Berezovsky, a mathematician, made his fortune in the 1990s during the catastrophic privatization of the Soviet Union's state-run economy. That era was marked by hyperinflation, contract killings and rampant corruption.
As Russia's GDP crumbled, oligarchs leveraged their ties to ruthless criminals and crooked officials to tear off huge chunks of the country's assets for themselves, draining resources and stripping factories to build fabulous fortunes.
Berezovsky—whose interests ran from automobiles to airplanes to aluminum—was one of this dark period's primary beneficiaries.
He became a political operator in Russian President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, trading on his connections to rack up assets estimated by Forbes to be worth roughly $3 billion in 1997.
“No man profited more from Russia's slide into the abyss,” wrote author Paul Klebnikov in a critical profile of Berezovsky entitled, “Godfather of the Kremlin.”
Eventually, the abyss began threatening Berezovsky as well.
The tycoon had been instrumental in orchestrating the accession of Yelstin's successor, Vladimir Putin, but when the new leader and Berezovsky began to clash, his political cover disintegrated. Berezovsky then fled the country in 2000, eventually claiming political asylum in Britain.
