[Tea leaves for the Weimar Russia crowd from Stratfor. If Putin was "forced upon Yeltsin" then, according to Stratfor's earlier analyses, it was by the military and intelligence services]
0214 GMT 990820 - Berezovsky Falls Victim to Political Shift in
Kremlin
Swiss authorities had frozen approximately US $66.6 million of
accounts belonging to Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, the Swiss
weekly Facts reported August 19. Dominique Reymond, a spokesman for
the Swiss public prosecutor's office, confirmed that some accounts
have been frozen at the request of Russian prosecutors, but refused to
comment on who held the accounts and the amounts in them. Nikolay
Volkov, senior investigator of the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office
who is heading the investigation in Russia, stated that a request to
freeze the accounts was made as early as May of this year. However,
the accounts were not touched until August 19.
This action, coming only a week after the appointment of Vladmir Putin
as Prime Minister of Russia, is significant. While there is no direct
evidence linking Putin to the action, we believe he is the force
behind it. There are less than a handful of people in the Russian
government for whom the Swiss would freeze Berezovsky's accounts. One
is Russian President Boris Yeltsin, but inasmuch as Berezovsky is
Yeltsin's long-time ally and financier, it seems highly unlikely
Yeltsin ordered the freeze. Yeltsin would not bite the hand that feeds
him. In fact, Yeltsin has undoubtedly been protecting Berezovsky since
the investigation began in May under former Prime Minister Yevgeny
Primakov. Primakov commenced his attack on Yeltsin's pet oligarch as
soon as he took office, in a campaign that eventually led to an arrest
warrant against Berezovsky. Berezovsky was not arrested, but Primakov
lost his job.
Prosecution of Berezovsky languished under Primakov's successor,
Sergei Stepashin, but now Stepashin is gone. Putin has taken charge,
and whether chosen by Yeltsin or forced upon him, Putin has made major
reversals in Yeltsin policy. In less than a week, Putin has rejected
Stepashin's timid handling of the Dagestan crisis, ordering the
assembly of now over 7,000 of Russia's elite paratroopers and special
forces in preparation for crushing the guerrillas. Now, he has turned
against not just any economic criminal, but Yeltsin's close personal
associate. We await Berezovsky's indictment for "crimes against the
people."
Putin is not behaving like another Yeltsin tool. He is reversing
fundamental Yeltsin policies dating back years, and undermining
Yeltsin's closest supporters. This is only the beginning.
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