ROMAN ABRAMOVICH, THE billionaire owner of Chelsea Football Club, attended the High Court today to answer charges that he intimidated former business parter Boris Berezovsky into selling him a lucrative stake in oil company Sibneft.

Berezovsky is suing Abramovich, whose personal wealth is estimated at £10.3 billion,  for £3.2 billion in damages.

The claimant has resided in self-imposed exile in the United Kingdom since 2000, when he fell out of favour with Russia’s politcal elite.

Speaking to the BBC, Berezovsky’s legal representative Laurence Rabinowitz outlined the nature of the charges:

“[Mr Berezovsky claims] that Mr Abramovich intimidated him into selling his very substantial interest in Sibneft to Mr Abramovich himself at a very substantial under value and that he did so in effect by making threats.

“The threats being… that unless Mr Berezovsky… sold those interests to him, he, Mr Abramovich, would take steps with a view to the interest being effectively removed from them by those in the Kremlin, led by President Putin, who had come to regard Mr Berezovsky as his enemy.”

The trial is expected to last somewhere in the region of two months.

Read the BBC’s court report here>

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