The Godfather of the Kremlin - Boris Berezovsky, or the History of the Plunder of Russia. Pavel Khlebnikov

How Boris Berezovsky built his empire

An abbreviated excerpt from the investigative book “The Godfather of the Kremlin” by the first editor-in-chief of the Russian Forbes, Paul Klebnikov, was published in the American Forbes on September 4, 2000.

Boris Berezovsky occupies a special place in Russian history. As Forbes detailed in a 1996 article (which prompted Berezovsky's libel suit against Forbes), the car salesman once privatized vast swaths of Russian industry. He organized secret financing for Yeltsin's presidential campaign and later helped in the election of Yeltsin's successor, Vladimir Putin. Putin declared war against the “oligarchs.” Can Berezovsky withstand a new threat to his well-being and freedom?

After the fall of communism and Boris Yeltsin's rise to power, American entrepreneur Page Thompson traveled to Russia in search of new business relationships. Thompson was formerly treasurer of the Atlantic Richfield oil company, now part of BP. Not without a bit of adventurism, he began a new career - selling auto parts in the former Soviet Union. Success came quickly. In 1994, he signed a contract with AvtoVAZ for $4 million to sell Goodyear tires. The auto giant AvtoVAZ occupied half of the Russian passenger car market. During the negotiations, Thompson asked AvtoVAZ to provide a letter of credit from Western Bank guaranteeing payment. He was informed that the guarantee would be provided by the French bank Credit Lyonnais.

Later, Credit Lyonnais would be close to collapse due to a scandal involving fraud and embezzlement. But at that time the bank seemed stable and credible, which was enough for Goodyear. It was then that things took an unexpected turn. Thompson was informed that he must pick up the letter of credit from Forus Services, which is located in Lausanne, Switzerland. He was met at the company office by two Russians.

“They worked in a half-empty, beautiful office with only furniture - empty desks and chairs,” he recalls. “There were three or four rooms, there was a bottle of Jack Daniels on the table and there were no other people except these two guys and a secretary who spoke a language I didn’t understand.”

“The letter of credit has not yet been delivered. Come back in 2 days,” Thompson was told. When he finally received the letter, it included the names of Credit Lyonnais, AvtoVAZ and his own company, but Forus Services was not mentioned anywhere.

"It was a surprise," Thompson says. When I was treasurer at Atlantic Richfield and we were looking to borrow money, I would pick up the phone and call Chase and say, “We want to borrow a couple hundred million dollars,” and they would say, “We're interested in this proposal and would like to discuss it with you.” " I didn’t have to call Wilshire Financial or another bank to borrow money from Chase.”

Who are these people and where is the money?

Thompson realized that something was wrong here, the half-empty office was “a company that was created by influential people from the AvtoVAZ company to carry out financial transactions, take payment from AvtoVAZ, and then divide the money received among themselves. I never found out who these people were.”

In fact, Boris Berezovsky, AvtoVAZ financial director Nikolai Glushkov and the large Swiss trading company Andr & Cie founded the Forus Services company on February 13, 1992. Officially, the financial company was engaged in the sale of currency, opening lines of credit and solving other financial issues for Russian companies abroad. However, the company remained a closed club where ownership was difficult to trace. Forus Holding (Luxembourg) owned Forus in Lausanne and was partly owned by the fictitious company Anros. In other words, at least two fictitious companies covered Berezovsky and his partners.

Forus was just one of the companies that Berezovsky owned in Russia, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Ireland, the Caribbean and Cyprus. Thus, Berezovsky could control the foreign exchange income of several Russian industrial companies. It was a sophisticated network ideal for extracting money from government coffers, managing financial flows around the world, minimizing taxes and avoiding audits. To date, several of these companies, including Forus, are facing criminal charges in Russia and Switzerland on charges of theft, fraud, tax evasion and money laundering.

Car business of the 90s

In 1994, the main company generating income for Berezovsky's growing empire was the state-owned AvtoVAZ. Berezovsky's LogoVAZ enterprise was the largest car dealer, selling 45,000 AvtoVAZ cars annually, which is approximately 10% of domestic sales.

While the Russian economy was falling apart, the auto industry continued to grow, producing the only domestic product that people were still willing to buy. Demand for such AvtoVAZ models as the Lada and the Niva SUV constantly exceeded supply. Thanks to low prices for raw materials and cheap labor (on average, workers received $250 a month, payment was usually delayed for several months), it seemed that AvtoVAZ should bring huge profits, in fact, cash was in short supply, and debts were constantly growing.

The reason was the corruption of the sales system. Hundreds of small companies were created to sell Lada cars and spare parts; they were independent, but at the same time belonged to different representatives of the AvtoVAZ management.

In the summer of 1996, I asked AvtoVAZ President Alexei Nikolaev about the sales system in his company, he replied that he was selling cars at a loss. “On average we get $3,500 per car. In fact, production costs are 30% higher – $4,600.”

Since most car dealers sell Ladas for $7,000 or more, they make a 50% profit, ten times higher than any other car dealer in the United States. And this is if we take into account payment for the goods, which the plant did not always receive. By 1995, LogoVAZ, under the leadership of Berezovsky and other dealers, owed AvtoVAZ $1.2 billion, one third of their annual income.

You can't just start selling Lada

“You can't just start selling Ladas,” recalls Page Thompson, who sold tires and oil to several large AvtoVAZ dealers. “If you are allowed to do this, you will need to pay for the privilege. Someone might show up and say that you’re now working with a partner.”

If dealers wanted to purchase cars through AvtoVAZ, bypassing the existing structure, then most likely they would not be able to purchase a single car or the cars would have a broken windshield, pulled out wires and deflated tires, and they could even lose their lives.

Thompson gives the example of one of his clients, a large distributor of AvtozaVAZ in Moscow - the Lada Strong company. “The cars were located in two parking lots, for which he paid two different criminal groups. By mistake, one of his employees moved 50 cars from parking lot A to parking lot B. Bandits who were paid for parking lot "A" kidnapped an employee and held him hostage until the owner had to pay $50,000 for the "insult" he caused.

One of Thompson’s clients was a dealership in Togliatti at the gates of AvtoVAZ, it was led by a young businessman. “He was a major supplier of Lada cars, spare parts and other hard-to-find goods. When you arrive at his office, the first thing you see is a group of strong guys, lounging on the couches and watching cartoons, with weapons in their hands. Wherever he went, he was accompanied by a car with armed guards.”

Thompson started a business with him by selling used cars from America, which were sent to Russia. Thompson tells how this businessman bragged to him that he had robbed and deceived everyone, and how someone from the AvtoVAZ company gave him cars intended for another person. According to Thompson, the entire AvtoVAZ was corrupt. For example, if a sales agent was going to arrange for spare parts to be shipped, he would have to bribe the parts manager. "I know who took the bribes," Thompson says.

Property for no one

I asked Alan Mair, Berezovsky's Russian partner at Andr & Cie, about the rampant corruption at AvtoVAZ. “I believe things are the same in other Russian companies, not only AvtoVAZ. It’s all about the mentality: collective property does not belong to anyone,” he notes.

Andr & Cie was a direct witness to corruption. In 1993-94, this company negotiated with the Italian International Trade Bank for a $100 million loan for AvtoVAZ. The money was supposed to be paid over 7 years from income from sales of Lada on the international market in Africa. “Nothing came of it,” says Christian Marais, head of the Moscow branch of Andr & Cie. “Because each manager of the AvtoVAZ company had his own preferred implementation system.”

Car re-export scheme

Berezovsky's main scheme was called re-export. AvtoVAZ's export contracts typically provided for lower prices for Ladas than domestic dealer contracts and guaranteed dealerships even longer repayment terms for loans to the engineering plant (up to one year). In fact, Berezovsky sold the cars domestically, however, the documents indicated that the cars were exported and then imported back to Russia. Their “export” allowed him to receive payment in dollars, while the machine-building plant received payment in the ever-depreciating ruble or, even worse, issued an IOU.

I asked Alan Mair why the engineering plant sold cars to Berezovsky on such unfavorable terms. “Listen, monsieur, 90% of cars were sold in Russia under exactly the same conditions. There is no particular difference in choosing Logovaz. There are only different conditions as a result of personal relationships built between people who are on good terms with AvtoVAZ managers,” he explains.

Berezovsky, AvtoVAZ's largest dealer, built the closest "personal relationship" possible. Especially after the chairman of AvtoVAZ, the financial director and the head of the after-sales service department acquired a large stake in Logovaz. In other words, AvtoVAZ sold cars to Berezovsky at a loss, while high-ranking officials at the engineering factory personally benefited as owners of Logovaz shares.

Automotive bankruptcy

While dealers like Berezovsky increased their capital, the automaker was steadily sliding into bankruptcy. The company was short of cash, unable to pay taxes, pay electricity bills or pay salaries. Page Thompson continued to do business with AvtoVAZ; he made several successful deals, but others were unsuccessful. Thompson decided to stop.

“I lost a couple of partners,” he says. One of my AvtoVAZ partners in Bishkek was killed right in the office. My partner in Tolyatti was a major criminal. I realized that the game is not worth the candle.”

When I asked AvtoVAZ President Alexei Nikolaev about the criminal groups controlling his sales network, he agreed that such a problem existed. In fact, AvtoVAZ has probably become one of the most gangster-controlled industrial companies in Russia.

Investigations of contract killings

In 1994, Radik Yagutyan, the head of the investigative department of the Samara prosecutor's office, was killed shortly after he undertook to investigate the situation around AvtoVAZ. In 1997, the Ministry of Internal Affairs conducted the largest special operation during Yeltsin’s reign, “Cyclone.” The joint forces were aimed at suppressing organized crime at AvtoVAZ. The raid included 3,000 operatives from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor's office and tax services. They blocked the exits of the giant plant and seized computer files. Thanks to the raid, evidence was discovered that bandits associated with AvtoVAZ committed 65 contract killings of company managers, dealers and competitors. Criminal cases were opened.

In February 1999, a fire destroyed the office of the main department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Samara region, responsible for conducting the investigation into the AvtoVAZ case. All documentation on the AvtoVAZ case was destroyed; More than 50 people involved in the investigation and other employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs died in the fire. Moscow immediately concluded that the fire was an accident, but a case against AvtoVAZ management for illegal tax concealment was still opened a few days later.

In such an atmosphere of lawlessness, Berezovsky built his empire. It was hard to imagine that the 47-year-old doctor of technical sciences, who spent most of his professional career developing computer software, would succeed in the criminal field. Yet he could not survive in this business if he could not protect his profits from the bandits.

Criminal "roof"

While chaos reigned in the Russian government, the most effective security service available to businessmen turned out to be criminal gangs. According to several senior law enforcement officials, Berezovsky built his LogoVAZ company under the protection of the Chechen group, one of the most dangerous organized crime groups in Russia. They became his “roof” in the car market.

Meanwhile, his rivals in the car market, controlled by other gangsters, were jealous of his success and his internal connections with the management of AvtoVAZ. Thus, alone among other big businessmen who would be known as "oligarchs", the Berezovskys became personally involved in the power struggle between the dominant gangster families in Moscow.

One of the first attempts occurred at noon on July 19, 1993, when a gang led by Igor Ovchinnikov raided the exhibition hall in the Kazakhstan cinema at 105 Lenin Avenue. The bandits stopped in three cars and began shooting first at the windows, then at the people in the building. Logovaz security guards returned fire. Within seconds, three people were killed (including Ovchinnikov) and six more were injured.

A few days later, I asked General Vladimir Rushailo, head of the Moscow RUOP, about what happened. He replied that “The reason for the shootout is that the company: “The Logovaz company has its own security service, and another group came to demand money. The result was predictable."

Later, when I asked Berezovsky, he replied that he remembered the shootout, but did not know the reasons for what happened. Then he continued:

“Today we are witnessing an unprecedented redistribution of property in the entire history of Russia. Nobody is satisfied: not those who became millionaires overnight - they complain that they did not earn enough millions, not those who received nothing and are naturally dissatisfied with the current situation. Although I do not believe that the scale of crime exceeds the scale of the transformation process.”

Igor Ovchinnikov, who participated in the shootout at the Kazakhstan cinema, was only a pawn in the gang war. He was subordinate to a crime lord known as Cyclops, who in turn was subordinate to a higher-level gangster group.

The shootout at the Kazakhstan cinema was just the beginning. In September 1993, at least two grenade attacks were carried out in the LogoVAZ parking lot, resulting in several cars being damaged, but no one was injured. Russian newspapers quoted police detectives as admitting that LogoVAZ refused to cooperate in the investigation. One police officer said the incident was "a continuation of the wars between organized crime groups for control of the car market."

Little is known what measures Berezovsky took to protect himself from the threat of bandits. The Russian state was so corrupt that it could not protect businesses from the wave of violence.

The same month that bandits attacked the LogoVAZ exhibition hall in the cinema, President Yeltsin signed a decree on the resignation of the Minister of Security (head of the former KGB), Viktor Barannikov. Barannikov was one of the main patrons of the businessman Boris Birshtein and his company Siabeko with divisions in Toronto and Zurich. Birshtein generously gave gifts to his patrons in the government. At the beginning of 1993, he invited Barannikov's wives and the first deputy chief of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for a three-day walk through Swiss shops. The two ladies bought $300,000 worth of furs, perfume, scarves and watches, all paid for by Siabeko. At the airport they had 20 pieces of excess baggage, for which they paid $2,000 to the airlines, but Siabeko paid for that too. When the scandal broke, Barannikov and the first deputy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were fired, but not prosecuted.

In Lausanne, Berezovsky's business partner Andr & Cie was alarmed by the gang wars that broke out in Moscow in 1993-94. Andr & Cie became Berezovsky's strategic partner even before the wave of explosions and murders. But Alan Mair will be able to smooth things over with the employees of the Andr company.

All this happened in Russia, but this did not happen in Switzerland,” as he explained. “We presented the facts and ... my bosses at the company accepted them. That's all. Without a doubt, there was a lot of competition in the automotive field in Moscow. The bandits used very cruel methods. It was not very comforting, and in truth, it was unbearably painful and unpleasant to see.”

Andr & Cie decided to remain with a Russian business partner. In the winter of 1993-94, when gang wars raged in Moscow, Berezovsky spent most of his time abroad. He went to Lausanne to complete his offshore financial network business with Andr & Cie. As soon as he returned to Moscow, an attempt was made on his life. An explosive device was placed on the front door of his apartment, which, fortunately, did not explode.

At the end of the day on June 7, 1994, Berezovsky left the new headquarters of the LogoVAZ company in the center of Moscow and sat in the back seat of a Mercedes. His security guard was in the front seat, next to the driver. As soon as the car started moving, a powerful explosion was heard throughout the area. An Opel with explosives was parked on a narrow street, which was detonated by remote control as soon as Berezovsky’s car approached it. Before Berezovsky's eyes, the driver's head was blown off by the explosion, and the guard was seriously injured; as a result, he lost an eye. Several passers-by were injured. Berezovsky climbed out of the car, his clothes smoking. The burns were so serious that he had to spend several months in a Swiss clinic.

A few days later, the offices of Berezovsky's United Bank were also blown up. He accused his rivals in the auto industry of using violence. Nine months later, he was suspected of murdering one of Russia's most successful television producers. Berezovsky recorded a personal video message to Yeltsin, in which he put forward several versions, pointing to his main rival in the media market, Vladimir Gusinsky.

Those who carried out the explosions at LogoVAZ were never found. Commenting on another outbreak of criminal violence, near the LogoVAZ gates a year earlier, the head of the RUOP, General Rushailo, told me: “Many people believe that businessmen are killed only because they are businessmen. But it is not so. Investigations into contract killings have shown that the victims were connected to the very people who either ordered their murder or carried out the attack on them. No one kills law-abiding citizens, but those who break the law pay a high price.”

In March 1994, Berezovsky's investment fund Ava placed money in Mostorg Bank and purchased two promissory notes worth 500 million rubles each. Mostorg Bank was controlled by the famous bandit Sergei Timofeev (nickname: Sylvester, since he slightly resembles the actor Sylvester Stallone). He himself was a member of the well-known Solntsevo criminal group. Sylvester's bank did not repay the debt on time, transferring this money abroad.

After blowing up the cars of the LogoVAZ company, Berezovsky hit the front pages of newspapers, which even forced President Yeltsin to talk about the “criminal filth” that is destroying Russia. After which Mostorg Bank finally returned the money to Logovaz with interest.

The gang war continued. In the early evening of September 13, 1993, a powerful explosion occurred near Tverskaya. The police found a blown up Mercedes 600. The explosive device was located under the hood of the car and was activated by remote control. Sylvester's charred corpse was pulled out from under the rubble.

Berezovsky, who by that time had returned to Moscow from Switzerland, was not among the suspects for long. Sylvester had many enemies and this case was never solved. After Sylvester's death, gangster attacks on Logovaz stopped.

Translation by Elena Olivotou

Pavel Khlebnikov

Pavel Khlebnikov.

Godfather of the Kremlin Boris Berezovsky,

or the history of the plunder of Russia

Jim Michaels for making me a journalist

Forbes magazine - for inflexibility

Muse - for support

Everything is crumbling, the foundations are shaken,

The world is overwhelmed by waves of lawlessness:

The bloody tide is spreading and drowning

Shyness is a sacred rite.

The power of righteousness has dried up for the good

And the evil ones seemed to go berserk.

William Butler Yeats

My sources include former members of the Presidential Security Service (SBP). This structure was dissolved in 1996, but until that time it was one of the most powerful in the country. It employed about 500 specialists - from special forces to intelligence analysts, equipped with the latest intelligence technology. The SBP's task was not only to protect Yeltsin, but also to investigate allegations of corruption or espionage in the corridors of power.

Many of those who agreed to talk to me about the events described in this book set one condition: I should not name them. Then their information was used only as secondary information. If I talk about events based on these anonymous sources, it means that I have confirmation from official sources. In those rare cases when an anonymous source was the only source, it was necessary to quote him as well. The most important of this series was the “RUOP source”. This man is a former high-ranking employee of the Moscow RUOP (Department for Combating Organized Crime). I do not doubt the reliability of his information, because the position he held allowed him to know what he was talking about. Moreover, I have known this man since 1993, and all this time he has been supplying me with information that was confirmed by subsequent events. For example, if he said that so-and-so were the leaders of criminal gangs, this later turned out to be true, because these people became participants in gang warfare or were arrested and sentenced to prison by Western law enforcement agencies.

I tried not to rely on newspaper materials, not to take them as the basis for my story. If I refer to newspapers, it is only because they kept a daily chronicle of events or published interviews with one of my heroes. In most cases, when I decided to use an interview conducted by another journalist, the latter did not give me a tape recording of the conversation with his interlocutor. One way or another, I believe that these published interviews are correct: firstly, they were published in newspapers with a solid reputation, and secondly, the subjects of the interview more than once gave another interview to the same newspaper several years later. In other words, I assume that if a person’s words in a newspaper were distorted, he will not come to this newspaper with a new publication.

The most reliable sources of the book are its characters. I have worked painstakingly on documentary and oral history of the Yeltsin era, but there is no doubt that much has been left out of my sight. Surely there will be books in which the lives of my heroes will be revealed in more detail. But I had the opportunity to communicate with these people in the early 90s, in their “age of innocence,” when they shared with me frankly - often boasting about their criminal exploits - and just as openly lied.

Introduction

In February 1997, Forbes magazine was sued by Boris Berezovsky. This man appeared suddenly, becoming the richest businessman and one of the most powerful people in Russia. In December 1996, I wrote an article about Berezovsky, “Godfather of the Kremlin?” He hired English lawyers and sued the London High Court for libel. At the time of publication of this book, the case is not closed. Forbes was not afraid of the prospect of a trial and continued to publish my articles about Berezovsky.

I noticed that his shadow falls on many important events that shook Russia in the past decade. I began listening to tapes of my conversations with all sorts of plunderers in the era of the new Russia whose careers overlapped with Berezovsky's: the commodity magnates who briefly took over the Russian economy; factory directors who inherited industrial empires; young bankers, tough and unprincipled, who made their fortunes through political connections. All these people were at the top when no one had heard of Berezovsky. They were in the light of Jupiters, and Berezovsky was waiting in the wings behind the scenes.

Many Russian business tycoons inherited their wealth from the old Soviet Union, becoming empowered millionaires, but Berezovsky built his empire himself, from scratch. Many people contributed to the collapse of Russia in the early 90s, but Berezovsky embodied the spirit of the era. No one else could capture rapidly changing circumstances so subtly; As soon as Russia made a new turn on its painful path to a market economy, Berezovsky was right there and invented new ways of making money. And when he entered politics, he overtook everyone here too. By privatizing vast expanses of Russian industry, Berezovsky privatized the state itself.

The transformation of Russia from a world superpower into a poor country is one of the most curious events in human history. This crash occurred in peacetime in just a few years. In terms of pace and scale, this collapse has no precedent in world history.

When Mikhail Gorbachev began perestroika and when Boris Yeltsin became Russia's first democratic president, I expected Russia to experience the same surge of energy that China experienced under Deng Xiaoping's reforms. I expected the kind of economic boom that followed the decollectivization of agriculture carried out by Pyotr Stolypin almost a century ago. But soon I realized that everything in Russia was collapsing. The Yeltsin government lowered prices, and following hyperinflation, the majority of the country's population became impoverished in the blink of an eye. A free market appeared, but the economy did not work more efficiently; on the contrary, it began an inexorable slide into the abyss. As a result of privatization, only a small group of “insiders” became rich. The country was plundered and destroyed by the new owners.

How could this happen? Everything points to Russian organized crime. I wrote articles about the grotesque lifestyle and terrible atrocities of the new bandits. While working on the Russian mafia, I often received advice: if you want to write about Russian organized crime, don't pay too much attention to the picturesque mafia kings, focus on the government. Russia is a gangster state, I was told, its political system is nothing more than a rule of organized crime.

The FBI defines organized crime as: “An ongoing criminal conspiracy that is fueled by fear and corruption and motivated by greed.” The definition also includes the following paragraph: “They commit or threaten to commit acts of violence or intimidation; their actions are methodical, consistent, characterized by discipline and secrecy; they insulate their leaders from direct involvement in illegal activities through bureaucratic layers; they try to influence government, politics and trade through corruption, bribery and legal means; their main goal is economic gain, not only through apparently illegal enterprises... but also by laundering ill-gotten money and investing in legitimate businesses.”

Khlebnikov Pavel

Godfather of the Kremlin - Boris Berezovsky,

or the history of the plunder of Russia

Jim Michaels

for making me a journalist

Forbes magazine

for inflexibility

for the support

Everything is crumbling, the foundations are shaken,

The world is overwhelmed by waves of lawlessness:

The bloody tide is spreading and drowning

Shyness is a sacred rite.

The power of righteousness has dried up for the good

And the evil ones seemed to go berserk.

William Butler YEATS

Preface

Over the past decade, when meeting with Russians who occupied a prominent position in society, I recorded, with their permission, our conversations on tape. And all statements in this book, except where specifically stated, are based on tape-recorded interviews with businessmen and politicians who ruled Russia in the 90s of the twentieth century.

The truth in Russia is always a fluid thing, and many of my interlocutors often took advantage of this fluidity. Usually they did not tell the whole truth, but only part of it. The purpose of this book is to bring together pieces of truth, compare them and get a complete picture of what is happening. It turned out that over time it became easier for me to accomplish my plans. The more a person knows, the more difficult it is to deceive him.

In offering this material, I have tried to be conservative in my assumptions about what is true. I present my sources, and the reader has the right to judge their reliability or unreliability. I also show exactly how my research was conducted so that the reader can decide for himself what to believe and what not to believe.

The history of modern Russia is largely based on oral histories, statements of people who “were there.” Often these people talk about things they don’t know. And any journalist walks through this minefield. In addition, many agreements in Russian business and politics are sealed with just a handshake. They are reflected on paper quite rarely. But these oral contracts are often more reliable than written ones, and the chronicler of modern Russia should not be embarrassed by the fact that there is no documentation in the Western sense.

However, many key elements of the material presented have a documentary basis - published annual reports, registration documents, bank analysis of investments, less accessible copies of contracts, minutes of board meetings of a particular company. I use both government documents, public and private, to reveal the nature of the relationships between the characters in the story.

Russia during Yeltsin's reign in many ways continued to remain a police state - phones were tapped, individual citizens were subject to intensive surveillance; we can talk about a police state that has been privatized. Many specialists from the old Soviet security and law enforcement agencies have taken jobs in the private sector. Each major financial-industrial group has created its own mini-KGB, usually known as the “analytical department,” staffed with experts in obtaining information, eavesdropping on competitors, and stealing documentation. The intelligence files collected in these analytical departments eventually took the form of standard reports such as those collected by Soviet security services in the past. These data were often inaccurate, but more than once they were a useful source of background information for me. Some of what these private intelligence agencies collected was later confirmed by events in the country or by law enforcement agencies themselves.

Many of those who agreed to talk to me about the events described in this book set one condition: I should not name them. Then their information was used only as secondary information. If I talk about events based on these anonymous sources, it means that I have confirmation from official sources. In those rare cases when an anonymous source was the only source, it was necessary to quote him as well. The most important of this series was the "RUOP source". This man is a former high-ranking employee of the Moscow RUOP (Department for Combating Organized Crime). I do not doubt the reliability of his information, because the position he held allowed him to know what he was talking about. Moreover, I have known this man since 1993, and all this time he has been supplying me with information that was confirmed by subsequent events. For example, if he said that so-and-so were the leaders of criminal gangs, this later turned out to be true, because these people became participants in gang warfare or were arrested and sentenced to prison by Western law enforcement agencies.

Russian bandits are not particularly afraid of the police, because they have protectors at the top. At the lowest level of the typical criminal community in Russia are the "street jocks" who extort money from tent vendors, restaurant owners, and so on; these people report to leaders operating at the citywide level; the latter, in turn, report to bosses at the national level. At every level, the bandits have their own people in government agencies - from the local police department or tax office all the way to mayors and governors. And so on to the very top, to the president’s entourage.

Typically, any successful Russian businessman had to deal with both sides. The Russian power structure was a three-sided pyramid: bandits, businessmen and government officials.

Behind every historical process there are specific individuals. I wanted to know: who really rules Russia? Who brought the country to this state? Who is at the top of the pyramid?

In the summer of 1996, I began to become acquainted with the activities of Boris Berezovsky. There was no other person so close to all three branches of government: crime, business and government. There is no other person for whom Russia's slide into the abyss would bring such enormous profits.

I first heard about it during a trip to the city of Togliatti, on the Volga, where Russia's largest automobile company, AvtoVAZ, is located. I was writing an article about the automobile industry in Russia and heard that AvtoVAZ was somehow connected with an entrepreneur named Berezovsky (in fact, this tycoon made his first millions from this car plant).

When I asked AvtoVAZ President Alexei Nikolaev about Berezovsky's LogoVAZ holding, the auto boss and his assistants looked at each other nervously. Fear flashed in the eyes of the people sitting opposite me. “We no longer have any direct connections with Logovaz,” Nikolaev muttered. “They have some other business there (in Moscow).”

Who was this businessman, whose very name silenced everyone? I began to study the stages of Berezovsky's lightning career and discovered that it was full of bankrupt companies and mysterious deaths. The scale of destruction was colossal, even by modern Russian standards. He latched on to a large company, sucking money out of it, turning it bankrupt, kept afloat only thanks to generous government subsidies. He was drawn, like a magnet, to the bloodiest places in Russia: the car sales business, the aluminum industry, the ransom of hostages in Chechnya. Many of his business endeavors - from the takeover of ORT to the repurchase of the Omsk oil refinery - were overshadowed by the murder or accidental death of key figures. Shortly after his intervention in the activities of the National Sports Foundation, an attempt was made to assassinate the former president of the foundation. There is no evidence that Berezovsky is responsible for these deaths. True, in 1995 he was briefly listed as a suspect in one of the biggest murders of the Yeltsin era, but he was never accused of committing a crime in connection with these events.

I met Berezovsky in Moscow in 1996. The high intelligence of this man did not raise the slightest doubt - he is a Doctor of Mathematical Sciences. He spoke nervously, formulated his thoughts clearly, every now and then waving his hand, on which there was a trace of the attempt on his life in 1994. He accepted violence in Russian business calmly, but at the same time took a highly moral position. “To a huge extent, the problem of criminalization in Russia is a far-fetched problem,” he said. – Far-fetched in the sense that Russian business in the West today is presented as a criminal business. But this is certainly not the case... Essentially, Russian business is not identified with the word “mafia”.

I asked: why can’t the state bring the bandits to justice? “Because there are many criminal people in power itself,” he answered. “The authorities themselves are not interested in these crimes being solved.”

A month later, Berezovsky was appointed to a key post in the state: he became deputy secretary of the Security Council.

The collapse of Russia provided Berezovsky with a unique opportunity to implement his plans on a gigantic scale. He became stronger and stronger, and Russia grew weaker.

Strange as it may seem, the basis for Russia’s economic and demographic decline was the actions of “young reformers” and “democrats” - a group led by Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais.

First, in 1992, the Democrats released prices until privatization was carried out and thereby caused hyperinflation. Within a few weeks, the savings of the vast majority of the country's citizens turned to dust, destroying the hope of building a new Russia on the foundation of a strong domestic market.

Second, the Democrats subsidized merchants—well-connected young men who made fortunes by taking over the role of state trading monopolies and profiting from the huge difference between the old domestic prices of Russian goods and world market prices.

Third, in the wake of hyperinflation that destroyed Russians' savings, Chubais' voucher privatization in 1993–1994 was carried out incompetently. In most cases, citizens simply sold their vouchers to brokers for a few dollars, or thoughtlessly invested them in pyramid schemes that soon collapsed. A powerful class of shareholders could have emerged, but this did not happen: Russia’s industrial assets, as a result of Chubais’s privatization, ended up in the hands of corrupt directors of enterprises or in the hands of new Moscow banks.

Fourth, Chubais and his associates subsidized these new banks by giving them Central Bank loans at negative (for the state) interest rates, transferring government accounts to them, and organizing the government securities market to benefit these banks.

Finally, during loans-for-shares auctions in 1995–1997, Chubais sold the remaining treasures of Russian industry at nominal prices to a small group of his own.

The corrupt capitalism of Yeltsin's Russia did not come by accident. The government deliberately enriched Berezovsky and a group of close associates in exchange for their political support. The Yeltsin clan and businessman friends retained power, but they dominated a bankrupt state and an impoverished population. It was assumed that young democrats would restore order in Russia, develop an appropriate legal system and give the green light to a market economy. Instead, they led a regime that turned out to be one of the most corrupt in human history.

Berezovsky benefited the most in this situation. He liked to brag about his achievements. He once told the Financial Times that he and six other financiers controlled 50 percent of the Russian economy, and that it was thanks to them that Yeltsin was re-elected to a second term.

“The Godfather of the Kremlin” is not a biography of Boris Berezovsky. There is no material about his childhood, adolescence, views, or personal life. This book cannot be called either a political analysis or a discussion of Russia's changing role in the world. It is rather an exploration of the career that Berezovsky had in business and politics. The book runs through two parallel themes - the rise of Berezovsky and the weakening of Russia. Much has been said here about the abuse of the principles of Western democracy: personal freedoms, freedom of speech, elected bodies of government, protection of minority rights, market economics, personal independence, honest work. In the early 1990s, well-wishers from abroad believed that if communism was dismantled and the principles mentioned above were practiced, Russians would transform their country into a Western-style democracy. Billions of dollars in economic aid and enormous amounts of time have gone into facilitating this transition. It is difficult for the Western world to understand how democratic principles could poison Russian society to such an extent, and in this sense Berezovsky's career provides an answer to this question.

Pavel Khlebnikov.

Godfather of the Kremlin Boris Berezovsky,

or the history of the plunder of Russia

Jim Michaels for making me a journalist

Forbes magazine - for inflexibility

Muse - for support

Everything is crumbling, the foundations are shaken,
The world is overwhelmed by waves of lawlessness:
The bloody tide is spreading and drowning
Shyness is a sacred rite.
The power of righteousness has dried up for the good
And the evil ones seemed to go berserk.

William Butler Yeats

The most reliable sources of the book are its characters. I have worked painstakingly on documentary and oral history of the Yeltsin era, but there is no doubt that much has been left out of my sight. Surely there will be books in which the lives of my heroes will be revealed in more detail. But I had the opportunity to communicate with these people in the early 90s, in their “age of innocence”, when they shared with me frankly - often boasting about their criminal exploits - and just as openly lied.

Introduction

Writing a coherent history of criminal acts during the Yeltsin era is no easy task. Almost not a single high-profile murder was solved. Even the criminal backgrounds of many of the characters are difficult to pin down—a problem that law enforcement faced was that some well-connected ex-criminals managed to steal their records, erasing traces of their crimes. The Russian criminal code contained many ambiguities and holes. Many financial transactions that in the West would be regarded as criminal (certain types of bribes, fraud, embezzlement, extortion) are often not crimes in Russia.