In August 1999 it was Berezovsky who persuaded Boris Yeltsin to appoint Vladimir Putin prime minister, an appointment that carried with it the president's imprimatur as heir apparent. In December's parliamentary elections he rallied his media outlets and financial resources behind Putin's Yedinstvo (Unity) party and promised to give him the same support in the presidential elections of 2000. Some newspapers, largely of the more scandalous type, speculated that Berezovsky may even have had a hand in the September 1999 apartment bombings which helped his protege into power, although no evidence was ever produced to support this.
Berezovsky told me a story to illustrate how much Putin seemed to value his help, and how close he seemed to be to his mentor at that time.
I don't hide that I helped him and supported him. As far as making him prime minister, I participated in that; for the parliamentary elections of 1999 I created all the ideology of his new party, Yedinstvo. The whole idea was created by me; the ideology was created by me and we won the parliamentary elections in December 1999. [After the election] I was on my way to my country house and he called me on the mobile phone. It was already late and he asked, ‘Where are you?’ I said, T am on the way to my country place,’ and he said, T would ask you very much to turn back and come to the White House.’ And I came back and he was alone and he said, ‘Boris, I just want to tell you: I can never overstate what you have done for me – your ideas and your energy and how you created this party. And I just want to tell you: I don't have a brother; you don't have a brother. Now you are my brother forever.’ And I felt he was saying that sincerely and for sure I was happy, because I really believed he would continue the path of democracy; he had told me that many times.
Putin may have been sincere in his gratitude, but behind the apparent affection we have already seen that Putin was finding Berezovsky's yoke increasingly irksome. The November 1998 press conference had left him exasperated and secretly plotting his revenge; his agreement to stitch up Skuratov had gone against his notions of propriety and he felt he was increasingly being drawn into a pact with a ruthless, unpopular figure. It was not just Berezovsky's failed automobile bond scheme that had aroused public resentment; he was widely disliked for the flaunting of his ill-gotten wealth, his rumoured connections with Chechen ‘bandits’ and -very importantly in a deeply anti-Semitic society – the simple fact that he was Jewish.
For the moment, however, Putin needed Berezovsky's help. Presidential elections were looming in March 2000, and as long as Berezovsky's ORT TV backed his candidacy – and shamelessly slandered his main opponent, Yuri Luzhkov – Putin was content to string Berezovsky along. But all the time he was secretly gathering evidence of his patron's misdeeds with the firm intention of using it against him once he was elected president. Berezovsky seems to have sensed this, because he decided to run for a seat in parliament and the legal immunity from prosecution it confers. Elections to the Duma were a novelty at that time and it did not take too much effort for a rich man to schmooze his way into a seat. Berezovsky was duly elected as deputy for Karachaevo-Cherkessk, a distant region of the north Caucasus, and once in the Duma, he set up his own political party, Liberal Russia. Meanwhile, Roman Abramovich became the new member for Chukotka, a frozen waste in Siberia. Both men probably breathed a sigh of relief.
Then in the presidential elections Berezovsky kept his word and helped to get Vladimir Putin elected, evidently hoping to continue the same symbiotic relationship he had had with Boris Yeltsin. But the new president did not seem impressed. Like Prince Hal in Shakespeare's Henry V, Putin seemed bent on throwing off his old cronies to take on the mantle of his destiny. To Putin, Berezovsky had been like Falstaff, a pleasant and useful companion in the past, but not fit to be seen with a king.
On 8 July 2000, three months after his elevation to the presidency, Putin declared war. In a nationally televised address he announced that Russia would ‘no longer tolerate shady groups that divert money abroad, that establish their own dubious security services and block the development of a liberal market economy'. Whatever the truth, it was quite clear to everyone that he was setting his sights on one group. For Boris Berezovsky – and for the other oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, Mikhail Fridman, Vladimir Potanin and Roman Abramovich – the writing was on the wall: they needed to make a choice between what Putin would view as going straight, getting out or going under. For Berezovsky, who had supported Putin all the way to the presidency and expected his gratitude, it was a cruel blow. At the beginning of August he went to see his former protege for what would turn out to be the last time. As he told me about the clash of titans that took place that day, it was clear that every detail remains fresh in Berezovsky's mind.
I remember well my last meeting with Vladimir Putin. It was in August 2000, after the tragedy of the Kursk submarine… ORT Television was very critical of him and so on. And I went to see the head of administration, Voloshin, who was my friend and… he said I was playing against Putin and if I did not return my shares in ORT I would follow Gusinsky to jail. I was very surprised and I don't even understand how I controlled myself. There was an ashtray and I was tempted to put that ashtray on his head. So I said, ‘OK I don't want to talk to you any more; I just want to speak to Vladimir.’ Next day I came and Putin said the same thing – ORT is very corrupt… Putin said ORT is very corrupt. I said it is strange you didn't know that before, when ORT supported you - and only now is it become corrupt… And we both spoke in a very arrogant way – both me and Putin. Putin said, ‘You should return your shares under my personal control… I will manage ORT on my own.’ I said, T will never return you my shares!’ And after that he started to call me Boris Abramovich – before he used to call me Boris – and I continued to call him Vladimir. And a bit later he said, ‘OK, goodbye,’ and he stood up and started to move away and I said, ‘Goodbye forever!’ And that's it: it was the last meeting I ever had with him.
The next day Berezovsky sent Putin a note saying that he was taking Russia in the wrong direction and adding, ‘If any time you need my real help in solving Russia's problems you may call me.’ But the rift between Russia's two most powerful men was final. Putin never rang Berezovsky, and Berezovsky embarked on his years of bitter opposition. In retrospect, he told me, it was the momen t that everything changed.
The most terrible thing during that meeting was that he accused me of deliberately trying to destroy him, that I was using false information against him… After that meeting, I realized he was really – it was new for me – that he is really… not a good man. This story helped me see he was a wrong sort of person… on the personal level. Before it was a political battle, but now for the first time I recognized he was also not my friend. There was something wrong about him as a man. And it was soon confirmed because after a few weeks they reopened the Aeroflot case against me and it was definitely done on the orders of Putin. And several months later they took my house off me, where I lived with my family. It's all the result of that meeting in August 2000. It was all the result of that.
Shortly afterwards, criminal cases were revived against Berezovsky declaring him the main suspect in the embezzlement of funds from Aeroflot and in large-scale fraud at his Logovaz car company. In the coming months his stake in ORT was sold, and his Channel Six TV was closed by a ruling of the Russian Arbitration Court. The man who did more than any other to bring Putin to power responded to the president's declaration of war by accusing him of establishing ‘an authoritarian regime'. Having pulled the strings of the Russian state for so many years, Berezovsky was furious that he was now being manipulated himself. ‘This campaign against the oligarchs is well orchestrated,’ he said at the time. ‘It is aimed at destroying independent big business in Russia. I don't want to be a puppet. I won't go every day to a show which someone has been directing, especially when I don't like the director. If the president decides it is in his interests to lock me up, he will lock me up. If he decides it is not in his interests, he won't.’
In fact, the president did not get the chance to lock him up. When a criminal case was brought against Berezovsky for defrauding a regional administration out of thirteen million dollars by the illegal sale of cars from the giant AvtoVaz car maker, he fled to the West, living first in Paris and then moving permanently to London in late 2000. When he looks back now, it is clear he finds it hard to hide his resentment at the way Putin turned against him.
I met him for the first time at the very beginning of the 90s. He was very helpful. He became a friend, and at that time I started doing business in Switzerland, and he travelled with me to ski and so on. We were not very close friends, but we were friends. Putin went into the presidential election promising to continue the policies of President Yeltsin. He declared democracy necessary, freedom of the mass media, freedom of political life and the market economy. But when he became president, in a very short time he completely changed his mind. I was completely against all that and not without arguments. I had a lot of arguments why it was a mistake… Three months later they put my friend Nikolai Glushkov in jail. I recognized there was no way for me to stay any more, and I left Russia.
Even at that late stage Berezovsky says he believed he had a deal with Putin, namely that his relinquishment of ORT would be reciprocated with the release of Glushkov from jail. Glushkov, the man Berezovsky had installed to run Aeroflot, was not released, and this clearly rankles. Berezovsky says it is evidence of Putin's ultimate treachery. (So deeply did this bother Berezovsky that he eventually employed an undercover agent to try to engineer Glushkov's escape. In a twist that will have intriguing ramifications for our investigation of the Litvinenko case, that agent was none other than Andrei Lugovoy.) In exile in London since the end of 2000, Berezovsky's anger has festered and grown. He feels the loss of his business empire in Russia, but even harder to bear is the disappearance of his power and prestige. When I ask him if he regrets having supported Putin, having made him president only to be cast aside, there is a momentary glimpse of the sense of betrayal which fuels his quest for revenge.
Well, no one likes to admit they made a mistake, OK? I definitely made a mistake in my understanding of his character, of his vision of Russia. But I can tell you – I knew him ten years before he was elected president. I definitely had very positive experiences with him together, and he was very brave at several very complicated episodes of my life and so… I really thought all the time that he was a good person and that his understanding of the future of Russia was correct. I knew there were better candidates than him, but they had no chance of being elected. I do not support losers.
When I ask Berezovsky if he can forgive Putin, he invokes the tenets of the new religion he has embraced since arriving in the West.
You know that for a Christian to forgive is much better than to seek revenge. It is clear. And it is clear Putin is a weak person… I am a Christian and I forgive everything… even Putin, but to forgive does not mean losing your true direction and I never want to lose my direction… In 2000 I knew what Putin was like, but the West kept thinking he was moving Russia to democracy and he was just fighting against ‘robber barons’ like me – as Mr Soros described us – and it was hard for me to explain: I don't fight Putin; I fight the regime he created. Many people say, ‘Oh, there is Putin and he fired Berezovsky because Berezovsky just went stealing property off Russia and Putin is just fighting the rich oligarchs.’ But it is wrong. I was the closest of anyone to Putin at that time, and when he started to go bad I had a very complicated choice. I had the chance to stay with Putin and to be number one, there is no doubt, but I knew that at the end… There is a big difference between me and my former friend Roman Abramovich: we were friends and partners, and he had the choice just like me and we made two completely different choices – two different paths. He made his choice and I don't have the power to change him, but inside I feel he is wrong. And I told him, ‘Roman, if I stay with Putin, finally he will lose and everyone would realize what he was and would see his true face… deep inside he is just Homo sovieticus. He will lose and I will lose and I will be killed and he will be killed… I will be the first and he will be the second. But if I leave him now, I know it will be a big battle. I know he will use his power against me, but I have a chance of surviving… I will continue on my own path of understanding life. I will not be a loser in my own eyes.’ It was a hard choice.
Berezovsky's ‘hard choice’ left him exiled in London and plotting to regain power in Russia. In 2005 he told the BBC, ‘If I am presented with any political project that could realistically bring down Putin, then I will support it. The day Putin goes, I am back in Russia… My strategy of attacking is the same: to change the Putin regime, which is very dangerous for Russia and for the world. And I think we have done a lot towards that because Putin's image is damaged now, damaged a lot… And I participate personally in doing that and I am happy about that.’
It is the loss of power that haunts Berezovsky. His response has been to thunder and rail from his London exile, his jibes and threats growing ever more intense as the months go by. With the muzzling of the press and the limitations on political activity in Russia, he and his London-based allies have become the centre of the real opposition to the Kremlin. At first Putin tried to make light of Berezovsky's hostility; when he was asked about him at a news conference in July 2001, he replied, ‘Boris Berezovsky – who's he?’ But Putin knows Berezovsky is a real and credible threat that is not going to go away: he is a billionaire with the resources, the connections and the motives to make life difficult for him. He is not someone the Kremlin can safely ignore.
In the years after 2000 Moscow issued a series of arrest warrants for Boris Berezovsky on fraud and embezzlement charges. An outstanding Interpol arrest warrant meant the only country he could travel to outside the UK was Israel, where he was protected by his dual nationality. His application for political asylum in Britain dragged through the courts – Litvinenko's had been granted much earlier – and in March 2003 a renewed Russian demand for his extradition resulted in him being briefly arrested and released on bail. The following September, when Berezovsky attended a hearing at Bow Street Magistrates Court to contest the extradition, Judge Timothy Workman declared he was rejecting the Russian demands as the British government had decided to grant Berezovsky political asylum – there was a legitimate fear that returning to Russia could expose him to persecution. For Berezovsky the news that he was now beyond the legal reach of the Kremlin was a victory. For President Putin it was an intensely infuriating setback. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office announced immediately that it would challenge the decision. On 13 November Judge Workman rejected another Russian government extradition request, this time for Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen leader and Berezovsky's exiled colleague, because of a ‘substantial risk’ of torture or death. An exasperated Kremlin publicly accused Workman of playing ‘cold war polities'.
Two months later, in the quiet Hertfordshire village of Furneux Pelham to the north of London, eighty-three-year-old Robert Workman was killed in an apparently motiveless murder when he opened his front door to what police described as a professional hit man. Robert Workman was a retired colonel in the British army with no connection whatsoever to the world of hit men and assassinations, except that he shared a surname with the judge who granted Moscow's exiled enemies protection from the FSB.