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Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich today won his £3.7 billion battle of the oligarchs as a High Court judge branded his rival dishonest.
Russian exile Boris Berezovsky was described as a “deliberately dishonest, deluded and inherently unreliable” witness who “regarded the truth as a transitory, flexible concept”.
Mrs Justice Gloster said that at times in the witness box he appeared to be “clearly making it up as he went along”. She added: “The bottom line of my analysis of Berezovsky’s credibility is that he would have said almost anything to support his case.”
In contrast the judge said Mr Abramovich’s evidence was “consistent, careful, thoughtful and frank”.
The climax to Britain’s biggest private court case has left Mr Berezovsky facing a £100 million legal bill although he is partly covered by a no win, no fee deal with his lawyers.
The court heard that he may have already started selling off his assets, including his multi-million pound home on the Wentworth estate.
Outside court Mr Berezovsky accused the judge of “trying to rewrite Russian history”.
He said the judgment could have been written “by Putin himself” and claimed Mr Abramovich had been lying throughout.
Mr Abramovich, 45, and Mr Berezovsky, 66, had been friends in the early Nineties when Russian president Boris Yeltsin was selling off state assets cheaply to oligarchs in return for support for his flagging re-election campaign. In 1995 the older man helped his protégé take control of the giant oil company Sibneft — but then they fell out.
Mr Berezovsky said his partner agreed he should have a major share in the company but then intimidated him into selling it for a mere £800 million, well beneath its true worth.
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Mr Abramovich denied that his rival owned any part of Sibneft. He admitted paying the older man, and a third figure, Arkady “Badri” Patarkatishvili, but only for security and political influence. This is what the Russians call krysha (“roof”) — old fashioned protection money.
Mr Abramovich said he paid more than £1 billion until he considered his debt to them had been settled and “I was buying myself my freedom”.
There was a second disputed deal over a company called RusAl. The judge rejected Mr Berezovsky’s claims about both companies “in their entirety” and said there was no evidence he had been threatened by Mr Abramovich.