[14] In late 2000, after the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General demanded that Berezovsky appear for questioning, he did not return from abroad and moved to the United Kingdom, which granted him political asylum in 2003.

[21][22] In 2012, Berezovsky lost a London High Court case he brought over the ownership of the major oil producer Sibneft, against Roman Abramovich, in which he sought over £3 billion in damages.

[6] Alexander Khinshtein (State Duma deputy, member of the United Russia faction) claimed that in 1979 Boris Berezovsky was detained by the OBKhSS authorities in Makhachkala (Dagestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) for profiteering.

[41] One of Berezovsky's early endeavors was All-Russia Automobile Alliance (AVVA), a venture fund he formed in 1993 with Alexander Voloshin (Boris Yeltsin's future Chief of Staff) and AvtoVAZ Chairman Vladimir Kadannikov.

[45] Alexander Litvinenko led the FSB investigation into the incident and linked the crime to the resistance of the Soviet-era AvtoVaz management to Berezovsky's growing influence in the Russian automobile market.

[50] From 1995 to 1997, through the controversial loans-for-shares privatisation auctions,[51][52] Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili assisted Roman Abramovich in acquiring control of Sibneft, the sixth-largest Russian oil company, which constituted the bulk of his wealth.

[60] On 17 October 1996, Yeltsin dismissed General Alexander Lebed from the position of National Security Advisor amid allegations that he was plotting a coup and secretly mustering a private army.

On 30 October 1996, in a political bombshell, Yeltsin named Ivan Rybkin as his new National Security Advisor and appointed Berezovsky Deputy Secretary in charge of Chechnya[70] with a mandate to oversee the implementation of the Khasavyurt Accord: that is, the withdrawal of Russian forces, the negotiation of a peace treaty, and the preparation of a general election.

[75][76] In an interview with Thomas de Waal in 2005, he revealed the involvement of the British Ambassador to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood, and explained that his former negotiations counterpart, the Islamic militant leader Movladi Udugov, helped arrange the Britons' release.

As Berezovsky explained later in interviews to de Waal[77] and Goldfarb,[46] Udugov proposed to coordinate the Islamists' incursion into Dagestan, so that a limited Russian response would topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish a new Islamic republic, which would be anti-American but friendly to Russia.

"[46] In March 1997, Berezovsky and Tatyana Dyachenko flew to Nizhniy Novgorod to persuade the city's governor, Boris Nemtsov, to join Chubais' economic team,[60] which became known as the government of Young Reformers.

[78] The clash was precipitated by the privatization auction of the communication utility Svyazinvest, in which Onexim bank of Chubais' loyalist Vladimir Potanin, backed by George Soros, competed with Gusinsky, allied with Spanish Telefónica.

Berezovsky's media revealed a corrupt scheme whereby a publishing house owned by Onexim Bank paid Chubais and his group hefty advances for a book that was never written.

[87] In November 1998, in a televised press conference, five officers of the FSB, led by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, revealed an alleged plot by their superiors to assassinate Berezovsky.

[108] In August, Berezovsky's media attacked Putin for the way he handled the sinking of the Kursk submarine, blaming the death of 118 sailors on the Kremlin's reluctance to accept foreign help.

[110] In an article in The Washington Post in 2000, Berezovsky argued that in the absence of a strong civil society and middle class it may sometimes be necessary for capitalists "to interfere directly in the political process" of Russia as a counterweight to ex-Communists "who hate democracy and dream of regaining lost positions.

[115] In 2001, the Russian government made a systematic takeover of privately owned television networks, in the course of which Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Patarkatsishvili lost most of their media holdings,[16] prompting one of them to warn of Russia "turning into a banana republic" in a letter to The New York Times.

[126] From his new home in the UK, Stanley House, where he and associates including Akhmed Zakayev, Alexander Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb became known as "the London Circle" of Russian exiles, Berezovsky publicly stated that he was on a mission to bring down Putin "by force" or by bloodless revolution.

[127][96] He established the International Foundation for Civil Liberties (IFCL), to "support the abused and the vulnerable in society – prisoners, national minorities and business people" in Russia and criticized Putin's record in the West.

After his falling out with Putin and exile to London, these allegations became the recurrent theme of official state-controlled media, earning him comparisons with Leon Trotsky[142] and the Nineteen Eighty-Four character Emmanuel Goldstein.

[154] In March 2010, Berezovsky, represented by Desmond Browne QC, won a libel case and was awarded £150,000 damages by the High Court in London over allegations that he had been behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.

[159] In late 2011, Israeli private detective Tamir Mori ordered the mercenary Indian hack-for-hire firm Appin to hack more than 40 targets, including Berezovsky and his lawyers.

In her ruling, the judge observed: "On my analysis of the entirety of the evidence, I found Mr. Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes.

In addition, they said British police placed a squad of uniformed officers around Akhmed Zakayev's house in north London, and also phoned Litvinenko's widow, Marina, to urge her to take greater security precautions.

[199] Berezovsky won a UK libel suit against Russian State Television over these allegations in 2010 (see above), following which he commented, "I trust the conclusions of the British investigators that the trail leads to Russia and I hope that one day justice will prevail.

"[155] In the evening of Tuesday, 12 February 2008, Georgia's richest man, billionaire Arkady "Badri" Patarkatsishvili, a close friend and long-time business partner of Berezovsky, collapsed and died in his bedroom after a family dinner at Downside Manor, his mansion in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, at the age of 52.

[200] Patarkatsishvili, who as a presidential candidate had also been campaigning to oust Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, spent his last day in the City of London office of international law firm Debevoise and Plimpton.

The same day Berezovsky, in the words of investigative journalist Richard Behar, "whipped out his tongue from its holster and publicly called the 41-year-old editor of Forbes Russia 'a dishonest reporter'".

[233] Ben Mezrich wrote Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the Oligarchs—A True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder, which provides a comparative narrative of Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich through their careers, friendship, and ultimate rivalry.

According to the Rough Guide, "The Market of Our Democracy shows Yeltsin waving a conductor's baton as two lesbians kiss and the oligarch Berezovsky flaunts a sign reading 'I will buy Russia', while charlatans rob a crowd of refugees and starving children.