Why has Abramovich’s billionaire friend been left off the UK sanctions list?
In March 2000, five of Russia’s richest oligarchs met in a suite at the Dorchester Hotel in London to discuss a multibillion-pound merger involving some of the biggest assets in the world aluminium industry.
The tycoons — one of whom arrived from a legal hearing in the House of Lords — discussed Russian politics, the aluminium wars in their country in the 1990s and the creation of the industrial giant Rusal.
A decade later, that hotel summit was at the centre of a £3bn high court battle between two of those present, Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, over the allocation of the abundant resources from the privatisation of Russia’s state-controlled industry, including the aluminium merger. It was the most costly private litigation battle ever fought in the British courts. The legal costs in the 2012 case were estimated at up to £100m.
While Abramovich won the legal case – in which Berezovsky demanded compensation for his alleged stake in the aluminium assets – the roots of these global riches, and those involved in managing them, are now coming under intense regulatory scrutiny from financial officials tasked with imposing sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Two of the men at the Dorchester meeting on 13 March 2000 have since died. Berezovsky was found dead in the bathroom of his Berkshire mansion in March 2013 with a ligature around his neck. A coroner recorded an open verdict. The Georgian-born oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili, who was also present, died in February 2008 from a suspected heart attack.
Two others who were at the summit, Abramovich and the billionaire Oleg Deripaska, the founder of Rusal, were last week put on the UK sanctions list. Abramovich’s British assets – including Chelsea football club – have
Read more on theguardian.com
