AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH Berezovsky was born into a Jew ishCommunist Party Leader Attacks Jews. Washington Post , December 25, 1998 family in Moscow . He studied Forestry and then Applied Mathematics , receiving his Doctorate in 1983. He did research on Optimization and Control Theory , publishing 16 books and articles between 1975 and 1989. He became a Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy Of Sciences in 1991 and the chair of a laboratory in its Institute Of Control Sciences . BUSINESS CAREER Berezovsky started in business in 1989 under '' Perestroika '' by buying and reselling automobiles from state manufacturer AutoVAZ . Officially, Berezovsky was called upon as an expert in development of optimized system of management of the enterprise. In 1992, a new middleman company, "LogoVAZ", was created with Berezovsky as its President . LogoVAZ became an exclusive Consignment dealer of AutoVAZ, enabling a scheme (named "ReExport") in which cars were sold abroad and then bought back for sale on the internal market. Frequently cars also were not exported at all - all operations on export and import remained only on paper. Each car going through this scheme brought dealers an income of up to USD 1,500. In May 1994, Berezovsky became head of the notorious Automobile All-Russia alliance "АVVА" ("АВВА" in Russian Cyrillic) and became known as the initiator of "the national car" project. This enterprise turned out to be merely a financial pyramid scheme. Shares of a nonexistent factory which has never been constructed were sold. On the data published in the Russian mass-media, the loss incurred by investors totalled USD 50 million. He survived several Assassination attempts,1 including one in 1994, when a Car Bomb decapitated the Chauffeur of his car (Berezovsky was not injured, as at the time of the attack he was in his LogoVAZ offices). POLITICAL ACTIVITY During the 1991-1999 presidency of Boris Yeltsin , Berezovsky was among the businessmen who gained special access to the president. He used his political clout to acquire stakes in state companies including AutoVAZ itself, the state airline Aeroflot , and several oil properties that he organized into Sibneft , paying a mere fraction of the companies' Book Value s. Berezovsky established a bank to finance his operations and acquired several news media holdings as well. These media holdings provided essential support for Yeltsin's Re-election in 1996. Berezovsky's holdings included the television channels ORT and TV6 , along with the newspapers '' Nezavisimaya Gazeta '', '' Novye Izvestiya '', '' Kommersant '' and national-patriotic '' Zavtra ''. Berezovsky is a leading proponent of political and economic Liberalization in Russia. He has frequently entered into politics by investing in the liberal media, financing liberal candidates, making political statements, and even seeking office himself. He was briefly executive secretary of the Commonwealth Of Independent States (CIS) and later a member of the Duma . Berezovsky had strong ties with Chechens through their Moscow Diaspora connections. According to Ramzan Kadyrov , Berezovsky was strongly opposed to the Second Chechen War but nevertheless supported Vladimir Putin 's 2000 Presidential Campaign . On June 15 , 2000 , '' The Times '' reported that Spanish police discovered Putin had secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to Berezovsky on up to five different occasions in 1999.2 Berezovsky was also involved in talks with terrorists on freeing hostages as a mediator and allegedly transferred large sums of money in exchange for hostages. In 1997, he delivered $2 million of governmental money in cash to Shamil Basayev who was then in charge of reconstruction of Chechnya. Berezovsky said that "we saved at least fifty people, who otherwise would have been killed; most of them were simple soldiers. And believe me, all of this was strictly official, with the full knowledge and consent of the Kremlin." However Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov accused Berezovsky and Russian government of collusion with the hostage-takers. According to Alex Goldfarb , Berezovsky secured Putin's appointment to Prime Minister position as a result of a secret agreement, where Putin promised his loyality to Yeltsin and his closest circle including Berezovsky himself. However Putin later broke the agreement, when he was infuriated by the critical coverage of Russian Submarine Kursk Explosion by Russian ORT TV Channel owned by Berezovsky. Putin forced Berezovsky to sell his ORT shares, partly in exchange for promise to free Nikolai Glushkov , a former manager of Aeroflot company and close associate of Berezovsky, according to Goldfarb. EXILE IN BRITAIN Russia neither welcomed Berezovsky's views on Chechnya , nor his political clout and opened investigations into Berezovsky's business activities. Fearing arrest, Berezovsky fled to London in 2001 , where he was granted Political Asylum . He has been charged with Fraud and Political Corruption , but the Russian government has been unable to get him Extradite d. From his new home in the U.K., he has strongly criticized the current Russian administration. In 2003 Boris Berezovsky formally changed his name to Platon Elenin ("Platon" being Russian for Plato , and Elena is the name of his wife) in the British courts. No reason has been given - but Platon is the name of the lead character in a film '' Tycoon '' based on his life. In December 2003 he was allowed to travel under his new name to Georgia , provoking a row between Russia and Georgia. In recent years, Berezovsky has gone into business with that the relationship may cause tension in Russo-American bilateral relations. {Link without Title} In September 2005, soon after the '', September 3 , 2007 . Berezovsky is suing the men for nearly $23 million US, accusing them of misusing the money he had allocated in 2004 to fund the Orange Revolution . Anti-Putin activities In January 2006, Berezovsky stated in an interview to a Moscow based radio station that he was working on overthrowing the administration of Vladimir Putin by force In November 2006, Berezovsky accused Putin of ordering The Poisoning of FSB Defector and fellow Dissident Alexander Litvinenko , who also lived in exile in the UK. The two were close associates. [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15923659/ Berezovsky said he had no doubts that Russian authorities were behind the poisoning.[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=HFEWWMHWC1HKDQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/11/19/npoison119.xml] On April 13 , 2007 , in an interview with the British newspaper '' The Guardian '', Berezovsky declared that he is plotting a new Russian revolution to overthrow the regime of Vladimir Putin by financing important people in Putin's administration. ''"We need to use force to change this regime," he said. "It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." Asked if he was effectively fomenting a revolution, he said: "You are absolutely correct."'' 'I am plotting a new Russian revolution' , ''The Guardian'', April 13 , 2007 During the interview, however, he did not mention violence and cited the recent nonviolent revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia as examples for Russia. He also admitted that during the last six years he struggled much to "destroy the positive image of Putin" and tried to portray him whenever possible as a dangerously anti-democratic figure. On '', April 13 , 2007 . The Russian Prosecutor General's Office has launched a criminal investigation against Berezovsky to find whether his comments can be considered a "seizure of power by force", as outlined in the Russian Criminal Code . If convicted, an offender is facing up to 20 years of imprisonment. The , April 14 , 2007 . Assassination attempt in London In June 2007 Berezovsky fled Britain on the advice of Scotland Yard , amid reports that he was the target of an assassination attempt by a suspected Russian , was deported to Russia. Berezovsky accused Vladimir Putin of being behind a plot to assassinate him.[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/19/wrussia119.xml The Kremlin has denied similar claims in the past.[http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2007/07/19/001.html] In November 2006, , Hazel Blears , then a Home Office Minister, said that inquiries made these claims were "unable to either substantiate this information or find evidence of any criminal offences having been committed".[http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmhansrd/vo040113/text/40113w08.htm#40113w08.html_spnew7] In addition, British police placed a squad of uniformed officers around the Chechen dissident Akhmed Zakayev 's house in north London. They also phoned the widow after Litvinenko, Marina, to urge her to take greater security precautions. Berezovsky said he was told the assassin would be someone he knew, who would shoot him in the head and then surrender to the police. {Link without Title} ALLEGATIONS OF CORRUPTION AND SUBVERSIVE ACTIVITY A 1996 '' Forbes '' magazine article titled ''Godfather of the Kremlin ?'', by Paul Klebnikov , portrayed Berezovsky as a mafia boss who had his rivals murdered. Berezovsky sued the magazine for Libel , and the dispute was ultimately settled with the magazine retracting both claims. Klebnikov expanded the article into a book, ''Godfather of the Kremlin'', that Berezovsky did not contest in court. Klebnikov subsequently became the editor of the Russian edition of ''Forbes'', but he was murdered in Moscow on July 9 , 2004 . After his self-exile, prosecutors in Russia had accused Berezovsky of a host of crimes, including , September 5 , 2007 . On , July 13 , 2007 . In August 2007, a criminal case was initiated against Berezovsky in , August 29 , 2007 . Russian Deputy Prosecutor General claimed that the Dutch tax police had visited Moscow in connection with the case. Berezovsky responded by saying that he had no business in Holland. SEE ALSO
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