Russia: Calls for Berezovsky's extradition - full text
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Russia’s First Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov on April 16, 2007, condemned the UK government for its continued "refusal" to extradite Boris Berezovsky, a prominent Russian "oligarch" (a business leader who wielded considerable political influence) who was living in exile in the UK. In an interview published in The Guardian on April 13, Berezovsky had claimed that he was actively fomenting a revolution in Russia to overthrow President Vladimir Putin, prompting Russia to formally request his extradition on April 16. Denisov’s comments were part of an escalating diplomatic dispute between Russia and the UK, in which the Russians claimed that the UK was granting Berezovsky a safe haven from which to mount a campaign against the Russian government.
Immediate Context
Berezovsky, 61, arrived in the UK in 2001, since when he had frequently and publicly described Putin’s government as "undemocratic" and accused it of violating human rights. He had been arrested in the UK in March 2003, at the request of the Russian authorities, who had earlier issued a warrant for his arrest in connection with investigations in Russia into large-scale illegal business activities . The attempts by Russia to extradite Berezovsky did not deter him from criticising the Russian government and from his London base he was a frequent source of embarrassment for Putin. In May , shortly after the office of the Russian prosecutor general had completed its investigation into three apartment bombings in 1999, which killed nearly 300 people in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk and prompted the second Russian invasion of Chechnya, Berezovsky maintained that the bombings had been orchestrated by the authorities themselves in order to provide an excuse for the invasion of Chechnya. After his arrest in March 2003, however, Berezovsky was (in September) granted political asylum in the UK, shortly before a UK court rejected an earlier Russian request for his extradition.
In November 2006, Aleksandr Litvinenko, a former Russian security services agent living in exile in the UK (and also an associate of Berezovsky), was killed in London after being poisoned by the radioactive substance polonium-212. An investigation into Litvinenko’s death by the UK authorities revealed that traces of the polonium-212 had been discovered at 12 locations in and around London, including at Berezovsky’s offices. In the aftermath of Litvinenko's murder, Russian media speculation included a theory appearing to imply that Berezovsky had been complicit in his murder in an apparent attempt to discredit Putin. Berezovsky blamed Litvinenko’s death on the Russian security services. In January 2007, the Russian authorities told UK detectives that they would not be allowed to return to Russia, where they had been questioning witnesses in connection with Litvinenko’s murder, unless the UK allowed Russian detectives to interview more than 100 Russians living in the UK, including Berezovsky.
Reaction and outlook
First Deputy Foreign Minister Denisov on April 16 accused the UK of "double standards", adding that the country had a duty to "to curb...activities, which are openly hostile'' to Russia. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) responded to Denisov’s criticism by saying that the UK government had condemned Berezovsky's comments and warned him to avoid abusing his asylum status, whilst distancing itself from the dispute by adding that the UK legal system was independent from the country’s government. In his interview with The Guardian on April 13, Berzovsky had said that it was not "possible to change" the Russian "regime through democratic means", warning that there could "be no change without force, pressure". Berzovsky had also claimed to be helping unidentified members of Russia’s political elite to overthrow President Putin, partly by offering his own personal "experience and ideology" and "financial" support.
Historical context
Russia became an independent federation in December 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, assuming responsibility for many of the Union’s former functions. President Boris Yeltsin implemented a wide ranging privatisation programme, as part of the country’s transition from a communist-based economy to a capitalist one. By the mid-to-late 1990s, the country was plagued by a series of financial scandals, in which it was alleged that government officials and "oligarchs" had engaged in corruption, including the misappropriation of public funds from former state-owned operations auctioned off to the private sector.
Despite earlier close ties with the political establishment in Russia, including as a leading figure in President Yeltsin’s "inner circle", Berezovsky fled the country in 2000, just months after President Putin assumed power . Putin had vowed to reassert central control over the Russian state by authorising investigations into the affairs of the country’s "oligarchs". As part of Putin’s campaign against the "oligarchs", a warrant for Berezovsky’s arrest was issued in November 2000 and he was charged with fraud, but he refused to answer questions from public prosecutors and remained in self-imposed exile, apparently in the south of France and later in the UK.
