LONDON: British police yesterday said they had found no evidence so far that anyone else was involved in the death of exiled oligarch and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky at his mansion outside London.
Police revealed that Berezovsky, 67, was found by one of his employees on the floor of his bathroom at the house in the upmarket town of Ascot on Saturday.
Paramedics went to the house but Berezovsky was dead when they arrived. Officers trained in detecting chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear material inspected the property after a device carried by the paramedic suggested the presence of a possibly hazardous substance, but they gave it the all clear.
Police said the death remained “unexplained” but their initial investigation suggested that no-one else was involved.
“It would be wrong to speculate on the cause of death until the postmortem has been carried out. We do not have any evidence at this stage to suggest third party involvement,” Detective Chief Inspector Kevin Brown of Thames Valley Police said.
Police said an employee of Berezovsky had called the ambulance service on Saturday after he forced open a door of a bathroom which was locked from the inside and discovered the tycoon’s body on the floor. The employee was the only other person in the house at the time that the body was found, police said. Berezovsky emigrated to Britain in 2000 after falling out with President Vladimir Putin.
He was granted political asylum in 2003 and used Britain as a springboard for attacks on Putin.
But friends of the tycoon said he had become depressed and possibly suicidal recently as his wealth diminished and he had become embroiled in a tussle with his girlfriend.
The suddenness of his death will inevitably lead to speculation. Berezovsky survived one assassination attempt in Russia in 1995 in which a bomb decapitated his chauffeur, and openly expressed fears that his life was in danger.
His friend and fellow Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died an agonising death from radioactive poisoning in London in 2006, in what Litvinenko’s widow has said was an assassination by Russian agents. AFP
