Boris Berezovsky

Name: Boris Berezovsky, a.k.a. Platon Yelenin

Age: 57

Estimated wealth: $3 billion

Member of the Group of Seven: yes

Current home: England

What others have said about him: “It is not enough for Berezovsky to just steal –

he needs everyone to see that he steals with total impunity.” (the late General Alexander Lebed)

A doctor of applied mathematics in his former, Soviet life, Berezovsky’s brilliant idea was that you could take control of a company’s cash flow without officially buying it, a theory he applied to the car dealership AvtoVAZ and the Russian state airline Aeroflot. He also seized Russia’s most watched TV Network, ORT (now First Channel and under government control), and, together with then associate Roman Abramovich, the Sibneft oil company (Abramovich later became Sibneft’s single largest shareholder). He escaped several assassination attempts and was alleged by some to have been behind several high-profile murders and even to have planned the assassination of Vladimir Gusinsky, although he has firmly denied all such charges. Berezovsky held several official positions during Yeltsin’s second presidential term, and was instrumental in bringing Putin to power. However, Berezovsky soon fell out of favor with the new leader, and, facing arrest, opted for exile in Britain, from where he regularly attacks Putin and his policies. Berezovsky was recently granted political refugee status in the UK and changed his name to Platon Yelenin, apparently in a reference to Platon Makovsky, the hero of Pavel Lungin’s movie Oligarch, modeled after him.