Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (, 23 January 1946 – 23 March 2013) was a
Russian business oligarch, government official,
engineer and
mathematician. He was a member of the
Russian Academy of Sciences. Berezovsky was politically opposed to the
President of Russia Vladimir Putin, since Putin's
election in 2000 and remained a vocal critic of Putin for the rest of his life. In late 2000, after the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General demanded that Berezovsky appear for questioning, he did not return from abroad and moved to the
UK, which granted him
political asylum in 2003. In Russia he was later convicted
in absentia of fraud and embezzlement. The first charges were brought during
Primakov's government in 1999. Despite an
Interpol Red Notice for Berezovsky's arrest, Russia repeatedly failed to obtain the extradition of Berezovsky from Britain, which became a major point of diplomatic tension between the two countries.