Berezovsky Found Guilty of Car Fraud

A Moscow region court on Thursday convicted self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky and his business associate Yuly Dubov of large-scale fraud, marking the second time Berezovsky has been found guilty in absentia. The Krasnogorsky City Court convicted Berezovsky and Dubov of embezzling 140 million rubles from their LogoVAZ auto dealership empire in 1994 and 1995. The sentences will be handed down Friday, Interfax reported. Prosecutors have asked the court to sentence Berezovsky to 15 years and Dubov to nine years in a medium-security prison. Prosecutors have also asked the court to order Berezovsky to pay 58 million rubles ($1.9 million) in compensation to the Samara regional administration. Berezovsky, who fled Russia in 2000 and received asylum in Britain in 2003, couldn't be reached on his cell phone Thursday afternoon. He has said his legal troubles in Russia are politically motivated. The Prosecutor General's Office has been seeking his extradition since 2002, when it charged him, Dubov and the late Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili with using the LogoVAZ dealership in a complicated scheme to defraud AvtoVAZ out of more than 2,000 cars worth $13 million in 1994 and 1995. Prosecutors said the three businessmen used the money they made from the car scam to buy real estate in the Moscow region and St. Petersburg as well as to buy shares in two television companies and a publishing house. Berezovsky established LogoVAZ in 1989 with Patarkatsishvili and senior managers of AvtoVAZ. Ostensibly, the company was created to provide the aging AvtoVAZ factory with automation software. Instead, it quickly began selling cars and became the auto giant's official dealer. In 2007, Berezovsky was convicted in absentia by a Moscow court and sentenced to six years in jail on charges of embezzling 215 million rubles from Aeroflot in the 1990s. Berezovsky forbade his lawyers from representing him at the 2007 proceedings, which he called "an absolute farce."