ping if you are interested.....more birchie fun.
Boris Berezovksy, 57, helped popularize the term "oligarch" and is perhaps the most controversial of the group. Born in Moscow in 1946, Berezovsky was the only child of a factory builder and a pediatric nurse. He earned his Ph.D. in mathematics and physics and landed his first research position at the prestigious Institute of Control Sciences. Berezovsky, by his own admission, wasn't a brilliant scientist, but he was an ambitious and skilled networker, constantly giving speeches and organizing seminars and trips abroad. He began in business selling and importing computer software, then cars. Berezovsky made his first millions from assets of state auto manufacturer Avtovaz. Later, he took over the management of the Russian airline Aeroflot, the oil company Sibneft, much of Russia's aluminum industry, and ORT, the state's largest and most influential television network. Through his close relationship with the longtime chief of staff to Boris Yeltsin, Berezovsky became part of the former president's inner circle. In 1996, he led Russia's most powerful tycoons to back Yeltsin's reelection. Yeltsin appointed Berezovsky deputy secretary of the National Security Council, then secretary of the Organization for Coordinating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS.) In 1999, he won a seat in the State Duma (the lower chamber of the Russian parliament), but six months later, amid unrelenting pressure from the new regime of President Vladimir Putin, Berezovksy resigned and soon fled Russia. The Russian Prosecutor General's office charged Berezovsky in absentia with complicity to fraud, complicity not to return hard currency from abroad, and money laundering. He now lives in self-imposed exile in France and Britain. In March, Berezovsky was arrested on a warrant alleging that he defrauded the Russian region of Samara of nearly $2 billion in 1994 and 1995. After the arrest, a London court granted Berezovsky political asylum, protecting him from extradition.