RUSSIA: Russia yesterday charged its exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky with plotting a coup, four days after Britain said it might expel him if he continued calling for the overthrow of President Vladimir Putin.
Russian prosecutors have charged Mr Berezovsky (60), who has asylum in Britain since fleeing Russia in 2002, with forcible seizure of power, a crime with a maximum 20-year-sentence.
It follows the tycoon's call in a radio interview in late January for ordinary Russians to rise up against a Kremlin he accused of being authoritarian: "The time for empty talk is over, and we need active moves," he said.
On Monday, British foreign secretary Jack Straw warned Mr Berezovsky that his asylum status could be revoked if he continued this campaign: "Advocating the violent overthrow of a sovereign state is unacceptable," he said.
In the 1990s, Mr Berezovsky was one of the most colourful figures to emerge in the chaos following the collapse of communism. A former mathematician, he built up a business empire that spanned cars, television and airline Aeroflot.
As a leading member of a group of tycoons nicknamed the Oligarchs, he was nicknamed the Kingmaker of the Kremlin because of his close ties to former president Boris Yeltsin.
But he clashed with Mr Putin, Mr Yeltsin's successor, and in 2002 fled Russia rather than face investigators who wanted to interview him about an alleged €10 billion fraud.
In London he lives in regal splendour, with an office in Mayfair and a mansion in Surrey. From this base he has launched a series of attacks on the Kremlin, to the embarrassment of the British government which has seen relations with Moscow deteriorate as a result.
In 2002 he accused the Russian secret service, the FSB, of being behind a series of mysterious blasts in Russian apartment blocks that killed 300 in 1999.
The following year, he protested at the arrest of fellow tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky by hiring 100 Mercedes limousines, installing protest placards in each, then driving them in convoy past Russia's London embassy.
A Russian extradition request failed that same year, with a London judge ruling that Mr Berezovsky was unlikely to get a fair trial if he returned home.
Moscow has not yet issued a fresh extradition request on the coup charges, but says it has forwarded details to London.
Since exile, Mr Berezovsky said he was forced to surrender most of his business interests, most to his former partner and now rival Roman Abramovich.
Mr Berezovsky has further antagonised the Kremlin by using an estimated €600 million fortune to finance pro-democracy groups in countries around Russia's rim.
He helped pro-democracy groups involved in Ukraine's Orange Revolution.
Last October he promoted Russian opposition groups during a tour of Latvia and Georgia in the company of Neil Bush, brother of the US president.
Mr Berezovsky himself was yesterday keeping a low profile, although he said late last month that, following the furore over his interview, he would sell his Moscow newspaper, Kommersant, an outspoken critic of the Kremlin.