– Boris Berezovsky’s last interview: ‘There is no point in life’ (Telegraph, March 24, 2013):
Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch, said less than 48 hours before he was found dead at his home in Berkshire that he no longer saw the point in life.
Boris Berezovsky was discovered dead yesterday afternoon at his home in Ascot, Berkshire. Reports from Russia said he was found in the bath.
lya Zhegulev, a commentator with the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, met the 67-year-old oligarch in the restaurant of the Four Seasons hotel on Park Lane on Friday evening.
Mr Berezovsky said had had lived through “many disappointments” in London. He said: “I’ve lost the point… there is no point [or meaning] in my life. I don’t want to be involved in politics. I don’t know what to do. I’m 67 years old. And I don’t know what I should do from now on.”
He said he wanted to return to Moscow: “I want nothing more than to return to Russia. Even when they opened a criminal case against me, I wanted to return to Russia… that was my main miscalculation: that Russia is so dear to me that I cannot be an émigré.”
Friends of Mr Berezovsky today claimed he may have been victim of a Russian hit. However, there are conflicting reports that he may have committed suicide after suffering from severe depression.
Friends raised the possibility of suicide and said Berezovsky had been “destroyed” by losing a £3billion legal action with his former business partner, Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club. Berezovsky had been living in exile in Britain since 2000.
– Boris Berezovsky death: friend suggests he may have been victim of Russian hit (Telegraph, March 24, 2013):
Yuri Felshtinsky, a historian and author who knew Mr Berezovsky since 1998, told The Daily Telegraph that he doubted suggestions the tycoon had committed suicide, and had no knowledge that his friend had been seriously ill.
His comments came as British police investigating his death said a search of his house by chemical, biological and nuclear experts had found “nothing of concern”.
“We do not have facts yet but we must bear in mind that there have been several questionable deaths of Russian émigrés in the UK,” said Mr Felshtinsky. “Badri Patarkatsishvili, Boris Berezovsky’s business partner, died in February 2008 [in Surrey] and until yesterday everybody including me thought that was a death by natural causes, but now I’m not so sure.”
Mr Berezovsky, a fiery critic of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who fled to the UK in 2000, was found dead at the age of 67, reportedly in a bath at his home, on Saturday. Police say the death is “unexplained”.
Mr Felshtinsky has lived in the United States since 1978, but in the late 1990s he travelled to Moscow to prepare a biography of Mr Berezovsky. Instead, he became close to the tycoon and his associate Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer.
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– ?Berezovsky ‘was strangled to death’ friends claim as it is revealed his security guard left him alone for five hours to run errands (Daily Mail, March 25, 2013):
- Berezovsky left no note and friends say ‘suicide was not in his DNA’
- Police announced he was hanged following a post-mortem
- Home Office pathologist found no evidence of a violent struggle
- Kremlin insider Sergei Markov says tycoon was ‘begging’ to come home
- ‘British secret services can be suspected in death of Berezovsky,’ he said
- Secret letter from Berezovsky to Putin asking to return to Russia ‘exists’
- Experts fear he may have been murdered by the Kremlin in ‘revenge’ attack
- Others say he was ‘destroyed’ after losing £3bn court case with Abramovich
Friends of Boris Berezovsky have claimed that the Russian oligarch was strangled to death despite a post-mortem examination suggesting there was no evidence of a struggle.
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