Self-exiled Russian tycoon Berezovsky sues ex-protégé
LONDON -- Two of the wealthiest Russians in London face a court showdown after self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky launched a suit against billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Mr. Berezovsky said yesterday he had been trying for six months to serve Mr. Abramovich with the lawsuit, chasing him hundreds of kilometres, and finally succeeded in accosting him in a Hermes shop last week in an encounter that resulted in a scuffle between their bodyguards.
He claims that Mr. Abramovich, a one-time protégé who now owns the Chelsea Football Club, forced him to sell his assets cheaply, costing Mr. Berezovsky billions of dollars. "He's part of a plot" created by Russian President Vladimir Putin and enforced by his agents "which is lethal," Mr. Berezovsky said.
Court papers seen by Associated Press show that Mr. Berezovsky claims Russian authorities used intimidation to force him to sell his stake in oil company OAO Sibneft, Russian Aluminum and the television channel ORT to Mr. Abramovich for below market value.
Mr. Abramovich's lawyers at Skadden Arps did not respond to four telephone inquiries seeking comment. But Caroline Ankin, a clerk at the High Court, confirmed that Mr. Abramovich's lawyers acknowledged receipt of the Berezovsky lawsuit. Not all the documents are publicly available.
Mr. Berezovsky said he had been carrying the papers in his car for six months and tried to serve the papers to Mr. Abramovich four times. He said he even travelled 320 kilometres north to a soccer game in Manchester that Mr. Abramovich was attending, but his target "was with 20 bodyguards. It was impossible to give him papers."
Mr. Berezovsky said he finally saw his chance when he spotted Mr. Abramovich shopping in a Hermes boutique on London's swanky Sloane Street on Oct . 5.
His account could not be independently verified, and Hermes refused to comment about the incident.
In the documents, Mr. Berezovsky, 61, claims he and business partner Badri Patarkatsishvili were forced to sell their joint stakes in three businesses to Mr. Abramovich, 40, at a fraction of their value after a meeting in the south of France in 2000. The papers claim the men were warned the Russian state would seize the shares if they didn't sell.
Mr. Berezovsky and Mr. Patarkatsishvili made nearly $1-billion (U.S.) each from the sale. But Mr. Berezovsky says the companies were worth at least five times that amount, and he is suing Mr. Abramovich for the difference.
Little love is lost between the two men, former business partners who grew immensely wealthy after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1995, under a much-criticized loans-for-shares deal, the pair acquired Sibneft for $100-million. When it was sold to Gazprom Neft in 2005, Sibneft was worth nearly $16-billion.
Mr. Berezovsky, a former Kremlin insider whose net worth is estimated at $1.1-billion by Forbes magazine, currently is being tried in Russia in absentia for allegedly embezzling millions of dollars from the flagship Russian airline OAO Aeroflot in the 1990s.
Last month, Russian prosecutors said they also asked a Moscow court to issue an arrest warrant for Mr. Berezovsky on charges that he stole $13-million from Russian banking giant SBS-Agro.
- credit: TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press, 12 Oct 2007
