Russia Accuses Berezovsky of Trying to Overthrow Putin, Demands UK Handover

MosNews
Mar. 02, 2006

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened a new criminal case against an exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky on charges of engaging in activity aimed at the forcible seizure of power in Russia, Interfax news agency reported. On March 1 Russian authorities sent documents to the UK Home Office to have Berezovsky extradited.

The case is now being investigated by the Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). If British authoities agree to extradite Berezovsky, he will face up to 20 years in Russian prison.

On Feb. 28 Berezovsky who is now living in Britain under political asylum was warned by the country’s government not to campaign for the overthrow of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

Britain’s foreign secretary Jack Straw said on Monday that Berezovsky’s refugee status could be reviewed at any time if he was “using the UK as a base from which to foment violent disorder or terrorism in other countries”.

The warning was announced after Berezovsky, a vocal critic of Putin, told a Moscow radio station last month that he had been planning a coup against Putin for the previous 18 months.

Commenting on the statement in an interview with Russia’s Ekho of Moscow radio station, Berezovsky said that he obeyed all British laws and therefore did not fear the loss of his refugee status.

Berezovsky, a close ally of former president Boris Yeltsin, exiled himself to London and was granted asylum in the UK in 2003. His presence in the UK, which has refused requests to return him to Russia, has been a source of tension between London and Moscow and helped sour previously friendly ties between Tony Blair, prime minister, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Berezovsky has been the subject of persistent fraud investigations in Moscow, which he rejects as politically motivated.

Berezovsky made his fortune as an entrepreneur, selling the Sibneft oil company in 1997. In February he said he wanted to protect his remaining Russian business interests from “political pressure” by selling out Kommersant newspaper to his Georgian partner Badri Patarkatsishvili.