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
