Badri Patarkatsishvili
Encyclopedia
Arkady "Badri" Patarkatsishvili ( October 31, 1955, Tbilisi
, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
– February 12, 2008, Leatherhead
, Surrey
, United Kingdom
) was a wealthy Georgian
businessman, who was also extensively involved in politics
. He contested the 2008 Georgian presidential election
and came third with 7.1% of the votes. Although his first name was Arkady, he was best known by the nickname "Badri".
to a Jewish family, Patarkatsishvili's membership of the Soviet Communist party's youth wing, the Komsomol
, gave him contacts he found useful later. Between 1994 and 2001, he lived in Moscow
. To avoid prosecution on charges of alleged fraud in Russia, he moved to Tbilisi. (Patarkatsishvili's business activities had made him the richest man in Georgia with an estimated wealth of $ 12 billion. In his Russian business deals, he was closely associated with Russian tycoon
Boris Berezovsky. In 1992, he became a deputy chief executive of Berezovsky's LogoVAZ group.
In January 1995, Patarkatsishvili became deputy chief executive with responsibility for finance at Russia's ORT
TV. In March – May 2001, he was chief executive of Russia's TV6 channel, which, like ORT, was partly owned by Berezovsky. Early in 2006, he bought out Berezovskys stake in Moscow's independent Kommersant publishing house, which he sold on in August that year to senior Gazprom executive Alisher Usmanov
.
In 1997, he oversaw the privatization of the Sibneft oil company in auctions that later seemed to have been fixed. Berezovsky snapped up the stake on offer for a fraction of the market value.
Office charged him with organizing an attempted escape from prison of Nikolay Glushkov - and, in October 2002, with involvement in an alleged grand fraud related to the AvtoVAZ
case.
In 2007, numerous allegations of corruption were made against him. He was impeached as president of the Georgian National Olympic Committee
, and also quit as a president of Georgian Business Federation. Georgian officials turned largely vocal about Patarkatsishvili's past. Tbilisi-based Rustavi 2 TV linked his name with several notorious murders in Russia and Georgia, including the assassination of Vlad Listyev.
, Roman Abramovich
submitted a 53-page court defence that accused Boris Berezovsky and Badri Patarkatsishvili of demanding huge sums for helping him to rise from obscurity. Arkady “Badri” Patarkatsishvili, emerges as the key intermediary, passing messages between Abramovich and Berezovsky. Mr Patarkatsishvili was offered $500 million by Roman Abramovich, the defence papers that were submitted admit, for protecting Roman in Russia's aluminium wars.
The Times reported that Boris Berezovsky is fighting Badri's widow for £3bn or half of Badri's fortune, after full one year of Badri's mysterious death last year, reportedly caused by heart-failure. It states: "The day after his [Badri's] death, Berezovsky asked Gudavadze [Badri's wife] to sign a statement acknowledging that half her husband’s assets belonged to him. The widow, who is represented by Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney-general, signed but has since changed her mind and sought to have the document annulled. "
to make his career. He had, he said, recommended Putin to Pavel Borodin
, then a senior member of President Boris Yeltsin
's Kremlin administration - and his business partner Boris Berezovsky, a Yeltsin insider, had got Putin appointed as Russian FSB
director.
In late 2007, he became embroiled in a political scandal after former defense minister Irakli Okruashvili
on September 25, 2007 accused Mikheil Saakashvili
, the President of Georgia
, of planning Patarkatsishvili's assassination. Arrested on corruption charges, however, Okruashvili retracted his accusations against the president, winning release on bail of 10 million Georgian lari
(about 6,250,000 USD). He also said that his earlier accusations levelled against Saakashvili were not true and were aimed at gaining political dividends for himself and Badri Patarkatsishvili and at discrediting the President of Georgia. On November 6, Okruashvili, said on Patarkatsishvili's Imedi TV - by then managed by Fox TV
's parent News Corporation
- that he had been forced into retracting his accusations against Saakashvili by pressure that he endured in prison. Down the line from Munich, he said: "All of those accusations, all of those facts that I brought against Saakashvili, everything I said about him is the plain truth."
On October 29, 2007, he publicly announced his plans to finance ten opposition parties' campaign aimed at holding early parliamentary elections in April 2008. On November 2, 2007, he addressed a large anti-government rally
held in downtown Tbilisi and pledged to further support it. He left Georgia for London
shortly afterwards. After the demonstration turned violent, following police attacks, on November 7, 2007, Georgia's Chief Prosecutor's Office announced that he was suspected of conspiracy to overthrow the government. Nevertheless, he said he would run in the January 5, 2008 snap presidential elections
under the slogan "Georgia without Saakashvili is Georgia without Terror." Leaders of the major opposition parties distanced themselves from Patarkatsishvili, who had to run as an independent presidential candidate.
On December 24 and 25, 2007, the prosecutor-general's office of Georgia released a series of audio and video recordings of the two separate meetings of the high-ranking Georgian Interior Ministry official Erekle Kodua with Patarkatsishvili and the head of his pre-election campaign Valeri Gelbakhiani. According to the government, Patarkatsishvili was trying to bribe Kodua to take part in what the Georgian officilas described as an attempted coup d'état on January 6, 2008, the next of the scheduled presidential elections. The plan included to stage a mass manifestation against the government and to "neutralize" the Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili
. Later independent journalist Vakhtang Komakidze produced what he said was the full transcript of the recorded conversation which showed that Patarkatsishvili was advising against violence and the extracts released had been doctored The accusations forced Patarkatsishvili onto the defensive. He confirmed that he met with Kodua in London, but denied that the bribe was in connection to an alleged coup plot and claimed instead that his intention was to uncover what he said were official plans to rig the election. He also confirmed that he offered Kodua "a huge amount of money" in exchange for defecting from the authorities allegedly to avert a possible use of force by the government against the planned January rallies.
On December 28, 2007, Patarkatsishvili announced that he would withdraw his bid for presidency, but would nominally remain a candidate until January 4, 2008. On January 3, 2008, he reversed himself, however, and decided to run in presidential elections. In response, his top campaign official Giorgi Zhvania (brother of the late Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania
) resigned, declaring that Patarkasishvili did not have the unquestionable reputation one would expect of a country's president.
soccer club.
He served as president of the Georgian National Olympic Committee (GNOC), until being impeached on October 9, 2007.
in Leatherhead
, Surrey
, England
on February 12, 2008 at 10.45 pm. Ambulance
crew members tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the businessman, who was pronounced dead at 10.52 pm.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/02/15/georgian-billionaire-badri-patarkatsishvili-had-severe-heart-disease-inquest-hears-89520-20320519/ As in any other case of unexpected death, Surrey police treated the case as "suspicious" and launched an official investigation.
The businessman spent his last day in the City of London
office of international law firm Debevoise and Plimpton, meeting his business partner
Boris Berezovsky, his spokesperson Lord Bell and his lawyer
Lord Goldsmith QC
, as well as fellow exiles, the Russians Nikolai Glushkov
and Yuli Dubov From the City he left for Down Street, Mayfair
, to visit Berezovsky's office, and at 7.00 pm was returned to Leatherhead with his Maybach
. Shortly after dining, Patarkatsishvili told his family he felt unwell and went upstairs to his bedroom where he was found unconscious after a heart attack.
Preliminary reports indicated a heart attack as the cause of death. According to the first post-mortem tests, the death of Patarkatsishvili appeared to have been from natural cardiac-related causes. According to the pathologist Ashley Fegan-Earl, he could identify a "severity that could have resulted in a sudden and unexplained collapse and death at any time." He also concluded that chest pain that Patarkatsishvili had had and a sudden collapse "were consistent with death due to coronary heart diseases." Patarkatsishvili's father Shalva Patarkatsishvili also died of a heart attack at an early age of 48. The businessman had no history of illness but was reported to have led an unhealthy lifestyle, smoking excessively and taking no exercise. According to Lord Bell, "he [Badri] always looked 10 years older than he was." However, theories of a possible assassination were considered seriously by some. "[A] number of compounds known to be used by the former KGB
can induce heart failure, but leave virtually no trace. One is sodium fluoroacetate, a fine white powder derived from pesticide
." The British police checked Patarkatishvili's Surrey mansion for radioactive elements but reportedly found none.
was first newspaper to inform the British
public of the Georgian oligarch's death on the evening of 13 February 2008. In the news of 14 February 2008, Patarkatsishvili's death was covered in The Guardian
, The Times
, Financial Times
, The Daily Telegraph
, The Independent
, etc. Most newspapers discussed Patarkatsishvili's business history, including his close ties with Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich
, Alexander Litvinenko
, Mikheil Saakashvili
and Vladimir Putin
.
reported that Patarkatsishvili feared the Georgian authorities were plotting to kill him, a source close to the late businessman said on the day of death."
Associated Press
reported that on December 26, 2007, Patarkatsishvili said that he had obtained a tape recording of an official in his homeland's Interior Ministry asking a Chechen warlord to murder the tycoon in London. "I believe they want to kill me," he said. He said the tape had been given to police.
Novaya Gazeta
reported the following information. Patarkatsishvili, living in London, was approached by members of the Saakashvili government demanding that he sell his controlling share in the dissident Imedi TV network. Initially, Patarkatsishvili refused, but was then offered an unprecedented deal: exchanging ownership of Imedi for ownership of the entire Georgian railroad system. Being a businessman, Patarkatsishvili reportedly agreed; however, when the Saakashvili side sent him the contract, there was a new clause, which required Badri to invest $2,000,000,000 in the "improvement" of the railroad property. He refused, but died shortly after. Novaya Gazeta's source is one of the lawyers from the legal side of this deal.
Tbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
– February 12, 2008, Leatherhead
Leatherhead
Leatherhead is a town in the County of Surrey, England, on the River Mole, part of Mole Valley district. It is thought to be of Saxon origin...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
) was a wealthy Georgian
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
businessman, who was also extensively involved in politics
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
. He contested the 2008 Georgian presidential election
Georgian presidential election, 2008
A presidential election was held in Georgia on January 5, 2008, having been brought forward by President Mikheil Saakashvili after the 2007 Georgian demonstrations from the original date in autumn 2008....
and came third with 7.1% of the votes. Although his first name was Arkady, he was best known by the nickname "Badri".
Early life
Born in TbilisiTbilisi
Tbilisi is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Mt'k'vari River. The name is derived from an early Georgian form T'pilisi and it was officially known as Tiflis until 1936...
to a Jewish family, Patarkatsishvili's membership of the Soviet Communist party's youth wing, the Komsomol
Komsomol
The Communist Union of Youth , usually known as Komsomol , was the youth division of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Komsomol in its earliest form was established in urban centers in 1918. During the early years, it was a Russian organization, known as the Russian Communist Union of...
, gave him contacts he found useful later. Between 1994 and 2001, he lived in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
. To avoid prosecution on charges of alleged fraud in Russia, he moved to Tbilisi. (Patarkatsishvili's business activities had made him the richest man in Georgia with an estimated wealth of $ 12 billion. In his Russian business deals, he was closely associated with Russian tycoon
Business oligarch
Business oligarch is a near-synonym of the term "business magnate", borrowed by the English speaking and western media from post-Soviet parlance to describe the huge, fast-acquired wealth of some businessmen of the former Soviet republics during the privatization in Russia and other post-Soviet...
Boris Berezovsky. In 1992, he became a deputy chief executive of Berezovsky's LogoVAZ group.
In January 1995, Patarkatsishvili became deputy chief executive with responsibility for finance at Russia's ORT
Channel One (Russia)
Channel One is the first television channel to broadcast in the Soviet Union. The channel was renamed Ostankino Channel 1 in 1991, after the Soviet Union broke up and the Russian SFSR became the Russian Federation. According to a recent government publication, the Russian government controls 51%...
TV. In March – May 2001, he was chief executive of Russia's TV6 channel, which, like ORT, was partly owned by Berezovsky. Early in 2006, he bought out Berezovskys stake in Moscow's independent Kommersant publishing house, which he sold on in August that year to senior Gazprom executive Alisher Usmanov
Alisher Usmanov
Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov is an Uzbek-born Russian businessman.According to the 2011 edition of Forbes magazine, the oligarch is one of Russia's richest men, with a fortune estimated at US$17.7 billion, and the world's 35th richest person.Usmanov is married and is a graduate of Moscow State...
.
In 1997, he oversaw the privatization of the Sibneft oil company in auctions that later seemed to have been fixed. Berezovsky snapped up the stake on offer for a fraction of the market value.
Allegations of corruption
In June 2001, the Russian Prosecutor General'sProsecutor General of Russia
The Prosecutor General of Russia heads the system of official prosecution in courts known as the Office of the Prosecutor General of Russian Federation ....
Office charged him with organizing an attempted escape from prison of Nikolay Glushkov - and, in October 2002, with involvement in an alleged grand fraud related to the AvtoVAZ
AvtoVAZ
AvtoVAZ is the Russian automobile manufacturer formerly known as VAZ: Volzhsky Avtomobilny Zavod , but better known to the world under the trade name Lada. The company was established in the late 1960s in collaboration with Fiat...
case.
In 2007, numerous allegations of corruption were made against him. He was impeached as president of the Georgian National Olympic Committee
Georgian National Olympic Committee
The Georgian National Olympic Committee is a Georgian national constituent of the worldwide Olympic movement. It is an umbrella organization for 12 regional bodies, the Georgian Olympic Academy, the Georgian Olympians’ Association, and the Olympic Museum.The GNOC was established on October 6,...
, and also quit as a president of Georgian Business Federation. Georgian officials turned largely vocal about Patarkatsishvili's past. Tbilisi-based Rustavi 2 TV linked his name with several notorious murders in Russia and Georgia, including the assassination of Vlad Listyev.
Connection with Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky
According to The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Roman Abramovich
Roman Abramovich
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich is a Russian businessman and the main owner of the private investment company Millhouse LLC.In 2003, Abramovich was named Person of the Year by Expert, a Russian business magazine. He shared this title with Mikhail Khodorkovsky...
submitted a 53-page court defence that accused Boris Berezovsky and Badri Patarkatsishvili of demanding huge sums for helping him to rise from obscurity. Arkady “Badri” Patarkatsishvili, emerges as the key intermediary, passing messages between Abramovich and Berezovsky. Mr Patarkatsishvili was offered $500 million by Roman Abramovich, the defence papers that were submitted admit, for protecting Roman in Russia's aluminium wars.
The Times reported that Boris Berezovsky is fighting Badri's widow for £3bn or half of Badri's fortune, after full one year of Badri's mysterious death last year, reportedly caused by heart-failure. It states: "The day after his [Badri's] death, Berezovsky asked Gudavadze [Badri's wife] to sign a statement acknowledging that half her husband’s assets belonged to him. The widow, who is represented by Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney-general, signed but has since changed her mind and sought to have the document annulled. "
Involvement in politics
Patarkatsishvili claimed to have helped Russian president Vladimir PutinVladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
to make his career. He had, he said, recommended Putin to Pavel Borodin
Pavel Borodin
Pavel Pavlovich Borodin is a Russian official and politician.Born in the town of Shakhunya, near the city of Nizhny in the Nizhny Novgorod Region....
, then a senior member of President Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
's Kremlin administration - and his business partner Boris Berezovsky, a Yeltsin insider, had got Putin appointed as Russian FSB
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
director.
In late 2007, he became embroiled in a political scandal after former defense minister Irakli Okruashvili
Irakli Okruashvili
Irakli Okruashvili is a Georgian politician who had served on various important posts in the Government of Georgia under President Mikheil Saakashvili, including being the Minister of Defense from December 2004 until being dismissed in November 2006.In September 2007, Okruashvili staged a...
on September 25, 2007 accused Mikheil Saakashvili
Mikheil Saakashvili
Mikheil Saakashvili is a Georgian politician, the third and current President of Georgia and leader of the United National Movement Party.Involved in the national politics since 1995, Saakashvili became president on 25 January 2004 after President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned in a November 2003...
, the President of Georgia
President of Georgia
The President of Georgia is the head of state, supreme commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office within the Government of Georgia. Executive power is split between the President and the Prime Minister, who is the head of government...
, of planning Patarkatsishvili's assassination. Arrested on corruption charges, however, Okruashvili retracted his accusations against the president, winning release on bail of 10 million Georgian lari
Georgian lari
The lari is the currency of Georgia. It is divided into 100 tetri. The name lari is an old Georgian word denoting a hoard, property, while tetri is an old Georgian monetary term used from the 13th century....
(about 6,250,000 USD). He also said that his earlier accusations levelled against Saakashvili were not true and were aimed at gaining political dividends for himself and Badri Patarkatsishvili and at discrediting the President of Georgia. On November 6, Okruashvili, said on Patarkatsishvili's Imedi TV - by then managed by Fox TV
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
's parent News Corporation
News Corporation
News Corporation or News Corp. is an American multinational media conglomerate. It is the world's second-largest media conglomerate as of 2011 in terms of revenue, and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009, although the BBC remains the world's largest broadcaster...
- that he had been forced into retracting his accusations against Saakashvili by pressure that he endured in prison. Down the line from Munich, he said: "All of those accusations, all of those facts that I brought against Saakashvili, everything I said about him is the plain truth."
On October 29, 2007, he publicly announced his plans to finance ten opposition parties' campaign aimed at holding early parliamentary elections in April 2008. On November 2, 2007, he addressed a large anti-government rally
2007 Georgian demonstrations
The 2007 Georgian demonstrations were a series of anti-government protests in Georgia. The demonstrations peaked on November 2, 2007, when 50,000-100,000 rallied in downtown Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. People protested against the allegedly corrupt government of president Mikheil Saakashvili...
held in downtown Tbilisi and pledged to further support it. He left Georgia for London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
shortly afterwards. After the demonstration turned violent, following police attacks, on November 7, 2007, Georgia's Chief Prosecutor's Office announced that he was suspected of conspiracy to overthrow the government. Nevertheless, he said he would run in the January 5, 2008 snap presidential elections
Georgian presidential election, 2008
A presidential election was held in Georgia on January 5, 2008, having been brought forward by President Mikheil Saakashvili after the 2007 Georgian demonstrations from the original date in autumn 2008....
under the slogan "Georgia without Saakashvili is Georgia without Terror." Leaders of the major opposition parties distanced themselves from Patarkatsishvili, who had to run as an independent presidential candidate.
On December 24 and 25, 2007, the prosecutor-general's office of Georgia released a series of audio and video recordings of the two separate meetings of the high-ranking Georgian Interior Ministry official Erekle Kodua with Patarkatsishvili and the head of his pre-election campaign Valeri Gelbakhiani. According to the government, Patarkatsishvili was trying to bribe Kodua to take part in what the Georgian officilas described as an attempted coup d'état on January 6, 2008, the next of the scheduled presidential elections. The plan included to stage a mass manifestation against the government and to "neutralize" the Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili
Vano Merabishvili
Ivane Merabishvili is a Georgian politician who has served as the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs since December 18, 2004...
. Later independent journalist Vakhtang Komakidze produced what he said was the full transcript of the recorded conversation which showed that Patarkatsishvili was advising against violence and the extracts released had been doctored The accusations forced Patarkatsishvili onto the defensive. He confirmed that he met with Kodua in London, but denied that the bribe was in connection to an alleged coup plot and claimed instead that his intention was to uncover what he said were official plans to rig the election. He also confirmed that he offered Kodua "a huge amount of money" in exchange for defecting from the authorities allegedly to avert a possible use of force by the government against the planned January rallies.
On December 28, 2007, Patarkatsishvili announced that he would withdraw his bid for presidency, but would nominally remain a candidate until January 4, 2008. On January 3, 2008, he reversed himself, however, and decided to run in presidential elections. In response, his top campaign official Giorgi Zhvania (brother of the late Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania
Zurab Zhvania
Zurab Zhvania was a prominent Georgian politician, having served as Prime Minister of Georgia and Speaker of the Parliament of Georgia as well as Minister without Portfolio. Zhvania assumed premiership on 18 February 2004 and remained on the position until his death on 3 February 2005...
) resigned, declaring that Patarkasishvili did not have the unquestionable reputation one would expect of a country's president.
Interest in sports
Patarkatsishvali was chairman of the Dinamo TbilisiFC Dinamo Tbilisi
FC Dinamo Tbilisi is a Georgian football team, based in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia.Dinamo Tbilisi was one of the most prominent clubs in Soviet football and a major contender in the Soviet Top League almost immediately after it was established in 1936...
soccer club.
He served as president of the Georgian National Olympic Committee (GNOC), until being impeached on October 9, 2007.
Death
Patarkatsishvili, aged 52, collapsed at Downside Manor, his mansionMansion
A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...
in Leatherhead
Leatherhead
Leatherhead is a town in the County of Surrey, England, on the River Mole, part of Mole Valley district. It is thought to be of Saxon origin...
, Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
on February 12, 2008 at 10.45 pm. Ambulance
South East Coast Ambulance Service
The South East Coast Ambulance Service is the NHS Ambulance Services Trust for south-eastern England, covering Kent , Surrey, West Sussex and East Sussex . It also covers a part of north-eastern Hampshire around Aldershot...
crew members tried unsuccessfully to resuscitate the businessman, who was pronounced dead at 10.52 pm.http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/topstories/2008/02/15/georgian-billionaire-badri-patarkatsishvili-had-severe-heart-disease-inquest-hears-89520-20320519/ As in any other case of unexpected death, Surrey police treated the case as "suspicious" and launched an official investigation.
The businessman spent his last day in the City of London
City of London
The City of London is a small area within Greater London, England. It is the historic core of London around which the modern conurbation grew and has held city status since time immemorial. The City’s boundaries have remained almost unchanged since the Middle Ages, and it is now only a tiny part of...
office of international law firm Debevoise and Plimpton, meeting his business partner
Business partner
Business partner is a term used to denote a commercial entity with which another commercial entity has some form of alliance. This relationship may be a highly contractual, exclusive bond in which both entities commit not to ally with third parties...
Boris Berezovsky, his spokesperson Lord Bell and his lawyer
Lawyer
A lawyer, according to Black's Law Dictionary, is "a person learned in the law; as an attorney, counsel or solicitor; a person who is practicing law." Law is the system of rules of conduct established by the sovereign government of a society to correct wrongs, maintain the stability of political...
Lord Goldsmith QC
Queen's Counsel
Queen's Counsel , known as King's Counsel during the reign of a male sovereign, are lawyers appointed by letters patent to be one of Her [or His] Majesty's Counsel learned in the law...
, as well as fellow exiles, the Russians Nikolai Glushkov
Nikolai Glushkov
Nikolay Glushkov is a former Deputy Director-General of Aeroflot and a former Finance Manager of AvtoVAZ.Glushkov had been AvtoVAZ's Finance Chief until he left his job in autumn 1995 and was appointed as Deputy General Director of Aeroflot on request from Yevgeny Shaposhnikov in February...
and Yuli Dubov From the City he left for Down Street, Mayfair
Mayfair
Mayfair is an area of central London, within the City of Westminster.-History:Mayfair is named after the annual fortnight-long May Fair that took place on the site that is Shepherd Market today...
, to visit Berezovsky's office, and at 7.00 pm was returned to Leatherhead with his Maybach
Maybach
Maybach-Motorenbau GmbH is a German luxury car manufacturer. It was founded in 1909 by Wilhelm Maybach and his son. The company was originally a subsidiary of Luftschiffbau Zeppelin GmbH and was itself known as Luftfahrzeug-Motorenbau GmbH until 1912.Today, the ultra-luxury car brand is owned by...
. Shortly after dining, Patarkatsishvili told his family he felt unwell and went upstairs to his bedroom where he was found unconscious after a heart attack.
Preliminary reports indicated a heart attack as the cause of death. According to the first post-mortem tests, the death of Patarkatsishvili appeared to have been from natural cardiac-related causes. According to the pathologist Ashley Fegan-Earl, he could identify a "severity that could have resulted in a sudden and unexplained collapse and death at any time." He also concluded that chest pain that Patarkatsishvili had had and a sudden collapse "were consistent with death due to coronary heart diseases." Patarkatsishvili's father Shalva Patarkatsishvili also died of a heart attack at an early age of 48. The businessman had no history of illness but was reported to have led an unhealthy lifestyle, smoking excessively and taking no exercise. According to Lord Bell, "he [Badri] always looked 10 years older than he was." However, theories of a possible assassination were considered seriously by some. "[A] number of compounds known to be used by the former KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
can induce heart failure, but leave virtually no trace. One is sodium fluoroacetate, a fine white powder derived from pesticide
Pesticide
Pesticides are substances or mixture of substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling or mitigating any pest.A pesticide may be a chemical unicycle, biological agent , antimicrobial, disinfectant or device used against any pest...
." The British police checked Patarkatishvili's Surrey mansion for radioactive elements but reportedly found none.
British press coverage
London LiteLondon Lite
London Lite was the trading name of a British free daily newspaper, published by Associated Newspapers , and now defunct. It was available Monday to Friday afternoons and evenings from street distributors in Central London only...
was first newspaper to inform the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
public of the Georgian oligarch's death on the evening of 13 February 2008. In the news of 14 February 2008, Patarkatsishvili's death was covered in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
, etc. Most newspapers discussed Patarkatsishvili's business history, including his close ties with Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich
Roman Abramovich
Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich is a Russian businessman and the main owner of the private investment company Millhouse LLC.In 2003, Abramovich was named Person of the Year by Expert, a Russian business magazine. He shared this title with Mikhail Khodorkovsky...
, Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
, Mikheil Saakashvili
Mikheil Saakashvili
Mikheil Saakashvili is a Georgian politician, the third and current President of Georgia and leader of the United National Movement Party.Involved in the national politics since 1995, Saakashvili became president on 25 January 2004 after President Eduard Shevardnadze resigned in a November 2003...
and Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
.
International press coverage
ReutersReuters
Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...
reported that Patarkatsishvili feared the Georgian authorities were plotting to kill him, a source close to the late businessman said on the day of death."
Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
reported that on December 26, 2007, Patarkatsishvili said that he had obtained a tape recording of an official in his homeland's Interior Ministry asking a Chechen warlord to murder the tycoon in London. "I believe they want to kill me," he said. He said the tape had been given to police.
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta
Novaya Gazeta is a Russian newspaper well known in the country for its critical and investigative coverage of Russian political and social affairs....
reported the following information. Patarkatsishvili, living in London, was approached by members of the Saakashvili government demanding that he sell his controlling share in the dissident Imedi TV network. Initially, Patarkatsishvili refused, but was then offered an unprecedented deal: exchanging ownership of Imedi for ownership of the entire Georgian railroad system. Being a businessman, Patarkatsishvili reportedly agreed; however, when the Saakashvili side sent him the contract, there was a new clause, which required Badri to invest $2,000,000,000 in the "improvement" of the railroad property. He refused, but died shortly after. Novaya Gazeta's source is one of the lawyers from the legal side of this deal.
External links
- Badri Patarkatsishvili, Civil Georgias profile. 2008-02-13 Patarkatsishvili: The Oligarch's Way. NewsGeorgias profile. 2008-02-38
- Mark Hollingsworth and S Lansley, Londongrad: From Russia With Cash: The Insdie Story of the Oligarchs. 4th estate, 2009