'I am plotting a new Russian revolution'

In today's paper:

"The Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has told the Guardian he is plotting the violent overthrow of President Putin from his base in Britain after forging close contacts with members of Russia's ruling elite."

Hang on, wasn't this the guy that was trying to buy West Ham a couple of years back?

Media Sports Investment, a company registered in London whose backers are unknown, took control of Corinthians and soon delivered the £10m signing of Argentina playmaker Carlos Tevez and the league title.

When MSI head Kia Joorabchian met the West Ham chairman Terence Brown in May to discuss a £70m takeover of the club with a further £200m promised for investment, Berezovsky was reported to be involved.

So, somewhere he was involved in the Tevez and Mascherano deal too. He seems a very interesting fellow. :) It's nicely timed with Radio 4's Book of the Week show I've been listening to on the way to work this week, which has carried extracts from a series of contemporary books on Russia. This is the listing of the one I heard this morning:

In Blowing Up Russia Alexander Litvinenko accuses the successors of the KGB of being involved in the Moscow apartment-block bombings in 1999 which were blamed on Chechen rebels. Litvinenko’s outspokenness about his KGB past and his subsequent imprisonment meant he had to flee Russia and seek political asylum in Britain. On 1st November 2006 he was poisoned with a lethal dose of Polonium 210.

Litvenenko was an awful writer but you can see why someone might have wanted to do him in. He was, as you may know, very close to Berezovsky.

The other extracts are from Anna Politkovskaya’s last book, A Russian Diary, and Andrew Jack's Inside Putin’s Russia, bookended by two from Martin Sixsmith's The Litvinenko File: the True Story of a Death Foretold, which refers to the oligarch as "the king of the exiles". It will be fascinating to see how appropriate the imagery turns out to be.

Putin does not seem like someone to cross, and while Berezovsky, it is rumoured, can look after himself, he has now moved from mere calls to revolution to what must be a highly provocative and open position of leadership. At least he knew well enough to steer clear of West Ham...

		P		+/-	Pts
17	Charlton	33		-20	32
18	Sheff Utd	32		-21	31
19	West Ham	32		-25	29
20	Watford	33		-29	23