Once Upon a Time in Russia

A shocking insight into the lives of Russia's most famous oligarchs, from the }New York Times{ bestselling author of }The Accidental Billionaires{ and }Bringing Down The House{. Now in paperbackA gripping and shocking insight into the lives of Russia's most famous oligarchs from New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and Bringing Down the House. Once Upon a Time in Russia is the untold true story of the larger-than-life billionaire oligarchs who surfed the waves of privatization to reap riches after the fall of the Soviet regime: ''Godfather of the Kremlin'' Boris Berezovsky, a former mathematician whose first entrepreneurial venture was running an automobile reselling business, and Roman Abramovich, his dashing young protégé who built a multi-billion-dollar empire of oil and aluminium. Locked in a complex, uniquely Russian partnership, Berezovsky and Abramovich battled their way through the ''Wild East'' of Russia with Berezovsky acting as the younger man's krysha- literally, his roof, his protector.Written with the heart-stopping pace of a thriller -but even more compelling because it is true - this story of amassing obscene wealth and power depicts a rarefied world seldom seen up close. Under Berezovsky's krysha, Abramovich built one of Russia's largest oil companies from the ground up and in exchange made cash deliveries - including 491 million dollars in just one year. But their relationship frayed when Berezovsky attacked President Vladimir Putin in the media - and had to flee to the UK. Abramovich continued to prosper. Dead bodies trailed Berezovsky's footsteps, and threats followed him to London, where an associate of his died painfully and famously of Polonium poisoning. Then Berezovsky himself was later found dead, declared a suicide.Exclusively sourced, capturing a momentous period in recent world history, Once Upon a Time in Russia is at once personal and political, offering an unprecedented look into the wealth, corruption, and power behind what Graydon Carter called 'the story of our age'.

This book offers a gripping and shocking insight into the lives of Russia's most famous oligarchs from New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires and Bringing Down the House. Once Upon a Time in Russia is the story of modern day Russia through the eyes of some of the most powerful and wealthy people in the world: the oligarchs. The story starts in the early 1990s with the formation of the huge oil company Sibneft owned by Roman Abramovich (with help from Boris Berezovsky), and takes the reader right through from Boris Yeltsin's resignation on New Year's Eve of the millennium, Putin's rise to power and Alexander Litvinenko's assassination to Berezkovsky's court case against Abramovich in 2011, which was the largest civil court case in British legal history. Told in an intimate narrative voice that makes you feel part of the action, but at an exhilarating pace that is typical of Mezrich, Once Upon a Time in Russia is his most hard-hitting and pertinent work yet.