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Russian officials seemed to believe that Berezovsky had plenty of cash on hand, trying
-- with mixed success -- to claw back some of the exile's assets. Charges are still pending against him in relation to the alleged embezzlement of some $13 million from Russia's now-defunct SBS-Agro bank. Berezovsky had also previously been convicted in absentia of bilking hundreds of millions of rubles from the airline company Aeroflot and the carmaker AvtoVaz. ___ THE BILLS PILE UP Berezovsky often expressed a fondness for Britain's legal system, despite his frequent and expensive encounters with it. A search of British court records throws up roughly three dozen judgments
-- libel, fraud, divorce, breach of contract -- involving the tycoon in some way. Berezovsky sued a business associate over a fraudulent loan. Other business associates sued him over a botched oil deal. Berezovsky sued Forbes over an unflattering profile. He sued Russian television for suggesting he had a hand in the poisoning death of ex-Russian KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko. His second wife sued him for a divorce. His girlfriend sued him for a house he'd promised her. He sued the wife of his long-time partner, Badri Patarkatsishvili, in a complicated dispute over how to split the man's assets after his death. The sums involved were staggering. The loan deal was worth $5 million. His second divorce settlement in 2011 reportedly cost him 100 million pounds (about $154 million at the time). Patarkatsishvili's assets could be worth hundreds of millions more. The biggest lawsuit of all, against Abramovich for breach of contract and blackmail, was for a mind-boggling $5.6 billion. Berezovsky lost the lawsuit against Abramovich last year and the judge involved stopped just short of calling him a liar. He was stuck with tens of millions of pounds in legal bills. ___ A FORTUNE FALTERS Whatever the extent of Berezovsky's wealth, his expensive divorce, Patarkatsishvili's death and his paper mountain of litigation left it much reduced. In 2008, Berezovsky was forced to sell the Darius, a 110-meter (360-foot) -long custom-built yacht that many believed was an attempt to compete with an even larger ship, the Eclipse, being built for Abramovich. Earlier this month, the Times of London reported that Berezovsky was downsizing his art collection, selling off his homes, firing staff and closing his office in London's upscale Mayfair district. In a January ruling in a dispute between Berezovsky and his ex-girlfriend Helena Gorbunova, High Court Judge George Mann wrote that the oligarch's fortune appeared to have been spread thin. "On the evidence, Mr. Berezovsky is a man under financial pressure," he said.
[Associated
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