UK's biggest private litigation bust-up affords rare insight into Russian oligarchs' opulent lifestyles
Ignore Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin. Set aside Dmitry Medvedev's badminton fetish. Forget the recent gangland murder of Chechnya's best-known poet. Instead, ordinary Russians have been transfixed by another news story taking place in a small island country far away. It is a quintessentially Russian tale of greed, skulduggery, and betrayal.
But it is being played out not on the grey streets of Moscow but in the improbable, autumnal setting of an English court.
The $5bn legal battle between Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich has offered Russians a fascinating peek into the opulent lifestyles of the mega-rich. Luxury cruises in the Caribbean, mansions in France, deals at the Dorchester, Chechen gangsters, and billions funnelled through opaque offshore companies – all have been uncovered in what is the UK's biggest private litigation bust-up.
But for Russians the case has been a unique opportunity to hear about the murky events that befell post-communist Russia. It has become a compelling oral history lesson from the 1990s in which the secrets of Boris Yeltsin's court have been brought to light.
Abramovich and Berezovsky were beneficiaries of Yeltsin's dubious privatisation programme, under which state assets were practically given away to a small group of powerful businessmen – the oligarchs.
At issue is whether Berezovsky owned a share of Abramovich's oil company Sibneft? Or did he, as Abramovich insists, simply receive $2.5 billion for providing political services?
"Whatever happens we will know much more about what was going on in these years than before," Yuli Dubov – a friend of Berezovsky's, watching the hearings, pointed out. "Everyone wants to know what was happening in 1995 and 1996 from the horse's mouth."
Back in Moscow, a segment of Russian society has followed proceedings avidly. Some, like the opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, have likened the trial to Russia's version of WikiLeaks, an insider look into events recounted by the very people that lived them. "I became an adult when this stage of the country's history seemed to be left in the past," the paper's correspondent Vera Chelischeva wrote, in an article titled "Berezovsky + Abramovich = Russian Assange."
"And it's only here, at this mad trial in the court of a foreign government, that I've been explained the 'whys'. Crudely explained. Under oath." Her dogged reports from the case run under the rubric "Trial of the Century".
The country's leading newspapers – Vedomosti, Kommersant, online portal Gazeta.ru – have been live-blogging each day of the trial, directly translating the questions and testimony given in the courtroom. Kommersant has illustrated its coverage with a cartoon, showing Berezovsky, Abramovich and the judge underneath Big Ben and the Houses of parliament. Abramovich looks like a bearded geography teacher."The political elite is interested [in the trial] as a collection of fantastic details," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a well-connected political analyst. "Stories about Abramovich and Berezovsky are like the story of the Trojan War, of Odysseus, and how everything was done."
That's particularly true when it comes to Abramovich. Despite his enormous wealth, close links to the Kremlin and political involvement – first as governor, today as a deputy in the far eastern region of Chukotka – the 45-year-old oligarch remains a mystery in his own country. After his seventh day of testimony in the trial, TV Rain, a new television channel, led its report with the fact that Abramovich managed to utter a few words of English.
Russia's official media outlets have been less enthralled, and the country's leadership and political elite have avoided the subject altogether. The story has received intermittent coverage on the federal level, with oligarchs still widely reviled.
Not surprisingly, the ruling United Russia party has launched a slow campaign to discredit the whole affair. Last week, it released a video featuring Vladimir Solovyov, a leading Kremlin-friendly journalist who hosts a debate show on Rossiya, one of the country's main state-run channels. The video was titled: "Russia is not an English colony."
"That they're talking about our government there, is that not a disgrace?" Solovyov asks, staring down the camera. He expresses amazement that his fellow Russians have accepted "English jurisdiction" over events that happened in Russia "at the end of the last century and at the start of this one".
Most of the British journalists covering the litigation battle have drifted away, as the trial entered its second month. But their Russian counterparts are still filing. Mary Timohova, a UK correspondent for the Russian portal Slon.ru, says that her readers cannot get enough of London. "For them, London is a paradise," she said. "If you take a normal story and put London in it, the interest goes up."
Observers have drawn comparisons between Abramovich with his fellow oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, serving a 14 year jail sentence after two trials in Moscow. In the 1990s both used third-party entities to reduce their oil companies' tax bills. Khodorkovsky – Putin's foe – is in prison; Abramovich – Putin's friend – is not. "The same methods and explanations used against Khodorkovsky were never brought against other companies," Pavlovsky said.
"The most interesting thing is why Berezovsky and, even more so Abramovich, suddenly started to tell the truth about their pasts," political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, wrote in a column for Moskovsky Komsomolets, Russia's most popular daily. Belkovsky said that the Russian elite were "very scared" of the London court, but no longer feared its Russian equivalent – with Russia's legal system known for its susceptibility to political influence. "They tremble before this [English] court," Belkovsky wrote. He added: "They want to live [in London] no matter what."
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