Posted on 11/25/2003 4:26:15 PM PST by RussianConservative
MOSCOW - Boris Berezovsky, Russian tycoon who was granted refugee status in Britain after fleeing Moscow, said the opening of a Swiss money-laundering investigation against him was an "anti-Semitic act".
The oligarch accused Swiss authorities of applying double standards. "Swiss authorities try to hide the crime of the Nazis in Swiss banks. I think it is just a continuation of the same game," Mr. Berezovsky, who is Jewish, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from London. He said he did not believe it was an independent decision of Swiss prosecutors. According to Mr. Berezovsky, he has direct evidence that the prosecutors got false information from Russian intelligence agencies.
The office of Swiss Federal Prosecutor Valentin Roschacher confirmed Sunday that it had opened the investigation, which is linked to Russian claims that Mr. Berezovsky and an associate defrauded a Russian regional government of the equivalent of $13m in the mid-1990s by stealing cars from Russia's largest automaker AvtoVaz. On Sunday, Swiss authorities launched a formal investigation into alleged money laundering and membership of a criminal organization by Boris Berezovsky.
According to Mr. Roschacher, the probe is purely a criminal investigation and is unrelated to the recent arrest in Russia of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of the YUKOS oil company who resigned as the company’s CEO after the arrest. "We are concerned with criminal justice, not politics," Mr. Roschacher told AP. "We just want to know which of Mr. Berezovsky's activities in Switzerland were legal and which ones might have been illegal," he added.
The businessman has been granted political asylum and refugee status in Britain. In September, London’s Bow Street Magistrates Court discharged the extradition proceedings against Mr. Berezovsky, who faces money laundering and fraud charges in his homeland.
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