Lawyer: Russian prosecutors set aside case against Berezovsky

Jan 22, 2007, 16:00 GMT

Moscow - Russia's case against exiled businessman Boris Berezovsky has been halted, a lawyer for the onetime adviser to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin told Russian news agencies Monday.

Moscow has put the brakes on its case against Berezovsky due to the difficulties involved with investigating the refugee, who now resides in London, his lawyer, Andrei Borovkov, said in remarks carried by Interfax.

'The Prosecutor General's Office informed us that investigative work had been completed and that it was impossible to conduct further actions in the absence of the accused,' Borovkov said.

The Prosecutor General's Office has yet to officially comment.

Russia charged Berezovsky with attempting to forcefully grab power last February after the media, auto and oil magnate whose name once struck awe, fear or disgust in many in Russia told Moscow's Ekho Moskvy radio station that he had 'been making concerted efforts in the direction (of a power grab) for a sufficiently long time.'

Speaking a year later, once again on the liberal-leaning Ekho Moskvy, Berezovsky on Monday connected the dropping of charges to Moscow's attempts to interrogate him in connection with the November murder of former Russian secret agent Alexander Litvinenko.

'Insofar as the Prosecutor General's Office plans to send detectives to London, they want to demonstrate that they have no other reason for a meeting with me than the Litvinenko affair,' Berezovsky told the radio station.

Russian prosecutors have officially asked Britain to allow their investigators to question the Kremlin critic, along with 100 other witnesses that include Chechen rebel envoy Akhmed Zakayev. Both Berezovsky and Zakayev were friends with Litvinenko before he died of poisoning by the radioactive isotope polonium-210.

London has yet to publicly give an answer.

Berezovsky was credited by many observers with manipulating his media outlets to secure Yeltsin's presidential victory in 1996, as well as that of the country's current president, Vladimir Putin, in 2000.

After Putin came to office, however, he and the once-massively powerful oligarch quickly parted ways.

Russian authorities in 2002 charged Berezovsky with defrauding the nation's biggest carmaker, AutoVAZ, out of 2,000 cars worth 14 million dollars through his auto dealership, Logovaz.

The fallen oligarch fled to Britain, where in 2003 he was granted political refugee status.

Russia has previously tried to achieve Berezovsky's extradition and has an international warrant out for this purpose.