Report: Exiled Russian Tycoon Wants To Move To Ukraine (Birds of a feather)

AP ^ | Friday January 28, 5:15 PM EST

[jb6]

MOSCOW (AP)--Boris Berezovsky, the controversial Russian tycoon now living in exile in London, says he wants to move to Ukraine, a Russian news Web site reported Friday.

The report came less than a week after the inauguration of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who aims to steer the country out of the Kremlin's sphere of influence and toward greater integration with Western Europe.

Berezovsky amassed a fortune in dubious privatization deals in the early 1990s and became an influential Kremlin insider, but fell out of favor with President Vladimir Putin and fled the country to avoid an investigation into the laundering of Aeroflot (AFLT.RS) revenues. He has said corruption allegations against him are politically motivated and the U.K. granted him political asylum.

But the Gazeta.ru Web site on Friday quoted him as saying he wants to return to living in a familiar Slavic milieu.

"I want to live in the environment I grew up in. I want to live closer to Moscow and the culture I grew up in," he was quoted as saying.

"I officially say that I want to move to Ukraine, and I will do this in the near future. Within a period of months, I hope, I will move," he said, according to the article.

Berezovsky was quoted as saying that he wasn't concerned at the prospect of Ukraine and Russia developing an extradition regime.

"There is the Geneva Convention on political refugees. This convention was signed by many, many countries, Ukraine among them. I officially received refugee status in Great Britain and in principle have the right to go to any country which signed this convention and be guaranteed that I will not be extradited to a country that is not law-abiding," the Web site quoted him as saying.

[xJones]

Does he have the mother of all life insurance policies?

[montag813]

Berezovsky amassed a fortune in dubious privatization deals

Hey Associated Press reporter...it's called CAPITALISM

[jb6]

Only if capitalism involves the government giving away assets at 60% their market value on promisary notes that never get repaid. Only if capitalism means never paying taxes, getting inside and main bids on everything while all other competition domestic and foreign is banned. If that's capitalism, then we're all in trouble.

[cicero's_son]

I have to agree with you on this one.

[elli1]

Only if capitalism involves the government giving away assets at 60% their market value on promisary notes that never get repaid. Only if capitalism means never paying taxes, getting inside and main bids on everything while all other competition domestic and foreign is banned. If that's capitalism, then we're all in trouble.

That's a rough outline for how the trancontinental railroad got built acoss the U.S.

[jb6]

The key word there is "built". The Transcontinental railroad produced something. Try this: Uncle Sam builds the railroad with tax payer's monies, then gives it away to the Rothchildes for a promise of 1/2 value they never pay off or pay taxes on while making billions to put in English or Canadian bank accounts. Then when they don't like that a new president is elected to fight this and examine the whole corrupt deal, they start to give money $6 million to both parties: to the communists of America and to a seperatist Indian terrorist group on the Mexican border. Oh and they flee to England and are given assylum from one of the nations that was lecture America for not fighting corruption.

That would be about equal then.

[radicalamericannationalist]

Shh. Anything that makes money is good. Things like "ethics" and "the rule of law" are for losers. All hail Mammon!

[Spirited]

Incisive analysis.

[radicalamericannationalist]

Thanks. Capitalism without any ethics is simply the jungle. The nasty, brutish and short lives inspired by the rampant mafia corruption in Russia tell us we do not want anything close to that ethos becoming accepted in America's corporate culture.

[elli1]

Yes, and the key to 'building' is money...something that the US gov't didn't have AND didn't have the power to generate because Congress did not have the authority to tax. Had the shadow of the taxman loomed over American enterprise during the 1800's, most likely many millions would have been buried in accounts and investments out of country and the situ would have been not a whole lot unlike what's been happening with Russia.