For homesick russian tycoon, instant of ruin came in court, страница 2

His tastes ran to private planes, big cars, big houses and expensive wines. In 2001, he bought a 215-acre estate in Surrey after, he said, a marathon drinking session in which he successfully persuaded the owner to sell it for $20 million. When he went to London, he traveled in a convoy that included his $600,000 Maybach sedan and a second car containing his French bodyguards. In 2006, he celebrated his 60th birthday at Blenheim Palace, one of England’s largest country houses and the birthplace of Winston Churchill. From his office in Mayfair, he directed anti-Putin activities, keeping the drapes drawn to discourage snipers and other ill-wishers.

In 2008, High Court hearings began in the lawsuit against Mr. Abramovich, who owns the Chelsea soccer club. In the suit, Mr. Berezovsky accused Mr. Abramovich of cheating him out of his multibillion-dollar share of a Russian oil company.

After the case failed, financial and personal losses piled up.

Mr. Berezovsky was ordered by the court to pay more than $53 million to cover Mr. Abramovich’s legal bills. He owed millions of dollars to his own lawyers. Facing more court battles and huge alimony and child-support bills after the dissolution of his relationship with his longtime companion, Mr. Berezovsky began divesting himself of the assets he had acquired so proudly and so offhandedly.

He sold his mansion in Surrey. He fired his two drivers. He mortgaged his villas in Cap d’Antibes and Cap Ferrat on the French Mediterranean. He gave up his handsome offices in Mayfair and his beloved Maybach. He told Mr. Litvinenko’s widow, whom he had been helping to support since her husband’s death, that he could no longer pay her lawyers. He sold off a Picasso and a Warhol.

He was in “terrible, terrible condition: he was practically broke, selling paintings and other things,” Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer who had represented Mr. Berezovsky and was one of the first to confirm his death, told the Russian television station Rossiya 24. Mutual friends, he added, recently told him that Mr. Berezovsky had recently “asked them for $5,000 for a ticket to fly somewhere.”

When he died, he seems to have been alone in the house, except for the employee who — worried after not seeing his boss since 10:30 the night before — finally found his body on Saturday afternoon.

On Friday, Mr. Berezovsky gave what would prove to be his final interview, to a columnist for the Russian edition of Forbes Magazine. (The columnist, Ilya Zhegulev, said the conversation had been off the record but that he felt “obligated” to publish an article after Mr. Berezovsky’s death.)

In the article, Mr. Berezovsky comes across as wistful, nostalgic and deeply sad. He says that his recent experiences have forced him to re-evaluate his beliefs about the West and about Russia.

“I don’t want anything more than to return to Russia,” he said. He had failed to understand when he left that “Russia is so dear to me, and that I cannot be an emigrant.”

He said he was at a loss to imagine the future. “I don’t know what I should do,” he is quoted as saying. “I’m 67 years old. And I don’t know what I should do next.”

E.U. OFFICIALS AGREE TO A DEAL RESCUING CYPRUS

By JAMES KANTER, LIZ ALDERMAN and ANDREW HIGGINS

Published: March 24, 2013

BRUSSELS — Struggling into the early-morning hours to avoid a collapse of Cyprus’s banking system, European Union leaders on Monday agreed on a bailout package intended to keep Cyprus in the euro zone and rebuild its devastated economy.