Russian prosecutors have halted an investigation into billionaire businessman Boris Berezovsky, Itar-Tass news agency reported today.
Mr Berezovsky, who fled Russia for Britain after falling foul of the Kremlin under President Vladimir Putin, told journalists last January he had been planning a forced takeover of power in Russia.
Russian prosecutors opened a formal investigation and Jack Straw, then Britain's foreign minister, warned Mr Berezovsky that his residency status could be reviewed if he continued to advocate a coup.
Mr Berezovsky helped Mr Putin to power during the last days of former president Boris Yeltsin's rule but later fell foul of the Kremlin and fled Russia in 2000, becoming a vociferous enemy of Mr Putin.
Mr Berezovsky told a Russian radio station in January 2006 that he had been planning a "forced takeover of power" and said the action was justified because Mr Putin's rule was unconstitutional. He repeated the claims in an interview with Reuters.
But in a letter to the British Foreign Office he explained that he had not meant violence but a "bloodless" change of regime.
Mr Berezovsky is the most powerful of a group of Russian opposition exiles living in London which includes Chechen leader Akhmed Zakayev, KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky and, until his death last November, former spy Alexander Litvinenko.