[struwwelpeter]

Interesting angle. Fits with what little I know of Boris Abramovich Berezovskiy.

There was a popular tele-journalist in Moscow back in the late 1990s who ran afoul of mafiosi and had to pay some protection money. Supposedly he had to give the money to Berezovskiy, who was to hand it off to the gangster. Berezovskiy instead went shopping, and the journalist ended up dead.

BAB is also the Russian businessman who invented the salary-less payroll, where employees wouldn't get paid, but had to keep getting salary advances to survive month to month. If they quit, "they'd never work in Moscow again", in addition to losing their back pay. The idea got so popular among Russian businessmen in the mid-1990s that pretty much nobody was getting paid.

BAB paid off Yeltsin through frequent luxury gifts and vacations. He even hired Yeltsin's son-in-law (the husband of Tanya Dyachenko, who pretty much ran the Kremlin during Yeltsin's frequent drunks) to be on the board of the airline Berezovskiy owned at the time, Aeroflot.

His role (along with General Lebed) in ending the first Chechen war was probably the reason he can't safely venture outside. Before he fled, several tapes of BAB talking on the phone with terrorists were aired. I had a lot of transcripts posted here, but when FR went to its new format, lots of history disappeared as well.

I'm amazed that UK decided to give BAB and assorted Chechen terrorists asylum, but the world long ago moved beyond my comprehension.

[oilfieldtrash]

What KOmmersant has to say today.

Chubais also tied the occurrence with Gaidar to two well-publicized murders. He is convinced that “the death construct of Politkovskaya-Litvinenko-Gaidar, who has been averted only by a miracle, would be extremely attractive to supporters of an unconstitutional forcible coup d'etat in Russia,” Chubais said.

Gozman commented on Chubais's statement that “We know what the three events led to. In the West, it was a terrible blow to the image Russia and the president of Russia. That is advantageous to people who want to isolate Russia from the outside world, from the West. People who want to return to the Cold War and local hot wars and to cause disorder during that isolation. Some of those people live in our country

[archy]

His role (along with General Lebed) in ending the first Chechen war was probably the reason he can't safely venture outside. Before he fled, several tapes of BAB talking on the phone with terrorists were aired. I had a lot of transcripts posted here, but when FR went to its new format, lots of history disappeared as well.

I'm amazed that UK decided to give BAB and assorted Chechen terrorists asylum, but the world long ago moved beyond my comprehension.

Hmmm. Has anyone noticed if Sasha Umalatova has had any of her hair falling out lately? I wonder if DOE/NNSA/GTRI missed anything during their Chechnya expeditions.