Death of a Dissident - Alex Goldfarb [70]
Their caution was well founded. In the past several weeks a purge of Boris’s empire by Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov had been the talk of the town.
It started with the tax authority leaning on ORT for back taxes. Everybody in the country owed back taxes, but ORT was singled out. Then prosecutors, accompanied by TV cameras and Spetsnaz troops in ski masks, raided twenty-four offices and homes in Moscow, all associated with Boris, including the head office of Sibneft. They were ostensibly looking for evidence of illegal wiretapping by Boris’s private security men.
In the beginning of February Glushkov’s entire team was purged from Aeroflot. Skuratov’s office announced that they were starting a criminal probe into the airline’s finances, particularly the role of Andava, the Swiss company that gathered proceeds from foreign sales of Aeroflot’s tickets.
Boris had no doubt that all of this was part of a strategy by Prime Minister Primakov to taint everything associated with Yeltsin as Russia entered an election year. The problem was, the president did not see it that way. He trusted Primus.
At the end of 1998 and into early 1999, Yeltsin, consumed by bouts of sickness and depression, was apathetic and indecisive. He was bitter that his former favorites, “the young reformers” and their banker friends, had let him down by designing enrichment schemes at the time of a critical fight with the Communists. He was wary of relying on the secret services. As he wrote in Midnight Diaries, in Primakov he saw a kindred soul, a reform-minded former Soviet boss who saw the light of democracy. His original understanding with Primakov was that they would jointly retire in 2000 after transferring power to a new generation of reform-minded politicians.
Boris, on the other hand, understood Primakov’s true colors earlier than many, perhaps because of earlier clashes with him over Aeroflot.
There were precious few around Boris who were determined to stop Primus and still had a fighting spirit, among them, former chief of staff Yumashev, Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana, Roma Abramovich, and Alexander Voloshin, the economic adviser to the president. Collectively, they became known as “the family.” Boris was somewhat of a guru in the group; he was at least a decade older than the others.
The influence of “the family” on the president was never as great as pundits believed. Yeltsin did not allow himself to be manipulated, and he always considered his options. To complicate things, he personally disliked Boris, who was the driving force of the group, and he preferred to filter his advice through Tanya-Valya.
Roma Abramovich was the youngest and newest “family” member. In late 1997, he had asked Boris for an introduction to Tanya-Valya, and they immediately hit it off. He became their favorite social companion. Boris was happy about this. At one point he told Roma, “I can work with them, but I cannot live with them, like inviting them for a weekend or going out on a boat. But it is important that you do it.” By then, both Boris and Roma had acquired yachts and properties on the Côte d’Azur, retreats from the pressures of Moscow.
“I don’t mind living with them at all, if it’s good for business,” smiled Roma. Boris knew that under the surface of Roma’s shy, sympathetic demeanor lurked a calculating, shrewd loner, with a sharp grasp of human weaknesses and a great talent for networking. Both of them knew pretty well that in the internal dynamics of “the family” there were those with clout and those with money; somebody had to pay for the boat trips. They both had money, but Roma was better at taking care of mundane matters. Before long, all monetary and many other “technical” details of “family” life fell under Roma’s domain. He got things done.
There was a sixth, aspiring member of “the family,” FSB Director Vladimir Putin. Boris saw him several times after his appointment, and Tanya-Valya strongly supported him. After their initial spat over Litvinenko’s allegations, Boris and Putin’s relationship