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Mar 2 2006 5:37PM London to consider Russia's request for Berezovsky's extradition MOSCOW. March 2 (Interfax) - Britain will thoroughly study the Russian Prosecutor General's Office's request for the extradition of businessman Boris Berezovsky, Anton Atrashkin, deputy head of the Press and Public Affairs Section of the British embassy in Moscow told Interfax on Thursday. "We know that a corresponding request has been filed. I can assure you that any enquiry filed by Russian government bodies will be thoroughly examined in London," he said.

RIGA - The controversy surrounding earlier visits by Russian exile Boris Berezovsky, as well as his recent banning, became more muddied last week when the head of Parliament’s national security commission, Indulis Emsis, announced that a clandestine network structure was operating in the country, and that billionaire George Soros was part of the conspiracy. Emsis, a member of the Greens and Farmers Union and a former prime minister, said he would consult foreign security agencies as to the possible existence of a secret anti-democratic group in the Baltic state. The group, or so he claimed, has exercised power partly through...

Concluding Question: The Meta-Group and the United States Government It seems clear that the meta-group, with its influential connections on at least three continents, was powerful enough to effect changes, through the Russian 9/11, in Russian history. The question arises whether they could similarly effect changes in American history as well. As we have seen Russian sources claim that the U.S. Government has had access to he meta-group, for such especially sensitive projects as the assassination of Abu al Walid al-Hamadi. They claim the meta-group's involvement in a number of U.S.-sponsored regime changes in eastern Europe, from the overthrow of...

Russians blame Chechen for US editor's murder Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow Friday June 17, 2005 The Guardian Russian prosecutors say the murder of an American journalist, Paul Klebnikov, shot dead in Moscow last year, was ordered by a Chechen separatist angered by the reporter's negative portrayal of him - and have declared the case closed. Khodzh-Ahmed Nukhayev, a former official in the separatist government, paid a gang of Chechens to kill Mr Klebnikov because of a 2003 book critical of Mr Nukhayev, the prosecutor's office said yesterday. The killing highlighted the dangers faced in Russia by investigative journalists, who...

KIEV — Fugitive Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky admits it is possible he will take part in tenders to privatize Ukrainian enterprises. "I do not rule out the possibility of my partaking in any of the auctions, because Ukraine's new authorities have declared the transparency of the auctions and business as a whole," Berezovsky was quoted by the Ukrainskaya Pravda internet newspaper on Tuesday. He supposed that Ukraine will let "a great number of enterprises" be privatized. Although Berezovsky did not elaborate on what enterprises he was seeking to acquire, while commenting on the sectors of his interest, he said,...

KIEV, April 4 (RIA Novosti, Tara Burnos) - Exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky can visit Ukraine anytime, representatives of the Ukrainian State Border Service Committee and Security Service told RIA Novosti on Monday. "Any person having proper documents can enter our country," said Anatoly Samarchenko, spokesman for the State Border Service Committee. "If Berezovsky's visit is legitimate and Ukrainian law enforcement bodies have nothing against it, he can arrive in Kiev anytime," he noted. According to Marina Ostapenko, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Security Council, security services have no claims against the exiled Russian businessmen. "No one, including border guards, has...

KYIV. Jan 31 (Interfax-Ukraine) - Ukrainian Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko has suggested that the Ukrainian authorities will allow controversial Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky to take up residence in their country. Berezovsky's plans to move to Ukraine prove that he helped finance Viktor Yushchenko's election campaign, Symonenko told Interfax on Monday. "In the end, we have found confirmation that Mr. Berezovsky, like some other oligarchs in Russia or those banished from Russia, worked to support Yushchenko during the presidential elections," he said.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin (news - web sites), wants to leave Britain, where he has been given political asylum, and move to Ukraine, media quoted him as saying on Saturday. Berezovsky, one of Russia's once-mighty and hugely wealthy "oligarchs," voiced his intention just days after the inauguration of Ukraine's new President Viktor Yushchenko, a Western-leaning liberal whose candidacy Putin publicly opposed. "Yes, I want to move to Kiev," Berezovsky told Interfax news agency. "I don't want to do business in Kiev, I just want to live there." A powerful Kremlin...

MOSCOW (AP)--Boris Berezovsky, the controversial Russian tycoon now living in exile in London, says he wants to move to Ukraine, a Russian news Web site reported Friday. The report came less than a week after the inauguration of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who aims to steer the country out of the Kremlin's sphere of influence and toward greater integration with Western Europe. Berezovsky amassed a fortune in dubious privatization deals in the early 1990s and became an influential Kremlin insider, but fell out of favor with President Vladimir Putin and fled the country to avoid an investigation into the laundering...

The former editor of one of Russia's best-known dailies, who was fired following his paper's coverage of the Beslan school siege, has said that media control in the country is comparable to Soviet times. Raf Shakirov, who ran the Izvestiya newspaper until his dismissal following what he claimed was pressure from the Kremlin, said that televison news was dedicated to propaganda designed to make Russia appear better. He said that Russian television news would show only positive stories about Russia, but very negative ones about events in the West. "They describe strikes in London, and lots of problems in Western...

THE London-based Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky has claimed that the intelligence services helped to foil a plot by Chechen terrorists to sell a nuclear device on the international black market. Berezovsky last week described the curious events that led to him tipping off the authorities about the plot. The exiled Russian oligarch, who according to The Sunday Times Rich List is the 14th richest man in Britain, said that he had contacted British and American intelligence after being approached by a Chechen at his home in Surrey. The Chechen said he was acting as an intermediary for a man who...

VILNIUS. Sept 17 (Interfax) - The Lithuanian Defense Council decided at its Friday session that the Kavkaz-Center website which belongs to Chechen separatists and is operated from Lithuania will be closed in the near future. "This website has been inciting ethnic and religious hatred. That is why a decision was made at the Lithuanian Defense Council's session to recommend that its operations be stopped in the near future," Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas told journalists after the session, which was chaired by the country's President Valdas Adamkus.

Friends and Colleagues Hold Funeral Service for American Editor of Russian Forbes Edition Mara D. Bellaby/Associated Press MOSCOW (AP) - Friends and colleagues of the slain American editor of Forbes Magazine's Russian edition held a small, private funeral service Sunday for Paul Klebnikov in the Russian capital, Russia's Ekho Moskvy reported. About 40 people attended the service at St. Yekaterina's Church, the radio station said. Klebnikov will buried in the United States. Klebnikov, 41, was gunned down late Friday outside the magazine's offices. Russia's Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov has said that he was taking personal control of the investigation, which authorities...

Irina Khakamada is running for president but her campaign headquarters are not bustling. Phones aren't ringing off the hook and no one is barking instructions. This is no Clinton-style war room, yet this lone warrior still looks battle-weary. She says she harbors no illusions of unseating President Vladimir Putin, but that's not the point. "We're fighting so that people raise their voices," she says, not fighting to win. "That costs less." But it's not clear just who is raising their voices in support. Speculation that she is a mercenary front for the Kremlin or oligarch interests has made it difficult...

Russia has demanded that Georgia explain why it allowed Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky to visit the Caucasus republic without arresting him. The billionaire, who has been granted political asylum in Britain, flew into Tbilisi by private jet on Tuesday night - to visit a friend, he said. The Russian foreign ministry said Georgia should have acted on an international warrant for his arrest. Mr Berezovsky is wanted in Russia on fraud and embezzlement charges. The Georgian ambassador to Moscow was summoned to the foreign ministry and was told that Russia "demands explanations why Georgian law enforcement agencies failed to take...

Tbilisi. (Interfax) - Georgia's independent television channel Rustavi-2 reported that Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky, who currently resides in London, arrived in Tbilisi from Britain early Wednesday morning. Berezovsky was met at the airport by his friend, Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili, Rustavi-2 reported. Spokesman for the Georgian Border Department Shalva Lontaridze confirmed to the press that Berezovsky arrived in Tbilisi from London last night on a plane owned by Patarkatsishvili. He also said that Berezovsky was cleared through the customs with a passport under the name of Elenin Platon. At 5 a.m., following a meeting with Patarkatsishvili, Berezovsky left Tbilisi...

GENEVA (AP) - Swiss authorities have begun a criminal investigation of Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, who fled corruption charges in his homeland and was granted political asylum in Britain, the federal prosecutor's office said Sunday. The investigation is related to the corruption case in Russia, but Hansjoerg Widmer, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, declined to provide further details. Berezovsky is one of a number of prominent Russian business executives who made fortunes during their country's privatization of state industries in the 1990s and now face what critics of President Vladimir Putin say are politically motivated criminal charges. Swiss prosecutors...

<p>Long ago in Leningrad, my wife and I were enjoying a gala dinner laid on by the local soviet for visiting trade center representatives from around the world. The band was playing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon," perhaps to remind us of how recently Americans had been prisoners in Vietnam. But then a fight broke out on the dance floor. A burly Russian, well lubricated with vodka, tried to cut in on another man's date.</p>

Boris Berezovsky and other Kremlin critics took out a full-page advertisement in major U.S. newspapers on Tuesday warning the United States not to trust President Vladimir Putin. The advertisement in The Washington Post, New York Times and Wall Street Journal was clearly designed to embarrass Putin as he headed for the United States to attend the UN General Assembly and a summit with U.S. President George W. Bush. Titled "Seven questions to President George Bush about his friend President Vladimir Putin," it accused Putin of undermining democracy, stamping his control on parliament, courts and media, and overseeing genocide in Chechnya....

Criminal investigations into the oil-and-banking empire of Russia's wealthiest tycoon have shocked the capital, sent the stock market into a nosedive and even stirred up worries about the fragility of the country's fledgling democracy. Heavy-handed raids in recent weeks by the tax police and security agencies have targeted Yukos, the conglomerate headed by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a 40-year-old magnate whose personal fortune is estimated at $8 billion US. Some observers suggest the Yukos investigations could be the start of a serious Kremlin campaign against Russia's so-called oligarchs, the handful of young businessmen who schemed to take control of key industries and...