Russian mass media owners

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 23. Chapters: Alexey Lushnikov, Alisher Usmanov, Badri Patarkatsishvili, Boris Berezovsky (businessman), Ivan Sytin, Mikhail Prokhorov, Vladimir Gusinsky, Vladimir Potanin, Vladimir Yakovlev (journalist), Vladimir Yevtushenkov, Yevgeny Dodolev. Excerpt: Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (Russian: , born in Moscow on 23 January 1946) is a former Russian oligarch, government official and mathematician, member of Russian Academy of Sciences. Although once a supporter of Vladimir Putin, Berezovsky clashed with the new president soon after his election in 2000 and remains a vocal critic. In late 2000, after the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General demanded that Berezovsky appear for questioning, he did not return from abroad and moved to the UK, which granted him political asylum in 2003. In Russia he was later convicted in absentia of economic crimes (first charges were brought under Primakov's government in 1999). Russia has repeatedly failed to obtain the extradition of Berezovsky from Britain, which has become a major point of diplomatic tension between the two countries. Berezovsky made his fortune in Russia in the 90's when the country went through privatisation of state property and "robber capitalism". He profited from gaining control over various assets, including the country's main television channel, Channel One. In 1997 Forbes Magazine estimated Berezovsky's wealth at US$3 billion. He was at the height of his power in the later Yeltsin years, when he was deputy secretary of Russia's security council, a friend of Boris Yeltsin's influential daughter Tatyana, and a member of the Yeltsin "family" (inner circle). Berezovsky helped fund Unity - the political party, which formed Vladimir Putin's parliamentary base, and was elected to the Duma on Putin's slate. However, following the Russian presidential election in March 2000, Berezovsky went into opposition and resigned from the Duma. After he moved to Britain, the government took over his television assets, and he divested from other Russian holdings. In a 2000 article in Washington Post, Berezovsky proclaimed the right of "oligarchs" to meddle in the nation's politics arguing that in the absence of civil society it is acceptable - indeed, necessary - to interfere direct