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Jamestown Foundation Monitor
January 25, 2002
FSB CHIEF ACCUSES BEREZOVSKY OF FINANCING CHECHEN REBELS.
The ongoing battle between the Russian authorities and Boris
Berezovsky ratcheted up sharply late yesterday. Nikolai
Patrushev, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB),
announced that his agency has documentary evidence that the
erstwhile Kremlin insider, who went into self-imposed exile in
2000 after denouncing President Vladimir Putin, had financed
Chechen rebel fighters. "Indeed, we have such information, it is
in large part documented," Patrushev told NTV television. "It
concerns, above all, the financing of illegal armed formations
and their leaders. I think that we will appropriately validate
[the information], send it to our foreign partners and wait for
the proper reaction from them about Boris Berezovsky." NTV said
that, based on these charges, the FSB could put out an
international warrant for Berezovsky's arrest. In the late
1990s, Berezovsky--who once served as deputy secretary of the
Kremlin's Security Council and later as executive secretary of
the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)--was involved in
the release of hostages from Chechnya. Some media at the time
accused him of financing various Chechen rebel leaders and their
fighters.
Patrushev's remarks came at the end of a week during which TV-6,
the television network in which Berezovsky holds a 75-percent
stake, was taken off the air by the Press Ministry on the orders
of the Higher Arbitration Court. Last month, as the controversy
surrounding TV-6 heated up, Berezovsky charged that Russia's
special services were behind the August 1999 invasion of
Dagestan by militants in Chechnya and that the bombing of
apartment buildings in Moscow was a "thought-out provocation by
the Russian secret services." The secret services, he alleged,
were also involved in the apartment building bombings in Moscow
and Volgodonsk a month later, which killed more than 300 people.
Berezovsky said that he could not say that Putin--who in the
autumn of 1999 was Russia's prime minister and who had
previously headed the FSB--had ordered these operations. But, he
said, he could say that the Russian security services had
carried out the apartment bombings to "consolidate society
around Putin's candidacy" prior to the presidential elections by
creating the pretext for a new Chechen military campaign, which
"ensured Putin's victory." The FSB called Berezovsky's
allegations "complete madness." Berezovsky repeated them earlier
this month, adding that the Russian special services had also
planned to bomb an apartment building in Ryazan in September
1999. He said that he would release documents proving the
Russian special services' participation in the bombings by the
end of February (see the Monitor, December 17, 2001; January 17,
14). Last night, responding to Patrushev's remarks, Berezovsky
said that the FSB director's demarche was "absolutely logical."
"I have gathered a great deal of material about the FSB's
involvement in the explosions and plan to present it to the
international community," the tycoon told NTV television in an
interview from London. He also said that TV-6 had been preparing
to broadcast a film on these incidents, but that the FSB had
gotten wind of it. This, he claimed, was the reason TV-6 was
taken off the air. Today, the Gazeta.ru website called
Patrushev's demarche "a response to Berezovsky for violating
certain rules of the game, according to which the former CIS
executive secretary would not reveal secrets of Russia's special
services that he might be privy to, and the FSB would remain
quiet about Berezovsky's business operations in Chechnya"
(Gazeta.ru, January 25; NTV.ru, January 24).
Last autumn, the Russian Prosecutor General's Office issued a
warrant for Berezovsky's arrest in connection with the Aeroflot
case, involving charges that two Swiss companies reportedly set
up by Berezovsky, Andava and Forus illegally received hundreds
of millions of dollars in hard currency revenues from Russia's
state airline. Berezovsky was charged on three counts: (1)
facilitating the embezzlement of Aeroflot funds by "arranging
work in that company for several of his acquaintances," (2)
failure to repatriate hard currency made abroad and (3)
moneylaundering (see the Monitor, October 23, 2001). Yet, while
a top Interior Ministry official said last month that the
Russian authorities knew exactly where Berezovsky was, the
Prosecutor General's Office has not requested any foreign
government to detain the tycoon in preparation for his
extradition to Russia (NTV.ru, December 11, 2001). This
contrasts with the case of fellow Russian media tycoon Vladimir
Gusinsky, who was arrested in Spain in late 2000 at the request
of the Russian Prosecutor General's Office, which sought to have
him extradited to Russia to face fraud charges. In April 2001,
Spain's National Court rejected the Russian extradition request
(NTV.ru, December 11, 2001; see the Monitor, April 19, 2001).
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