Paul Klebnikov (1963–2004)

Boris Berezovsky is a murderer and racketeer who was chased out of Russia by President Putin, and is now in asylum in England (reason: no fair trial in Russia). He is also, in all likelihood, the murderer of the author of this book.

Klebnikov gives the best account that I have read, of the economic and social catastrophe of the Yeltsin presidency, and the way in which Berezovsky first used his Chechen mafia contacts, and later his membership of Yeltsin's inner circle in the early 1990's, to "privatize" (for himself ) the profits of Russia's major enterprises. His tactic was to enter in a friendly way, a company such a Autovaz (Russia's largest auto manufacturer), set up associate companies, knock out the management then bleed the enterprise through the overseas associates (turning it into a loss maker). Entry became much easier with the Yeltsin circle's support and he successfully moved against Aeroflot (national airline), ORT (national TV broadcaster) and the giant Russian raw materials companies, with management dissenters being unaccountably murdered.

The theft turned to overdrive when he and his associates (also Jewish and who came to be known as the oligarchs) came up with the idea of lending the Yeltsin government money in return for shareholdings in the major Russian raw materials companies. "Loans for Shares" developed into a series of rigged auctions with the connivance of Yeltsin's family (particularly his daughter Tanya Dyachenko - a personal friend of Berezovsky). As a example, Khodorkovsy obtained 45% of the Yukos oil company for only 159 million dollars, when the true market value of this share was revealed as 2.798 million dollars (stock market value 01-08-97). All this, while ordinary Russians were, as usual, abandoned to their fate in a hyperinflating, lawless society in which previously middle class professionals were reduced to penury.

When talking about these ex communists turned businessmen, the outsider General Aleksandr Lebed correctly stated that, "They have always regarded ordinary people as garbage: the stones at the foot of the pyramids."… (plus d'informations)