Controversial Russian Tycoon Berezovsky Dies at 67

Exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky speaks to reporters outside a court in London, Britain, 31 August 2012. EPA/BGNES

Self-exiled Russian businessman and Kremlin critic Boris Berezovsky has died in his Surrey home at the age of 67, his son-in-law, Yegor Shuppe, has revealed.

"Boris Berezovsky is dead," Shuppe wrote on Facebook on Saturday.

Berezovsky's death was confirmed by Demyan Kudryavtsev, a long-time family friend, who told rbc.ru that Berezovsky had died at 11 a.m. GMT.

Police are currently treating Berezovsky's death as unexplained.

RIA Novosti has reminded that the controversial tycoon was known as Russia's "kingmaker" under President Boris Yeltsin. He was a trusted figure at the very heart of the Kremlin and was central to Vladimir Putin's rise to power in the late 1990s.

After Putin took office, however, Berezovsky's relationship with the Kremlin quickly soured.

In 2001, he fled to France and then on to the UK. The Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant for him the following year on charges of money-laundering and illegal business activity.

Russian courts have twice sentenced Berezovsky in absentia since he fled the country. First in 2007 over fraud charges relating to his time at Aeroflot in the 1990s, and then in 2009 on embezzlement charges relating to his time at carmaker Avtovaz, also in the 1990s.

Berezovsky denied these charges.

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