Berezovskys Financial Ties To Chechen Separatists

The Kidnapping of General Shpigun

As has been noted, the brazen kidnapping of MVD General Gennadii Shpigun
in March of 1999 at the ‘Severnyi’ Airport in Groznyi served to push the
Russian leadership in the direction of a new invasion of Chechnya. This was
merely the latest in a series of gaudy kidnappings that had been occurring in
Chechnya since the end of the first war in August of 1996. In early 2002, a
pro-Kremlin website reported: “Today, 24 January, the director of the FSB,
Nikolai Patrushev, announced that he possesses information about the
participation of entrepreneur Boris Berezovsky in the financing of illegal
armed formations and their leaders... It is also not excluded [Patrushev said]
that Berezovsky had a relationship to the well-known kidnapping of the
General of the MVD Shpigun...”
There appears to be abundant evidence that Berezovsky had long been
providing extremist elements among the Chechen separatists with millions of
dollars in funds. Former MVD chairman and Russian deputy premier Anatolii
Kulikov, subsequently an elected Duma deputy, told the weekly Argumenty i
fakty in 2002: “I have received a great deal of evidence that Berezovsky was
funding Chechen separatists. He did it under the flag of the Security Council,
which had enormous powers under Boris Yeltsin. The Security Council was
headed by Ivan Rybkin and Boris Berezovsky at that time... On April 28,
1997, I was informed that Berezovsky’s envoy Badri Patarkatsishvili had
arrived at the Ingushetian airport of Sleptsovsk. He gave Shamil’ Basaev $10
million—in the presence of Ingushetian President Ruslan Aushev and Vice-
president B[oris] Agapov... On [April 30]... I told [Yeltsin] about Berezovsky’s
transfer of money to Basaev. In Moscow I wrote a letter to the Procuator
General... Once I met Berezovsky... I asked him immediately why he had
delivered money to the Chechen bandits. He was at a loss for words... Then I
told him about Patarkatsishvili’s visit to Sleptsovsk. He admitted that he had
transferred some money to Chechnya, but that it was allegedly only $1
million.”
In a subsequent statement, however, Berezovsky stipulated that
“he gave $2 million to Chechen leader Shamil’ Basaev, but reiterated that

115 Aleksandr Orlov, “Imenno Berezovsky pridumal sistemu torgovli lyud’mi,” Strana.ru,
25 January 2002.
“How Berezovsky Funded Separatists,” Argumenty i fakty, 20 March 2002. English
translation posted at Ichkeria.org, 21 March 2002.
both men were government officials at the time and the money was
earmarked for reconstruction work.”117
A former Chechen separatist activist Adam Beibulatov confirmed to the
Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya gazeta: “The ransoming of
prisoners and the making of business on it began after the Khasavyurt
Accords [of August 1996]. The basic ‘service’ in beginning this business
belongs to Berezovsky... I personally knew Berezovsky, inasmuch as from
the Chechen side I carried out the exchange of prisoners of war. At
Berezovsky’s word from places of imprisonment were released not only
rebels but also criminals. There was an enormous financial fund to pay the
ransoms... Berezovsky paid $2.8 million for a well-known kidnapped man. In
so doing, he neglected neither himself nor the kidnapped persons... Honestly
speaking, for [Berezovsky] it was not so much business as a political game.
He liked to have everything submitted to him and for that he needed a lot of
power. The exchange of hostages afforded him enormous political
dividends.”
Another intermediary, retired major Vyacheslav Izmailov, has recalled, “The
author of these lines, beginning in 1996, was required to occupy himself with
the freeing of hostages, together with the Commission of the President of
Russia on Prisoners of War, Those Interned and Persons Disappeared without
Trace, with the support and assistance of the General Procuracy and officers
of the MVD and FSB of Russia... In March of 1998... with the final assistance
of Berezovsky were liberated the heads of the FSB of Ingushetiya... No less
than a million U.S. dollars was paid for the employees of the FSB Gribov and
Lebedinskii, who had been kidnapped in 1997, and the money was
transferred to the bandits precisely by officers of the FSB.”
In 2002,
Berezovsky boasted that, using his contacts with the separatists, he had
“freed sixty-four persons who were hostages [of the rebels].”120
A number of Russian press commentators have emphasized that
Berezovsky’s contacts with and the paying of enormous ransoms to extremist
elements among the separatists was fully known to and approved of by the
Russian power ministries. “Vladimir Putin,” journalist Valerii Yakov has
written, “director of the FSB at the time, was friendly with Berezovsky then.
Being what he was, Putin must have known about all (all!) the oligarch’s
contacts with the Chechens. These contacts did not worry the chekist Putin,
the policeman Rushailo, or prime minister Stepashin back then. The
businessman is an enemy now, and those contacts are labeled criminal...”

Natalia Yefimova, “Berezovsky: I gave Cash to the Chechen rebels,” The Moscow
Times, 1 February 2002.
“Ispoved’ smertnika o Basaeve, Maskhadove i Berezovskom,” Rossiiskaya gazeta, 5
July 2002.
Vyacheslav Izmailov, “Den’gi bandidam platil ne tol’ko Berezovsky,” Novaya gazeta,
31 January 2002.
“Boris Berezovsky svodit schety s prezidentom Putinym,” Deutsche Welle, posted in
Russian translation on Insomi.ru, 1 February 2002.
Valerii Yakov, “The Regime Ducks the Question,” Novye izvestiya, 7 March 2002.
Translation in JRL, no. 6120, 7 March 2002.
As the moderate separatist leader of Chechnya, Aslan Maskhadov, put it to
the late human rights activist Viktor Popkov in early 2001, “All of these
ordered kidnappings of major bureaucrats—Vlasov, Shpigun—were a
preparation for war!... I believe that the war in Dagestan was provoked by
Moscow and the leadership of Russia... It was a direct act of collusion,
collusion of the Yeltsin administration, of the financial oligarchy, of
Berezovsky, and of the military who shamefully lost that [first] war. Well, of
course not without the participation of our near-sighted, radically inclined
people. I do not deny it.”
As for the specific instance of the kidnapping of General Shpigun, retired
major Izmailov has observed: “[T]he organizer of the kidnapping [of
Shpigun] was the late bandit Bakuev, who was connected with Arbi Baraev...
All of the reasonably well-known bandits—Arbi Baraev, the Akhmadov
brothers—always cited (again, through intermediaries) Bakuev as the ‘owner’
of Shpigun... The former leadership of the MVD [under Vladimir Rushailo]
limited, if it did not reduce to nothing, the actions of the ethnic department
of GUBOP [an elite unit of the regular police] to liberate General Shpigun...
The fate of Shpigun did not interest the leadership of the MVD headed by
Rushailo...”
The notorious Chechen wahhabi leader singled out by Izmailov, Arbi Baraev,
was reported to have close ties to the Russian power ministries. Baraev
“moved freely about the [Chechen] republic showing at federal checkpoints
the documents of an officer of the Russian MVD.”124 “On the windshield of
Baraev’s vehicle,” journalist Anna Politkovskaya noted, “there was a pass,
regularly renewed, which stated that the driver was free ‘to go everywhere’—
the most cherished and respected pass in the Combined Group of [Russian]
Forces.”
Arbi Baraev also had reported shadowy ties both to the FSB and
the GRU.126
Why were both Berezovsky and the Russian special services engaged in de
facto supporting the extremists? “To the extent that Berezovsky represented
the interests of the Yeltsin regime in Chechnya,” the late Paul Klebnikov has
written, “the Kremlin had been undermining the moderates, supporting the
extremists financially and politically... At best, it was a misguided policy...
The worst-case scenario is that the Berezovsky strategy with the Chechen

122 “Aslan Maskhadov: Ya pytalsya predotvratit’ etu voinu,” Novaya gazeta, 27 April 2001.
See also Sophie Shihab, “Tchétchénie: un entretien avec Aslan Maskhadov,” Le Monde,
17 September 1999.
Vyacheslav Izmailov, “Kto pokhitil generala Shpiguna,” Novaya gazeta, 18 March
2002.
Sanobar Shermatova, “Glavnyi rabototorgovets,” Moskovskie novosti, 29 October
2002.
In Novaya gazeta, 28 June 2001. Politkovskaya was, of course, assassinated in
Moscow in October 2006.
Sanobar Shermatova, “Tainaya voina spetssluzhb,” Moskovskie novosti, 8 August
2000.
warlords was a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of war.”127 “There are
interviews given by Berezovsky that show that already from 1997 onward,”
French philosopher André Glucksmann—who visited Chechnya and Dagestan
in the year 2000—has noted, “he foresaw the usefulness of a large-scale war
in Chechnya for the 2000 election campaign.”
Journalist Sophie Shihab of Le Monde has reported that in September 1999 a
young French businessman close to Berezovsky contacted her newspaper
over the telephone and said: “I will no longer have anything to do with him
[Berezovsky]. He must think that in unleashing chaos he will be able to
install his own man firmly in power. And in the process to seize new pieces of
the Russian cake, including the Caspian. It is for that reason that he
organized the invasion of Dagestan by the Chechens.”

Transcripts Published of Berezovsky’s Alleged Phone Conversations

with Radical Separatist Leaders

During September of 1999, the Russian press published transcripts of a
number of alleged phone conversations conducted by Berezovsky with
Movladi Udugov, Kazbek Makhashev and other radical Chechen separatist
leaders. Although the reported conversations took place in a kind of primitive
code, it seemed to press commentators that Berezovsky had been
negotiating a price for an incursion by the rebels into Dagestan.
Berezovsky heatedly denounced the published tapes as falsehoods and
threatened to sue the newspaper Moskovskii komsomolets, one of the papers
that had published the transcripts.131 He also assailed the NTV television
channel, controlled by Luzhkov ally Vladimir Gusinskii, for broadcasting tapes
on 15 September of “alleged phone conversations between Berezovsky and
[extremist] Chechen leaders.”132 Journalist Aleksandr Khinshtein has
reported: “At the present moment in FAPSI [roughly the Russian equivalent
of the US NSA] there is taking place a harsh internal investigation—
concerning the leaking of tapes containing eavesdropping on confidential
conversations. Supposedly a loss of eight cassettes has been discovered.”
On 22 September, Khinshtein published a detailed analysis of Berezovsky’s
phone conversations with radical Chechen leaders. “[Berezovsky] is trying
hard,” he wrote, “to clear himself of accusations of a deal with the Chechens.

Paul Klebnikov, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia
(New York: Harcourt, 2000), pp. 300-302. Klebnikov, as is well known, was gunned down
in Moscow on 9 July 2004.
Galina Ackerman, “Conversation with André Glucksmann,” JRL, no. 4397, 12 July
2000.
Sophie Shihab, “Qui a commis les attentats de 1999,” Le Monde, 16 November 2002.
See: “BAB-Boeviki: ‘Berezovsky slushaet,’” MK.ru, 14 September 1999; Sergei
Mikhalych, “Obstoyatel’tva. Kavkazskii torg. Chtoby poluchit’ Nobelevskuyu premiyu mira,
Berezovsky oplatil voinu?” Novaya gazeta, 20 September 1999; and Mikhail Shevelev,
“Samizdat. Pravdu ne skroesh’,” Moskovskie novosti, 28 September 1999.
Evgenii Krutikov, “Chechnya teryaet pokrovitelei,” Izvestiya, 17 September 1999.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Foreign Media Note, 16 September 1999.
Aleksandr Khinshtein, “Otkroveniya bol’nogo cheloveka,” MK.ru, 17 September 1999.
He says that he did not conduct any telephone conversations with Udugov
and Makhashev, that all of this is a provocation organized by Moskovskii
komsomolets at the command of Luzhkov...”134
“In the middle of June [1999],” Khinshtein went on, “Movladi Udugov
conducted telephone negotiations with Berezovsky and exchanged fax
communications with him. Udugov counted on receiving a large sum of
money from the oligarch... On the 30th of July, an authorized representative
of Berezovsky named Badri [Patarkatashvili] met with Kazbek Makhashev in
Nal’chik [Kabardino-Balkariya]. The Chechens hoped that Boris Abramovich
would provide them with material support. However that did not happen.
Badri brought with him only a financial document for the receipt of a much