STEPHEN CURTIS
CLOCHER DE LA GAROUPE is a spectacular, rambling villa in Cap d’Antibes in the heart of the Côte d’Azur. Set in 50 manicured acres of fragrant gardens, olive trees, and terraces that run down to the Mediterranean, the magnificent Italianate property is protected by a well-guarded gate tower and is a full mile from its ornate entrance. There are three sizeable villas - two for guests and one for its owner, commanding an impressive view of coastline and sea - along with a gymnasium, tennis court, and large swimming pool. The surrounding gardens are styled in the grand formal English manner with sweeping lawns and hedges.
The American composer Cole Porter rented the property in 1922. Along with fellow American, the artist Gerald Murphy, Porter famously raked the beach clean of seaweed that year, and wrote many of his most famous songs in the villa, notably his hit musical Hitchy-Koo.
Boris Berezovsky bought the place for $13.4 million in September 1997, a typically conspicuous statement of his personal wealth and extravagant tastes. It was soon put to good use and not just as a summer retreat. The chateau, just down the coast from Cannes, was the scene of many of Berezovsky’s most important business deals and much of his political scheming. It was here in 1998, during Russia’s deepening financial crisis, that he conspired with other oligarchs on who to back as Yeltsin’s successor when the President started to rapidly lose his faculties. The following year Vladimir Putin and his family were among those who were invited as guests.
In the autumn of 2000, when Berezovsky was facing up to the full implications of his spectacular rift with Putin and the Russian prosecutors were closing in, the chateau provided the perfect retreat. On 30 October 2000 the state seized his high-security nineteenth-century dacha in Alexandrovka, which he leased from the Kremlin. On 1 November 2000 the Russian Deputy Prosecutor, Vasily Kolmogorov, announced that he was launching criminal proceedings and summoned Berezovsky to appear in Moscow for questioning over the hundreds of millions alleged to be missing from Aeroflot’s Swiss-based accounts. The prosecutor said that if he failed to attend, an international arrest warrant would be issued. Knowing he would not emerge from the process unscathed, the next day he took a momentous decision: to remain in the South of France and become a fugitive. Berezovsky has repeatedly denied the accusations, claiming that they were politically motivated.
As he reflected on his predicament in his Cap d’Antibes retreat, the oligarch decided to remain defiant. Publicly, Berezovsky said that he still planned to return to Russia, but privately the decision had already been made. Two weeks later, on 14 November, he declared that he would not return to Moscow. ‘I have been compelled to choose between becoming a political prisoner or a political emigrant,’ he said.1
For the next month Berezovsky stayed in France. With his future now in the balance, his options were bleak: return to Moscow and face trial or lead a life of exile. The threatened international arrest warrant was then issued by the Russian Prosecutor-General. Although Interpol issued a ‘red notice’ that alerted other countries to this warrant, it did not oblige or mandate police to arrest him. But with the threat intensifying and his options rapidly narrowing, Berezovsky took a life-changing decision - London would be a safer refuge. He already had links to the UK - his daughters had gone to Cambridge and he owned a luxury apartment at Palace Gate in Kensington Palace Gardens - and so in early 2001 he travelled to London, a move he hoped would be temporary.
Berezovsky’s immediate concern as he quit Russia was how to protect his personal fortune. He still owned - or believed he still owned - large stakes in LogoVaz, Aeroflot, Sibneft, Rusal, and ORT - all jointly with Patarkatsishvili. He also had interests in the television channel TV6 and several newspapers. One of his greatest fears was that Putin would simply seize these assets. Then, several weeks after he fled Russia, he received a telephone call from his old friend Roman Abramovich.
Berezovsky’s former protégé, also a shareholder in Sibneft and Rusal, explained that he wanted to meet on ‘urgent business’. It was mid-December 2000 and Berezovsky was somewhat bemused by the call. The next day Abramovich drove the ten minutes from his own magnificent villa at Château de la Croix to Berezovsky’s Château de la Garoupe, where they were joined by Badri Patarkatsishvili. The meeting was not the usual informal, backslapping event the three men were used to. Instead, the atmosphere was uncharacteristically tense. There was now much at stake between the three men and Berezovsky had every reason to be wary of his old friend. While Berezovsky had turned himself into an enemy of Putin, he suspected that Abramovich had become the President’s consigliere.
Top of the agenda was the media company ORT. Putin was still fuming about Channel One’s critical coverage of the sinking of the Kursk and he was still demanding that the two tycoons sell their 49 per cent holding back to the state.
It was a measure of the tension and importance of this meeting that conflicting versions of what was said later emerged and have since become the subject of a hard-fought lawsuit being contested between the two oligarchs in London. According to Berezovsky, Abramovich was sent on the specific orders of Putin to exert intense pressure on them to sell up. He claims that Abramovich, in the role of the President’s willing messenger, warned him that unless he sold his ORT shares, Putin would simply seize the television station without compensation. Berezovsky later maintained that this was a trick to force him and Patarkatsishvili to sell their ORT stake at a knockdown rate, thereby cheating them out of millions.
According to Berezovsky, central to the negotiations was the fate of Nikolai Glushkov, who had been arrested on 7 December 2000 on charges relating to his management of Aeroflot. He was being held at Lefortovo jail in Moscow, notorious as the place where the KGB tortured political prisoners in the Soviet era. Berezovsky believed the arrest was part of the wider campaign by the Kremlin to curb his power. He claimed that Glushkov was essentially being used by the Putin administration as a hostage to prompt him and Patarkatsishvili into relinquishing their assets. According to Berezovsky, Abramovich told the partners that, if they sold their shares in ORT, Putin would release Glushkov from prison. Frustrated and cornered, Berezovsky had no leverage and reluctantly accepted the terms. He needed substantial funds to finance his London lifestyle and knew there was a risk that his stake might otherwise be seized without compensation.
Abramovich’s account of events is entirely at odds with Berezovsky’s. While he accepts that he was at such a meeting, he maintains that he was present in a quite different capacity - in order to assist Berezovsky, at his request, to sell Berezovsky’s ORT shares. Abramovich has denied making any threats or acting as an agent of Putin or the Russian state, claiming that Berezovsky was anxious to sell his ORT shares and actually asked for his help. Far from making threats, the future Chelsea FC owner claims that he, in fact helped Berezovsky and made money for him - by buying his stake in ORT at a price higher than he would otherwise have got.
On any view of the matter, the deal was not going to be straightforward. Neither Abramovich nor Putin would want to be seen publicly doing business with a man being investigated by the Russian state for fraud and for whom there was an international arrest warrant. All sides knew that, in order for the transaction to work, it would need to be entirely clandestine. But how could such a deal be constructed?
The solution was provided by the lawyer Stephen Curtis. He had already been working for Khodorkovsky, knew Abramovich, and advised Berezovsky. He relished the challenge of constructing a convoluted scheme by which to sell the ORT shares.
The fast-talking Curtis found working for the Russians exciting and challenging. He loved the complex and often unorthodox structure of their business and finances, but his colleagues had been less than happy when he first started to work for them. Late one evening in 1998, sitting in the back of his Mercedes, he told a confidant, ‘I need to tell you something. We’ve got some major new Russian clients.’ The friend was dismayed. ‘That’s crazy,’ he replied. ‘Why are you getting into bed with the Russians? It will be a disaster. They play by different rules. If you fall out with them, they will come after you. You are dealing with the Devil.’ Curtis laughed and brushed aside the comments, ‘Well, I will jump on their backs and ride all the way down to hell.’ He was mesmerized by the high rollers and high stakes. This was his chance for the big time. After one particular trip