title: The Hangover Part II

text: Two years after the events in Las Vegas, Stu Price travels to Thailand for his upcoming wedding to Lauren, his fiancée, along with his three best friends, Doug Billings, Phil Wenneck and Alan Garner. Much to Alan's dismay, they are joined by Lauren's younger brother, a Stanford University scholar named Teddy. At the rehearsal dinner, Lauren's father reveals his disapproval of Stu during a toast. Later that night, Stu hesitantly joins Phil, Doug, Alan and Teddy for a beer. Sitting at a campfire and roasting marshmallows, the group toast to Stu and Lauren's future happiness.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: The next day, Phil, Stu and Alan awaken in a dilapidated hotel room in Bangkok. Stu has a face tattoo (a replica of Mike Tyson's) and Alan's head is completely shaved. They meet a chain-smoking capuchin monkey and discover that their old 'friend', Chinese gangster Leslie Chow, followed them to Thailand on Alan's invitation. They cannot find Teddy, and discover only his severed finger. Chow begins to relay the events of the prior night, but he seemingly dies after snorting a line of cocaine. Panicked, the trio disposes of Chow's body in the hotel's ice box.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Through a tip from Doug (who left the campfire earlier and stayed at the resort), they go to a police station to pick up Teddy, but are given a wheelchair containing an elderly Buddhist monk. He refuses to reveal anything, having taken a vow of silence. After finding a business card, they travel to the smoldering ruins of the business.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: They enter a nearby tattoo parlor where Stu got his tattoo, and they learn that they started a fight that escalated into a riot. The trio returns the monk to his temple, where they are encouraged by the head monk to meditate. Alan manages to recall that they had been at a strip club, where they learn that Stu engaged in sexual intercourse with a trans woman. Upon exiting, the trio is attacked by two Russian mobsters who take the monkey, and one shoots Phil in his arm.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: After Phil is treated at a clinic, Alan confesses that he had drugged some of the marshmallows from the previous night with muscle relaxers and his ADHD medication in order to sedate Teddy, as he feared the others were going to replace him, but accidentally mixed up the bags. Phil and Stu become furious that Alan drugged them again. Stu blames Alan for ruining his life and attacks him, but Phil breaks it up and tells them that they have to stick together. They notice something on Alan's stomach: an address and a time for a meeting. They meet a gangster named Kingsley, who demands Chow's bank account password by the following morning in exchange for Teddy. They return to the hotel to try to find Chow's password, only to discover that he is still alive. They steal the monkey, who had the code given to him and put inside his vest for safe-keeping by Chow, back from the Russian mobsters through a violent car chase, during which the monkey is shot and injured.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: After taking the code and leaving the monkey outside a veterinary clinic, the group completes the deal with Kingsley the next morning. Interpol agents appear and arrest Chow. Kingsley turns out to be an undercover agent, who tells the trio that he does not actually know where Teddy is.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Desperate, Phil calls Doug's wife Tracy to tell her they cannot find Teddy. Stu decides to call off the wedding, live in Bangkok and say that Teddy died. During a rolling blackout, Stu realizes where Teddy is. The trio rushes back to the hotel to find Teddy who is in the elevator (though is still missing a finger). Teddy had woken up earlier than the others, but became trapped after the power went out when he went to get ice for his finger. The four use Chow's speedboat to travel back to the wedding reception.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Arriving just as Lauren's father is about to cancel the wedding, Stu makes a defiant speech, and rejects being a boring dentist and instead insists he is quite wild. Impressed, Lauren's father gives the couple his blessing. Alan presents Stu with a special gift at the reception: a musical guest performance by Mike Tyson. Teddy later discovers that he had taken many pictures during the night on his cell phone before the battery died. The group, along with Tyson, agree to look at the pictures together once before deleting them.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Mike Tyson reprises his role as himself and sings a cover of the 1984 Murray Head song "One Night in Bangkok" for the movie. The film is the Hollywood debut of Mason Lee, son of director Ang Lee. Nick Cassavetes has a cameo appearance as a Bangkok tattoo artist. Liam Neeson was initially cast in that role, which was originally envisioned for Mel Gibson.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In April 2009, Warner Bros. hired Todd Phillips, who directed "The Hangover", to write a sequel with Scot Armstrong. The deal, reached two months before the release of "The Hangover" in June 2009, came as result of "The Hangover"'s positive screen tests, and a trailer which drew a strong reaction from audiences at ShoWest. The writers from the first film, Scott Moore and Jon Lucas, decided not to come back to write the sequel because, according to Lucas, "they were done with that story…and didn't want to just write "Hangover" sequels their whole careers".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: "Variety" reported in July 2009, that production on "The Hangover 2" would begin in October 2010, for a May 26, 2011 release, following the same production schedule used for the first film. Also in July, Zach Galifianakis stated in an interview with "Latino Review" that the film will be set in Thailand, "Well, I think we're going to Thailand. The problem with "Hangover 2" is that we have to live up to what we did which is very difficult. So we get, I think, kind of kidnapped. It has nothing to do with the bachelor party. We're definitely not doing that again but we do end up in an exotic location. That's all I know".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In January 2010, Phillips dismissed rumors that Zac Efron would join the cast of "The Hangover 2", though Ed Helms stated that Efron would be a welcomed addition, commenting, "I love that guy. He's actually really funny".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In March 2010, Phillips denied reports that the film would take place in Mexico or Thailand stating, "I don't know. There's a lot of rumors. There was rumor also that it was going to Mexico or something and neither are true". Also by March, Galifianakis, Helms, Bradley Cooper, and Justin Bartha completed negotiations and signed deals to reprise their roles in the sequel.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Cooper stated that "we made [the] decision early on" to keep the same plot structure. "I remember we did this photo shoot for "Vanity Fair" and that was when we first talked about a sequel in a realistic way; and we were all in the room together afterwards and we were saying 'here's the choice: do we stray from the structure or do we run straight for it?' And we all agreed, no question about it, we hadn't earned the ability to take these 3 guys out and put them in a new structure. There needs to be a ticking clock, there needs to be a missed night and there needs to be someone who's gone and a woman who is waiting to get married and a guy who needs to get married."


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In June 2010, before accepting the Guy Movie of the Year award on the Spike Guys Choice Awards, Phillips announced that there would be a "Hangover 2" and that they were hoping to begin filming around October 15, 2010, for a July 4, 2011 weekend release.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In July 2010, it was confirmed that film would indeed be set in Thailand and earlier comments made by Phillips denying such reports were a deliberate case of misdirection. The following month, Bradley Cooper stated he believed the rumors to be true and was looking forward to filming "The Hangover 2" in Thailand.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In October 2010, Phillips confirmed that the film would take place in Bangkok and Los Angeles and that Galifianakis, Cooper, Helms and Ken Jeong would be returning.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: On a budget of $80 million, principal photography began on October 8, 2010, in Ontario, California with the first images of production being released a few days later. It was also reported in October that actress Heather Graham would not be reprising her role as Jade from the first film. Later in the same month it was reported that Mel Gibson would have a cameo appearance in the film as a Bangkok tattoo artist. Four days later Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures and director Todd Phillips confirmed that Gibson would not be appearing in the film. Phillips stated: "I thought Mel would have been great in the movie and I had the full backing of [WB president] Jeff Robinov and his team. But I realize filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and this decision ultimately did not have the full support of my entire cast and crew."


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Liam Neeson replaced Gibson after being invited by Cooper, who worked with Neeson on "The A-Team", to take the part. Neeson, a fan of the first film stated, "I just got a call to do a one-day shoot on 'Hangover 2' as a tattooist in Thailand, and that's all I know about it". Gibson was reportedly furious over the decision. A source close to Gibson stated, "He doesn't understand why Mike Tyson, a drug user who turned his life around, was given a chance while Mel was kicked to the curb. Everybody deserves a second chance". Although, Neeson had filmed his scenes, his cameo was edited out when director Todd Phillips was forced to do reshoots and Neeson was not available. He was replaced by Nick Cassavetes.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In November 2010, it was reported that Jamie Chung had been cast in the film as Stu's fiancée as well as it being renamed, "The Hangover Part II". In an interview director Todd Phillips revealed that Mike Tyson would be back in the sequel. Also in November, it was reported that Paul Giamatti had joined the cast. The next day it was reported that former U.S. President Bill Clinton filmed a cameo appearance for the film in Bangkok while he was in the city to deliver a speech on clean energy. Ed Helms clarified that Clinton merely visited the set and would be surprised if he appeared in the film.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In December 2010, it was reported that Bryan Callen, who played the owner of the wedding chapel in "The Hangover", is working again in "The Hangover Part II", as "a smarmy strip club owner in Bangkok". Also in December, Australian stuntman Scott McLean was seriously injured in a traffic accident while filming a stunt sequence near Bangkok. Warner Bros. issued a statement stating McLean was put into a medically-induced coma but is expected to recover.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Bradley Cooper said that "logistically, to get from point A to point B [was] incredibly difficult and the bureaucracy and getting things done. There are always tons of people around the set and Todd loves a lean set and it was always the opposite, so watching a director deal with that—especially when it was Todd Phillips—was interesting." He then went on to say, in a later part of the interview, that "it was the hardest shoot that I had ever done, that Zach had ever done, that Ed had ever done and that Todd had ever done."


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In February 2011, it was reported that Christophe Beck would be reteaming with director Todd Phillips to score the film. The project marks the fourth collaboration between Beck and Philips, who also worked together on "School for Scoundrels", "The Hangover" and "Due Date".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In April 2011, "Variety" reported that Liam Neeson's cameo as a Bangkok tattoo artist had been accidentally cut and Nick Cassavetes had been re-cast in the role. While editing, Phillips cut the scene that immediately followed Neeson's cameo, meaning it no longer had the information necessary to logically get the main characters to the situation in the next scene. Three weeks later, Phillips decided to reshoot the scene, but with Neeson in London filming "Wrath of the Titans", the actor was no longer available. Phillips explained, "We were in a complete time crunch so I called up Nick and asked if he would do the part. He came in and crushed it and that is the scene that you will ultimately see in the film. [I'm excited for everyone] to see the film. It turned out great".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: The soundtrack was released on May 24, 2011, by WaterTower Music. The soundtrack contains 12 songs from the film, along with eight dialogue clips from the film. Though the song "Monster", by Kanye West featuring Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Bon Iver, and Nicki Minaj, was featured in the film, it does not appear on the soundtrack.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Among the songs included on the album is Ed Helms' version of the Billy Joel song "Allentown", rewritten in the spirit of his popular "Stu's Song" from the soundtrack of 2009's "The Hangover". Additional music includes a song from Danzig, along with music from the Ska Rangers, Kanye West, Mark Lanegan, Deadmau5, Wolfmother, Billy Joel, and more.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: "The Hangover Part II" held its premiere on May 19, 2011, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: The first teaser trailer was released online in February 2011. The first full trailer was released in April 2011. Later in the same month Warner Bros. pulled the trailer from theaters for violating an MPAA rule stating that films can only trailer before similarly rated movies. The trailer for the R-rated comedy was being promoted at screenings for the PG-13-rated "Source Code" against MPAA regulations. Warner Bros. released a statement saying, "In our haste to meet the placement schedule for this trailer, we failed to properly vet the final version with the MPAA. We acted immediately to correct the mistake and removed the trailer from screens".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In April 2011, tattoo artist S. Victor Whitmill filed a lawsuit against Warner Bros. In the film, Stu wakes up with a copy of Mike Tyson's tattoo. Whitmill, who designed the tattoo for Tyson, claims it as a copyrighted work and asked a judge to stop Warner Bros. Entertainment from using the tattoo in the film or in marketing materials, which would effectively halt the film's release, and asked for monetary compensation for what he referred to as "reckless copyright infringement". In response, Warner Bros. claimed that any delay in the film's release would result in huge financial costs and argued that there was no legal precedent for the case, saying that the use of a permanent tattoo on a human's face could not be controlled.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: The judge allowed the case to go forward, stating that Mr. Whitmill had a "strong likelihood of prevailing on the merits for copyright infringement" and that most of the arguments put forward by Warner Bros. were "just silly," but rejected Whitmill's request for a preliminary injunction to stop the release of the film, because, on balance, that rejection was "in the public interest". In the event that Warner Bros. and Whitmill did not come to an agreement, the former party aimed to digitally modify the tattoo from Helms' face for the home video release. In June 2011, Warner Bros. settled the lawsuit with Whitmill; the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. In January 2013, the "University of Illinois Law Review" published an article addressing this case and discussing in detail the implications of Whitmill's claims.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In 2011, Scott McLean, an Australian stuntman who was injured and suffered brain damage while filming in Bangkok sued Warner Bros. The case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In June 2012, Warner Bros. successfully defended a lawsuit brought against them by Louis Vuitton over the use of a fake case in one scene.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: "The Hangover Part II" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 6, 2011, in the United States by Warner Home Video, on December 5 in the United Kingdom and on November 30 in the Netherlands. The film was made available in three formats: DVD, Blu-ray, and a Blu-ray combo pack which included both high- and standard-definition versions of the film and an UltraViolet digital copy of the film.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: "The Hangover Part II" grossed $254.5 million in North America and $332.3 million in other territories for a worldwide gross of $586.8 million, against a budget of $80 million. In its opening weekend, it earned $177.8 million, which was the highest-grossing worldwide opening for a comedy film. On the weekend of June 17–19, 2011, it out-grossed its predecessor in worldwide earnings to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: The film was released on Thursday, May 26, 2011, in North America, coinciding with the U.S. Memorial Day weekend. During launch midnight showings in 2,600 theaters, the film earned $10.4 million, breaking the record for the biggest midnight opening for an R-rated film, replacing "Paranormal Activity" (2007) with $6.3 million. The film opened in a further 1,015 theaters during the launch day for a total of 3,615—becoming the widest opening ever for an R-rated film—and earned a further $21.2 million to accrue a launch-day total of $31.6 million; nearly doubling "The Hangover"s Friday launch opening ($16.7 million). By this point, it had the third-highest Thursday opening of any film, behind "The Matrix Reloaded" ($37.5 million) and "" ($50 million).


title: The Hangover Part II

text: This amount broke two further records; the highest-grossing opening day for a live-action comedy and the highest-grossing opening day for an R-rated comedy film, replacing "Sex and the City" (2008) with $26.7 million. According to exit polling, the launch day audience was 51 percent female and 41 percent were aged between 18 and 24. On May 27, the film took an additional $30.0 million, dropping only 5 percent from the takings of the previous day and becoming the highest-grossing Friday for a live-action comedy. The three-day (Friday–Sunday) opening weekend accumulated $85,946,294—an average of $23,923 per theater—becoming the highest-grossing opening weekend for a comedy film, the highest-grossing opening weekend for a live-action comedy, replacing "Austin Powers in Goldmember" ($73 million), the highest-grossing opening weekend for an R-rated comedy, replacing "Sex and the City" ($79 million) and the second-highest-grossing opening weekend of all time for an R-rated film, after "The Matrix Reloaded" ($91.7 million).


title: The Hangover Part II

text: For the Memorial Day four-day weekend, the film amassed $103.4 million to become the fourth-highest-grossing Memorial Day weekend opening. In its second weekend the film gross dropped 64 percent from the previous weekend—while the original film dropped only 27 percent during its second weekend—and grossed $31.4 million.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: "The Hangover Part II" debuted in 40 countries internationally over the weekend of May 26–29, 2011, across 5,170 screens. In total, the film accrued $60.3 million from its Friday-through-Monday opening weekend, more than tripling the international gross of "The Hangover"s debut in the same territories. The highest weekend gross came from the United Kingdom where the film earned £10,409,017 from 469 screens, breaking the record for the highest-grossing opening for a U.S. comedy, but this record was overtaken by "The Inbetweeners Movie" (£13,216,736). Australia accrued a gross of $12.1 million to replace "Sex and the City" in the country as the highest-grossing opening for an MA-rated film—no-one under the age of 15 permitted.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: The film took $8.7 million in the Netherlands and $6.2 million in France and $3.1 million in Italy ($4.6 million with previews); a five-fold increase over the opening-weekend gross of "The Hangover". On its second weekend, the film accrued $63.8 million from 53 territories, placing it second behind "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," the film having earned 79 percent of its predecessor's entire overseas run. On the weekend of June 10–12, 2011, it surpassed its predecessor and "There's Something About Mary" in international earnings to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy overseas.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 33% based on 247 reviews with an average rating of 4.96/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "A crueler, darker, raunchier carbon copy of the first installment, "The Hangover Part II" lacks the element of surprise—and most of the joy—that helped make the original a hit." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 44 out of 100 based on 40 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Andrew Barker of "Variety" gave the film a negative review, stating, "The stock dismissal 'more of the same' has rarely been more accurately applied to a sequel than to "The Hangover Part II", which ranks as little more than a faded copy of its predecessor superimposed on a more brightly colored background". Christy Lemire of the Associated Press said, "Giving the people what they want is one thing. Making nearly the exact same movie a second time, but shifting the setting to Thailand, is just … what, lazy? Arrogant? Maybe a combination of the two". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film two stars out of four stating, ""The Hangover Part II" plays like a challenge to the audience's capacity for raunchiness. It gets laughs, but some of them are in disbelief".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Conversely, Michael Rechtshaffen of "The Hollywood Reporter" gave "The Hangover Part II" a positive review remarking, "What happens in Bangkok isn't as much fun as when it happened in Vegas, but it's still worth the trip". Lou Lumenick of the "New York Post" said, "There are definitely laughs to be had, even if the three leads often seem to be going through the motions".


title: The Hangover Part II

text: Crystal, a capuchin monkey who also appeared in the "Night at the Museum" films, portrays the drug-dealing monkey. Director Todd Phillips raised concerns after he joked that Crystal had become addicted to cigarettes after learning to smoke them for the film. Philips later explained that Crystal never actually held a lit cigarette on the film's set and the smoke was added digitally in post-production. Despite this, PETA protested about Crystal's appearance in the film for use of exotic animals for entertainment purposes and the film does not carry the American Humane Association's disclaimer that "no animals were harmed" since the group was denied set visits.


title: The Hangover Part II

text: In an interview with "New York" magazine, Ken Jeong responded to criticisms of the character Mr. Chow as an offensive caricature and stated doing the character was "very cathartic" for him and said the character "has the inflections of Vietnamese, with kind of the anger of my own Korean nature" although "it's definitely not about an accent, or a stereotype."


title: The Hangover Part II

text: As the film comes to a close, many photos are revealed depicting the events of the previous night. Among them is a photo which loosely depicts a famous war photo by photographer Eddie Adams of a public execution during the Vietnam War. Film critic Roger Ebert was amongst those who criticized use of the photo, calling it "a cruel shot that director Todd Phillips should never, ever have used."


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge is a beat 'em up game developed by Tribute Games and published by Dotemu. It is inspired by and based on the 1987 "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" animated series and borrows stylistically from the arcade and home console "Turtles" games developed by Konami during the 1980s and 1990s. The game was released for Windows, Linux, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on June 16, 2022, and for PlayStation 5 on November 15, 2022. A version for iOS and Android mobile devices will be published by Netflix in early 2023.


title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge

text: The Turtles voice actors from the 1987 series reprise their roles. Music was composed by Tee Lopes, with contributions from guitarist Jonny Atma, rappers Mega Ran, Ghostface Killah and Raekwon and singer Mike Patton. "Shredder's Revenge" received generally favorable reviews, with reviewers praising the pixel-based visual style, playable character roster and combat mechanics, while criticism was directed at audio quality issues and the short length of the story mode. The game was also a commercial success, selling one million copies within a week of release.


text: "Shredder's Revenge" is a side-scrolling action brawler with a pixelated artstyle. The player assumes control of Leonardo, Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, April O'Neil, Master Splinter, and unlockable character Casey Jones as they combat opponents including the Foot Clan, Krang, Bebop and Rocksteady, and Shredder in locations ranging from New York City sewers to Dimension X. Each character has their own attributes (range, speed, and power) and plays differently. They have unique super moves and taunts. Throughout each stage, players can find pizza boxes, which can be used to heal them, and other pies that grant players extra strength and infinite supers for a brief period of time.


text: The game features two different modes: Arcade Mode and Story Mode. In arcade mode, players have a limited amount of lives, and the game must be completed in one sitting. Story mode allows players to convert accumulated points for health, extra lives, additional combat moves, and a special ability known as Radical Mode which temporarily enhances the player character's combat abilities. In story mode, each stage has optional side-content, challenges. and collectibles. In addition to the single-player mode, the game supports six-players cooperative multiplayer both online and locally. Players can high-five to share health, or work together to perform certain moves.


text: Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Donatello, along with April O'Neil and master Splinter are watching the news on TV when it is interrupted by Bebop, who announces the Foot has returned and is taking over the Statue of Liberty. The turtles go to the Channel 6 building and find Bebop with the head of Krang's android body, but it is taken away while they were fighting Bebop. The team fight Foot operatives and other adversaries while pursuing Krang, finding other parts of his body being reconstructed. Their chase leads them to Dimension X, where they fight their way through the destroyed Technodrome, until they eventually reach their enemy's lair in Dimension X and face Shredder and Krang in his new body. This is a decoy to get them away from New York while they are turning the Statue of Liberty into the Statue of Tyranny, a robot controlled by Krang. The Turtles return to New York and defeat Krang and Super Shredder.


text: After the battle, the heroes return to their lair and watch the news as the city is being restored, but are disappointed to see that the credit goes to the Punk Frogs. That night the Turtles along with April, Splinter and Casey Jones celebrate their victory with pizza.


text: The game was developed by Montreal-based Tribute Games. The team had experiences working on brawler games at Ubisoft on "" and "TMNT". Nickelodeon approached Dotemu following the release of "" on the possibility of developing an adaptation of one of its franchises. After knowing that Tribute Games had been pitching to Nickelodeon for a "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game since 2010, the two companies decided to work together after meeting each other at Game Developers Conference. The game was inspired by the animated series from 1987 and the arcade games in the 1990s such as "" (1991). While the game paid homage to older "TMNT" games, the team wanted to modernize the series by introducing various quality-of-life enhancements, online multiplayer, and locations that have not been seen in a 2D "Turtles" game.


text: The game features voice acting, with the original cast of the 1987 series, Cam Clarke, Barry Gordon, Rob Paulsen, and Townsend Coleman reprising their roles. The soundtrack was composed by Tee Lopes, who is known for his work on other retro-style games such as "Sonic Mania" and "Streets of Rage 4". Guitarist Jonny Atma provided the guitar recordings for most of the soundtrack, and vocals for the song "Panic in the Sky!". Singer Mike Patton was invited to perform the theme song for the game. American rapper Mega Ran contributed vocals to the track "It's a Pizza Party!", while Ghostface Killah and Raekwon were featured in the track "We Ain't Come To Lose".


text: Dotemu announced the game on March 10, 2021. On August 25, 2021, a trailer was revealed during Gamescom showcasing April O'Neil as a playable character. On February 10, 2022, another trailer was released revealing Master Splinter as a playable character. The release date trailer was revealed at Summer Game Fest on June 9, 2022, which showcased Casey Jones as a playable character. The game was released digitally for Windows, Linux, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on June 16, 2022, physically for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 on October 18, 2022, and physical Xbox One and PlayStation 5 versions on November 15, 2022. A version for iOS and Android mobile devices will be published by Netflix in early 2023.


text: Four limited editions of the game were made available by Limited Run Games: The Standard Edition, which includes a physical copy of the game, a reversible cover, an art booklet, a sprite sticker sheet, and a redeemable Pizza Hut coupon. A PC-exclusive edition, that includes everything in The Standard Edition plus retro big box PC packaging, a USB stick with the game, a steel book case, and a mouse pad. The Classic Edition includes everything in The Standard Edition plus a retro VHS sleeve with a tape box to store the game and a steel book case. The Radical Edition includes everything in The Classic Edition, plus a strategy guide, a poster, a Shredder action figure, a shadow box, a mini arcade cabinet replica, a CD soundtrack, and blister box packaging. Merge Games and Signature Edition Games offered a special edition of the game, which included a physical copy of the game, a signed art card, a special edition outer sleeve, a pizza key ring and booklet inside the game case, a Shredder key ring, individual pins for all four Turtles, a CD soundtrack, a metal coaster, and one randomly selected Turtle mask.


text: The soundtrack was released on digital platforms on the same day as the game's release. It was further released in CD and vinyl on October 28, 2022 by Kid Katana Records. To promote it, a single version of "We Ain't Come To Lose" was released on June 13, 2022.


text: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge" received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic; it is the highest-rated "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" game on the website. In July 2022, Tribute Games and Dotemu announced that the game had sold over one million copies in its first week. The Nintendo Switch version was the seventeenth best-selling retail game during its first week of release in Japan, with 4,365 physical copies being sold in the country.


text: Critics generally lauded the game's appealing personality, animations, music, distinct playstyles, combat, and multiplayer. Chris Moyse of "Destructoid" found the game's attention to detail to be charismatic, writing, "Where "Shredder’s Revenge" shines brightest, however, is in its personality, utilizing... Individual run cycles, taunts, and celebrations; goofy background characters; and nods to previous "TMNT" games, shows, and movies." Mollie L. Patterson of "EGM" thought that the game surpassed the quality of the titles it drew inspiration from and called its visuals "by far the game's best feature", while further praising the stage variety, accessible depth, distinct character-based playstyles, and enemy roster. Marcus Stewart of "Game Informer" praised the use of level-specific objectives meant to encourage player exploration and the game's chaotic brand of local multiplayer entertainment, stating, "Sure, losing track of yourself in the sea of digital humanity happens often and can be mildly frustrating, but the joy of laughing and cheering alongside so many buddies dulls that irritation." Mitchell Saltzman of "IGN" said that "Shredder's Revenge" had "one of the best soundtracks of the year", and commended the inclusion of additional character mobility options and a meter which incentivized skilled playstyles.


text: Tom Massey of "Nintendo Life" was impressed by the game's visuals and wrote, "Familiar locations are rendered with fresh, loving attention to detail, gorgeous colour, and an authentic cartoon flavour, all strung together with great visual storytelling", while also lauding the variety of stages and enemies, well-rounded character roster, and "sterling" soundtrack. "PC Gamer"s Dominic Tarason thought positively of the distinct stages and characters, saying, "The backdrops rarely repeat, which is impressive considering "Shredder's Revenge" is about four times the length of and far more detailed... The character art is equally lush—despite all having the same body shape, there's few frames shared between the turtles. Their animations capture their personality..." "Push Square" praised the game's use of rollback netcode and the stability of the online co-op mode, noting that it was "as sturdy as local [co-op]." TJ Denzer of "Shacknews" said that "Shredder's Revenge" was one of the best beat-em-ups he had ever played, and wrote, "Each character is fun to explore, the music will stay in your head long after you stop playing, and even if the game feels a bit short, there are plenty of reasons to go back."


text: Though critics generally regarded the game positively, they took minor issue with a few of its elements. "Destructoid" felt that while the title was deeper than its predecessors, it broke little new ground in the genre, and deemed its combat mechanics less precise than the ones seen in "Streets of Rage 4". "EGM" criticized the game's subpar audio quality, and wrote, ""All" of the audio in this game is disappointing... Some of the voice acting sounds really off. Attacks often lack that satisfying "oomph" when hitting an opponent. Explosions sound anemic. A few of the sound effects are just outright terrible." "Game Informer" and "GameSpot" expressed concern with the game's short length, repetitive side missions, and the lack of visual clarity during more populated multiplayer sessions. "IGN" and "Nintendo Life" noted that the lack of variety in the game's level design felt overly safe and made the game feel repetitive towards the end. "PC Gamer" expressed minor gripes with the hollow Story Mode, poorly scaled difficulty and leveling system, unremarkable side quests, and lack of longevity.


title: BM-27 Uragan

text: The BM-27 Uragan (; GRAU index 9P140) is a self-propelled 220 mm multiple rocket launcher designed in the Soviet Union. The system began its service with the Soviet Army in the late 1970s, and was its first modern spin and fin stabilized heavy multiple rocket launcher.


title: BM-27 Uragan

text: The BM-27 Uragan is capable of launching 220 mm rockets from 16 launch tubes mounted on the rear of a ZIL-135 8×8 chassis. This vehicle is extremely similar to that used in the FROG-7 free flight rocket system. It has two gasoline engines that power its 20 tonnes to a maximum speed of 65 kilometers per hour. One engine drives the four wheels on the left of the truck, while the other engine drives the four wheels on the right. The ZIL-135 has eight wheel drive, but only the front and rear axles are used for steering. It has a maximum cruising range of 500 kilometers.


title: BM-27 Uragan

text: The cab of the ZIL-135 is NBC protected, allowing the rockets to be fired without exposing the crew to possible contaminants. The six-man crew can emplace or displace the system in three minutes.


title: BM-27 Uragan

text: Before firing, stabilizing jacks must be lowered and the blast shield raised to protect the cab and its occupants. Indirect fire aiming is achieved with the use of a PG-1 panoramic telescope. Although there are no night vision sights, the driver of the launch vehicle is equipped with a night vision device.


title: BM-27 Uragan

text: The BM-27 can use HE-FRAG, chemical, explosive or scatterable mine (PTM-3 or PFM-1) submunition equipped rockets, all of which are detonated by electric timing fuses. (However, chemical munitions have been officially off service in Russia since 2017.) Each rocket weighs 280.4 kilograms. The warheads weigh between 90 and 100 kilograms, depending on type. A full salvo of 16 rockets can be fired in 20 seconds and can engage targets within a range of 35 kilometers.


title: BM-27 Uragan

text: Because of the size of the warhead, the range of the rocket and the speed that a salvo can be delivered, the BM-27 is very effective at mine laying. Each 220 mm rocket can scatter 312 anti-personnel PFM-1 mines. Minefields can be laid behind a retreating enemy or even be used to trap an enemy by encircling them with mines. Tactics such as this were often used by the Soviets in Afghanistan.


title: BM-27 Uragan

text: Once the rockets have been fired, 9T452 (another ZIL-135 based vehicle) is used to assist in reloading. It carries additional rockets and a crane to transfer the rockets from the reload vehicle to the launcher. The entire reloading procedure takes around 20 minutes.


title: David Chase

text: David Henry Chase (born August 22, 1945) is an American filmmaker. He wrote and produced the HBO drama "The Sopranos" which aired for six seasons between 1999 and 2007. Chase has also produced and written for such shows as "The Rockford Files", "I'll Fly Away", and "Northern Exposure". He created the original series "Almost Grown" which aired for 10 episodes in 1988 and 1989. He has won seven Emmy Awards. Chase's film debut came in 2012 with "Not Fade Away", followed by "The Many Saints of Newark" (2021), a prequel film to the TV series "The Sopranos".


title: David Chase

text: Chase was born into a working-class Italian American family in Mount Vernon, New York, the only child of Henry and Norma Chase. His paternal grandmother had changed the family name from "DeCesare" to "Chase". His father owned a hardware store. He grew up in a small garden apartment in Clifton, New Jersey, and in North Caldwell, New Jersey. He grew up watching matinée crime films and was well known as a creative storyteller.


title: David Chase

text: He has stated that he had many problems with his parents when he was a child. He says that his father was an angry man who belittled him constantly, and his mother was a "passive-aggressive drama queen" and a "nervous woman who dominated any situation she was in by being so needy and always on the verge of hysteria." A character he created for "The Sopranos", Livia Soprano, is based on his mother.


title: David Chase

text: Chase struggled with panic attacks and clinical depression as a teenager, something he dealt with into adulthood. He graduated from high school in 1964 and attended Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his depression worsened. "I slept 18 hours a day," he has stated. He described his problems as "normal, nagging, clinical depression." He also worked as a drummer during this period and aspired to be a professional musician. After two years, he transferred to New York University where he chose to pursue a career in film—a decision that was not well received by his parents. He went on to attend Stanford University's School of Film, earning a Master of Arts degree in 1971.


title: David Chase

text: Chase started in Hollywood as a story editor for "" and then produced episodes of "The Rockford Files" and "Northern Exposure", among other series. He also worked as a writer of 19 episodes while on "The Rockford Files"—a show which he worked on in various capacities for more than four years. He won several Emmy awards, including one for a television movie, "Off the Minnesota Strip", the story of a runaway he scripted in 1980. His first original created series was "Almost Grown" in 1988, with Eve Gordon and Timothy Daly. Although the one-hour series was well received by critics, only 10 episodes aired from November 1988 to February 1989.


title: David Chase

text: Chase worked in relative anonymity before "The Sopranos" debuted. The story of "The Sopranos" was initially conceived as a feature film about "a mobster in therapy having problems with his mother". Chase got some input from his manager Lloyd Braun and decided to adapt it into a television series. He signed a development deal in 1995 with production company Brillstein-Grey and wrote the original pilot script. He drew heavily from his personal life and his experiences growing up in New Jersey, and has stated that he tried to apply his own "family dynamic to mobsters". For instance, the tumultuous relationship between series protagonist Tony Soprano and his mother Livia is partially based on Chase's relationship with his own mother. He was also in psychotherapy at the time and modeled the character of Jennifer Melfi after his own psychiatrist.


title: David Chase

text: Chase had been fascinated by organized crime and the mafia from an early age, witnessing such people growing up. He also was raised on classic gangster films such as "The Public Enemy" and the crime series "The Untouchables". The series is partly inspired by the Richard Boiardo family, a prominent New Jersey organized crime family when Chase was growing up, and partly on New Jersey's DeCavalcante family. He has mentioned American playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams as influences on the show's writing, and Italian director Federico Fellini as an important influence on the show's cinematic style.


title: David Chase

text: Chase and producer Brad Grey pitched "The Sopranos" to several networks; Fox showed interest but passed on it after Chase presented them the pilot script. They eventually pitched the show to Chris Albrecht, president of HBO Original Programming, who decided to finance a pilot episode which was shot in 1997.


title: David Chase

text: Chase directed it himself. They finished the pilot and showed it to HBO executives, but the show was put on hold for several months. During this time, Chase, who had long experienced frustration at being unable to break out of TV and into film, considered asking HBO for additional funding to shoot 45 more minutes of footage and release "The Sopranos" as a feature film. In December 1997, HBO decided to produce the series and ordered 12 more episodes for a 13-episode season.


title: David Chase

text: The show premiered on HBO on January 10, 1999, with the pilot, "The Sopranos". In 2022, David Chase and Phil Abrham created the 2022 Super Bowl spot for Commonwealth / McCann.


title: David Chase

text: Thirty episodes of "The Sopranos" are explicitly credited to Chase; however, as the show's creator, showrunner, and head writer, he had a major role in all the scripts, including producing and touching up each script's final draft. He also directed the pilot episode and the series finale (both of which he also wrote). Of the controversial final scene of the series finale, Chase said, "I have no interest in explaining, defending, reinterpreting, or adding to what is there."


title: David Chase

text: "Not Fade Away" (2012), Chase's feature film debut, was released on December 21, 2012. It centers on the lead singer of a teenage rock 'n' roll band (played by John Magaro) in 1960s New Jersey. Described as "a music-driven coming-of-age story," the film reunites Chase with James Gandolfini (former star of "Sopranos"), who co-stars as Magaro's father. Other cast members include Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald, Molly Price, Lisa Lampanelli, Jack Huston and Brad Garrett. Chase himself has described the film as about "a post-war, post-Depression-era parent who has given his kid every advantage that he didn't have growing up, but now can't help feeling jealous of the liberated, more adventurous destiny his son is able to enjoy." Another former "Sopranos" cast member, Steven Van Zandt, served as music supervisor and executive producer.


title: David Chase

text: Although Chase was "against [the movie] for a long time", "Deadline Hollywood" reported in March 2018 that New Line Cinema had purchased the script for "The Many Saints of Newark", a prequel to "The Sopranos" written by Chase and fellow screenwriter Lawrence Konner. Chase said of the storyline, which centers on the 1967 Newark riots and racial tensions between the Italian-American and African-American communities, "I was interested in Newark and life in Newark at that time... I used to go down there every Saturday night for dinner with my grandparents. But the thing that interested me most was Tony's boyhood. I was interested in exploring that." Chase served as producer, and in July 2018, Alan Taylor, who previously directed episodes of the series, was hired to direct the film. The film was initially scheduled to be released on September 25, 2020, however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, its release date was rescheduled to March 12, 2021 and later September 24, 2021 before ultimately being released on October 1, 2021.


title: David Chase

text: Chase has previously developed "A Ribbon of Dreams", a miniseries for HBO. According to an HBO press release, the series' pilot would "begin in 1913 and follow two men, one a college-educated mechanical engineer, the other a cowboy with a violent past, who form an unlikely producing partnership and together become pioneers and then powers for a time in motion pictures." Specifically, the two men would "begin as employees of D.W. Griffith, and then cross career paths with John Ford, John Wayne, Raoul Walsh, Bette Davis, Billy Wilder and others who gave shape to Hollywood as it grew from the age of rough-hewn silent Westerns, to the golden era of talkies and the studio system, to the auteur movement, to television, and finally to the present day." In 2021, Chase revealed that HBO agreed to proceed with the production of the miniseries but with "a cheesy budget", to which Chase refused to agree. Therefore, Chase and HBO parted ways on the project and "A Ribbon of Dreams" fell through.


title: David Chase

text: After graduating from NYU in 1968, Chase moved to California and married his high school sweetheart Denise Kelly. He is the father of actress Michele DeCesare, who appeared in six "The Sopranos" episodes as Hunter Scangarelo.


title: David Chase

text: Chase has stated that he "loathed and despised" television shows, watching only "The Sopranos" and movies. However, he has said in recent interviews that he watches "Boardwalk Empire" and "Mad Men", the work of former "Sopranos" writers and producers Terence Winter and Matthew Weiner, respectively. He said that he made those negative comments in part because he had been frustrated working within the confines of 1990s network television.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Boris Abramovich Berezovsky (; 23 January 1946 – 23 March 2013), also known as Platon Elenin, was a Russian business oligarch, government official, engineer and mathematician and a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s, when the country implemented privatization of state property. He profited from gaining control over assets, including the country's main television channel, Channel One. In 1997, "Forbes" estimated Berezovsky's wealth at US$3 billion. Berezovsky helped fund Unity, the political party that would form Vladimir Putin's first parliamentary base, and was elected to the Duma on Putin's slate in the 1999 Russian legislative election. However, following the Russian presidential election in March 2000, Berezovsky went into opposition and resigned from the Duma. Berezovsky would remain a vocal critic of Putin for the rest of his life.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In late 2000, after the Russian Deputy Prosecutor General demanded that Berezovsky appear for questioning, he did not return from abroad and moved to the UK, which granted him political asylum in 2003. After he moved to Britain, the Russian government took over his television assets, and he divested from other Russian holdings. In Russia, Berezovsky was later convicted "in absentia" of fraud and embezzlement. The first charges had been brought during Primakov's government in 1999. Despite an Interpol Red Notice for Berezovsky's arrest, Russia repeatedly failed to obtain the extradition of Berezovsky from Britain; the situation became a major point of diplomatic tension between the two countries.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 2012, Berezovsky lost a London High Court case he brought over the ownership of the major oil producer Sibneft, against Roman Abramovich, in which he sought over £3 billion in damages. The court concluded that Berezovsky had never been a co-owner of Sibneft.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky was found dead in his home, Titness Park, at Sunninghill, near Ascot in Berkshire, on 23 March 2013. A post-mortem examination found that his death was consistent with hanging and that there were no signs of a violent struggle. However, the coroner at the inquest into Berezovsky's death later recorded an open verdict.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Boris Abramovich Berezovsky was born in 1946, in Moscow, to Abram Markovich Berezovsky (1911–1979), a Jewish civil engineer in construction works, and his wife, Anna Aleksandrovna Gelman (22 November 1923 – 3 September 2013). He studied applied mathematics, receiving his doctorate in 1983. After graduating from the Moscow Forestry Engineering Institute in 1968, Berezovsky worked as an engineer from 1969 till 1987, serving as assistant research officer, research officer and finally the head of a department in the Institute of Control Sciences of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Berezovsky conducted research on optimization and control theory, publishing 16 books and articles between 1975 and 1989.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 1989, Berezovsky took advantage of the opportunities presented by perestroika to found LogoVAZ with Badri Patarkatsishvili and senior managers from Russian automobile manufacturer AvtoVAZ. LogoVAZ developed software for AvtoVAZ, sold Soviet-made cars and serviced foreign cars. The dealership profited from hyperinflation by taking cars on consignment and paying the producer at a later date when the money lost much of its value.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: One of Berezovsky's early endeavors was All-Russia Automobile Alliance (AVVA), a venture fund he formed in 1993 with Alexander Voloshin (Boris Yeltsin's future Chief of Staff) and AvtoVAZ Chairman Vladimir Kadannikov. Berezovsky controlled about 30% of the company, which raised nearly US$50 million from small investors through a bonded loan to build a plant producing a "people's car". The project did not collect sufficient funds for the plant and the funds were instead invested into AvtoVAZ production, while the debt to investors was swapped for equity. By 2000, AVVA held about one-third of AvtoVAZ.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 1994, Berezovsky was the target of a car bombing incident, but survived the assassination attempt, in which his driver was killed and he himself was injured. Alexander Litvinenko led the FSB investigation into the incident and linked the crime to the resistance of the Soviet-era AvtoVaz management to Berezovsky's growing influence in the Russian automobile market.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky's involvement in the Russian media began in December 1994, when he gained control over ORT Television (see Channel One (Russia)) to replace the failing Soviet Channel 1. He appointed the popular anchorman and producer Vladislav Listyev as CEO of ORT. Three months later Listyev was assassinated amid a fierce struggle for control of advertising sales. Berezovsky was questioned in the police investigation, among many others, but the killers were never found.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Under Berezovsky's stewardship, ORT became a major asset of the reformist camp as they prepared to face Communists and nationalists in the upcoming presidential elections.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: From 1995 to 1997, through the controversial loans-for-shares privatisation auctions, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili assisted Roman Abramovich in acquiring control of Sibneft, the sixth-largest Russian oil company, which constituted the bulk of his wealth. In an article in "The Washington Post" in 2000, Berezovsky revealed that financier George Soros declined an invitation to participate in the acquisition.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 1995, he played a key role in a management reshuffle at Aeroflot and participated in its corporatization, with his close associate Nikolai Glushkov becoming Aeroflot's CFO. In January 1998, it was announced that Sibneft would merge with Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos to create the third-largest oil company in the world. The merger was abandoned five months later amid falling oil prices.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky entered the Kremlin's inner circle in 1993 through arranging for the publication of Yeltsin's memoirs and befriended Valentin Yumashev, the President's ghost-writer.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In January 1996, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Berezovsky liaised with fellow oligarchs to form an alliance – which later became known as the "Davos Pact" – to bankroll Boris Yeltsin's campaign in the upcoming presidential elections. On his return to Moscow, Berezovsky met and befriended Tatyana Dyachenko, Yeltsin's daughter, According to a later profile by "The Guardian", "Berezovsky masterminded the 1996 re-election of Boris Yeltsin... He and his billionaire friends coughed up £140 million for Yeltsin's campaign".


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In the summer of 1996, Berezovsky had emerged as a key advisor to Yeltsin, allied with Anatoly Chubais, opposing a group of hardliners led by General Alexander Korzhakov. One night in June, in the drawing room of Club Logovaz, Berezovsky, Chubais and others plotted the ouster of Korzhakov and other hardliners. On 20 June 1996, Yeltsin fired Korzhakov and two other hawks, leaving the reformers' team in full control of the Kremlin. Firing them was controversial though, as Korzhakov a few days before caught two of Yeltsin's campaign organizers carrying US$500,000 cash without invoices out of the presidential administration building.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: On 16 June 1996, Yeltsin came first in the first round of elections after forging a tactical alliance with Gen. Alexander Lebed, who finished third. On 3 July, in the runoff vote, he beat the Communist Gennady Zyuganov. His victory was due largely to the support of the TV networks controlled by Gusinsky and Berezovsky (NTV and ORT) and the money from the business elite. "The New York Times" called Berezovsky the "public spokesman and chief lobbyist for this new elite, which moved from the shadows to respectability in a few short years".


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: On 17 October 1996, Yeltsin dismissed General Alexander Lebed from the position of National Security Advisor amid allegations that he was plotting a coup and secretly mustering a private army. Lebed promptly accused Berezovsky and Gusinsky of engineering his ouster, and formed a coalition with the disgraced General Alexander Korzhakov. The dismissal of Lebed, the architect of the Khasavyurt peace accord, left Yeltsin's Chechen policy in limbo. On 30 October 1996, in a political bombshell, Yeltsin named Ivan Rybkin as his new National Security Advisor and appointed Berezovsky Deputy Secretary in charge of Chechnya with a mandate to oversee the implementation of the Khasavyurt Accord: that is, the withdrawal of Russian forces, the negotiation of a peace treaty, and the preparation of a general election. On 19 December 1996, Berezovsky made headlines by negotiating the release of 21 Russian policeman held hostage by the warlord Salman Raduev amid efforts by radicals from both sides to torpedo peace negotiations.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: On 12 May 1997, Yeltsin and Maskhadov signed the Russian–Chechen Peace Treaty in the Kremlin. Speaking at a press conference in Moscow, Berezovsky outlined his priorities for the economic reconstruction of Chechnya, particularly the construction of a pipeline for transporting Azerbaijani oil. He called upon the Russian business community to contribute to the rebuilding of the republic, revealing his own donation of US$1 million (some sources mention US$2 million) for a cement factory in Grozny. This payment would come to haunt him years later, when he was accused of funding Chechen terrorists.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: After his dismissal from the Security Council, Berezovsky vowed to continue his activities in Chechnya as a private individual and maintained contact with Chechen warlords. He was instrumental in the release of 69 hostages, including two Britons, Jon James and Camilla Carr, whom he flew in his private jet to RAF Brize Norton in September 1998. In an interview with Thomas de Waal in 2005, he revealed the involvement of the British Ambassador to Russia, Sir Andrew Wood, and explained that his former negotiations counterpart, the Islamic militant leader Movladi Udugov, helped arrange the Britons' release.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky had a phone conversation with Movladi Udugov in the spring of 1999, six months before the beginning of fighting in Dagestan. A transcript of that conversation was leaked to a Moscow tabloid on 10 September 1999 and appeared to mention the would-be militants' invasion. It has been the subject of much speculation ever since. As Berezovsky explained later in interviews to de Waal and Goldfarb, Udugov proposed to coordinate the Islamists' incursion into Dagestan, so that a limited Russian response would topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish a new Islamic republic, which would be anti-American but friendly to Russia. Berezovsky said that he disliked the idea but reported Udugov's overture to prime-minister Stepashin. "Udugov and Basayev," he asserted, "conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov ... but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the Terek River. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war."


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In March 1997, Berezovsky and Tatyana Dyachenko flew to Nizhniy Novgorod to persuade the city's governor, Boris Nemtsov, to join Chubais' economic team, which became known as the government of Young Reformers. This was the last concerted political action of the "Davos Pact" (see above). Four months later the group split into two cliques fiercely competing for Yeltsin's favour. The clash was precipitated by the privatization auction of the communication utility Svyazinvest, in which Onexim bank of Chubais' loyalist Vladimir Potanin, backed by George Soros, competed with Gusinsky, allied with Spanish Telefónica. An initially commercial dispute swiftly developed into a contest of political wills between Chubais and Berezovsky.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Potanin's victory unleashed a bitter media war, in which ORT and NTV accused the Chubais group of fixing the auction in favor of Potanin, whereas Chubais charged Berezovsky with abusing his government position to advance his business interests. Both sides appealed to Yeltsin, who had proclaimed a new era of "fair" privatization "based on strict legislative rules and allowing no deviations". In the end, both sides lost. Berezovsky's media revealed a corrupt scheme whereby a publishing house owned by Onexim Bank paid Chubais and his group hefty advances for a book that was never written. The scandal led to a purge of Chubais' loyalists from the government. Chubais retaliated by persuading Yeltsin to dismiss Boris Berezovsky from the national security council. Berezovsky's service on the Security Council ended on 5 November 1997. Soros called the Berezovsky-Chubais clash a "historical event, in the reality of which I would have never believed, if I had not watched it myself. I saw a fight of the people in the boat floating towards the edge of a waterfall". He argued that the reformist camp never recovered from the wounds sustained in this struggle, setting the political stage for conservative nationalists, and eventually Vladimir Putin.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 1991, Berezovsky founded the "Triumph" award, bestowed upon outstanding Russian poets, musicians, artists, directors and ballet dancers.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: It is reported in the documentary series Captive that Boris Berezovsky, in 1998, was effective in the release of two English aid workers who had been held hostage for ransom in Chechnya for 14 months


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In the spring of 1998, Berezovsky made an unexpected political comeback, starting with his appointment, in April 1998, to the position of executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States. He emerged in the centre of a new informal power group – the "Family", a close-knit circle of advisers around Yeltsin, which included Yeltsin's daughter Tatyana and his chief of staff, Yumashev. It was rumoured that no important government appointment could happen without the Family's support. By 1999, the Family also included two of Berezovsky's associates, his former AVVA partner Alexander Voloshin, who replaced Yumashev as Yeltsin's chief of staff, and Roman Abramovich.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: The principal concern of the Family was finding an "electable" successor to Yeltsin to counter the presidential aspirations of the then prime minister, Yevgeny Primakov, who was leaning to more statist positions. Political battles between the Family and Primakov's camp dominated the two last years of Yeltsin's presidency.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In November 1998, in a televised press conference, five officers of the FSB, led by Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, revealed an alleged plot by their superiors to assassinate Berezovsky.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In April 1999, Russia's Prosecutor General, Yury Skuratov, opened an investigation into embezzlement at Aeroflot and issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky, who called the investigation politically motivated and orchestrated by Primakov. Nikolai Glushkov, Aeroflot's former General Director, later revealed that conflict with Primakov arose from the irritation that Berezovsky's management team caused in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, which Primakov headed before becoming prime minister, over firing of thousands of spies, who used Aeroflot as a front organization in Soviet times. The arrest warrant was dropped a week later, after Berezovsky submitted to questioning by the prosecutors. No charges were brought. Yeltsin sacked Primakov's government shortly thereafter and replaced him with Sergey Stepashin as new prime-minister.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Vladimir Putin's meteoric rise from relative obscurity to the Russian presidency in the course of a few short months of 1999 has been attributed to his intimacy with the "Family" as a protege of Berezovsky and Yumashev. By the end of 1999, the Family had persuaded Yeltsin to name Putin his political successor and candidate for the presidency.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky's acquaintance with Putin dated back to the early 1990s, when the latter, as Deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg, helped Logovaz establish a car dealership. They enjoyed friendly relations; on occasion, Berezovsky took Putin skiing with him in Switzerland.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In February 1999, when Berezovsky's political standing looked uncertain because of his clash with Primakov over Aeroflot, Putin, then Director of the FSB, made a bold gesture of friendship by showing up at a birthday party for Berezovsky's wife. "I absolutely do not care what Primakov thinks of me", Putin told Berezovsky on that night. That was the beginning of their political alliance. According to the Times, Spanish police discovered that on up to five occasions in 1999, Putin had secretly visited a villa in Spain belonging to Berezovsky.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In mid-July 1999, the Family dispatched Berezovsky to Biarritz, where Putin was vacationing, to persuade him to accept the position of prime minister and the role of heir apparent. On 9 August, Yeltsin sacked the government of Sergei Stepashin and appointed Putin prime minister, amid reports that Berezovsky had masterminded the reshuffle.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Putin's principal opponents were the former Prime Minister Evgeny Primakov and the Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov, backed by the Fatherland-All Russia alliance. To counter this group in the Duma elections of 1999, Berezovsky was instrumental in the creation, within the space of a few months, of the Unity party, with no ideology other than its support for Putin. Later, he disclosed that the source of Unity's funding, with Putin's knowledge and consent, was Aeroflot. In the 1999 election, Berezovsky campaigned as a Putin loyalist and won a seat in the Duma, representing the North Caucasian republic of Karachaevo-Cherkessia.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: During the Duma election campaign Berezovsky's ORT TV served as an extremely effective propaganda machine for the Putin camp, using aggressive attack reporting and programming to denigrate and ridicule Putin's rivals, Primakov and Luzhkov, tactics strongly criticized as undue interference with the media. But Unity got a surprisingly high score in the elections, paving the way for Putin's election victory in spring 2000.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky's disagreements with Putin became public three weeks into Putin's presidency. On 8 May 2000, Berezovsky and Abramovich were spotted together at Putin's invitation-only inauguration ball in Moscow. However, on 31 May, Berezovsky sharply attacked the constitutional reform proposed by the president, which would give the Kremlin the right to dismiss elected governors. On 17 July 2000, Berezovsky resigned from the Duma, saying he "did not want to be involved in the country's ruin and the restoration of an authoritarian regime". In August, Berezovsky's media attacked Putin for the way he handled the sinking of the "Kursk" submarine, blaming the death of 118 sailors on the Kremlin's reluctance to accept foreign help. In September, Berezovsky alleged that the Kremlin had attempted to expropriate his shares in ORT and announced that he would put his stake into a trust to be controlled by prominent intellectuals.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In an article in "The Washington Post" in 2000, Berezovsky argued that in the absence of a strong civil society and middle class it may sometimes be necessary for capitalists "to interfere directly in the political process" of Russia as a counterweight to ex-Communists "who hate democracy and dream of regaining lost positions." Berezovsky took legal action against the journalist Paul Klebnikov, who accused him of various crimes. In October, in an interview in "Le Figaro", Putin announced that he would no longer tolerate criticism of the government by media controlled by the oligarchs. "If necessary we will destroy those instruments that allow this blackmail", he declared. Responding to a question about Berezovsky, he warned that he had a "cudgel" in store for him. "The state has a cudgel in its hands that you use to hit just once, but on the head. We haven't used this cudgel yet. We've just brandished it... [But] the day we get really angry, we won't hesitate to use it."


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In the same month, Russian prosecutors revived the Aeroflot fraud investigation and Berezovsky was questioned as a witness. On 7 November 2000, Berezovsky, who was travelling abroad, failed to appear for further questioning and announced that he would not return to Russia because of what he described as "constantly intensifying pressure on me by the authorities and President Putin personally. Essentially," he said, "I'm being forced to choose whether to become a political prisoner or a political emigrant." Berezovsky claimed that Putin had made him a suspect in the Aeroflot case simply because ORT had "spoken the truth" about the sinking of the submarine Kursk. In early December, his associate Nikolai Glushkov was arrested in Moscow and Berezovsky dropped the proposal to put ORT stake in trust.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 2001, the Russian government made a systematic takeover of privately owned television networks, in the course of which Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Patarkatsishvili lost most of their media holdings, prompting one of them to warn of Russia "turning into a banana republic" in a letter to "The New York Times". In February, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili sold their stake in ORT to Roman Abramovich, who promptly ceded editorial control to the Kremlin. Berezovsky later claimed that there was a secret understanding that Nikolai Glushkov would be released from prison as part of that deal, a promise that was never fulfilled. In April, the government took control of Vladimir Gusinsky's NTV. Berezovsky then moved to acquire a controlling stake in a smaller network, TV-6, made Patarkatsishvili its Chairman, and offered employment to hundreds of locked out NTV journalists. Almost immediately, Patarkatshishvili became a target of police investigation and fled the country. In January 2002 a Russian arbitration court forced TV-6 (Russia) into liquidation. The liquidation of TV-6 was precipitated by LUKoil, a partly state-owned minority shareholder, using a piece of legislation that was almost immediately repealed.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 2001, Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili ended their involvement in Sibneft for a US$1.3 billion fee from Roman Abramovich. This transaction was the subject of a later dispute in the UK commercial courts, with Berezovsky alleging that he had been put under pressure to sell his stake to Abramovich at a fraction of the true value, an allegation that the court rejected.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 2006, Berezovsky sold the "Kommersant" ("The Businessman") newspaper and his remaining Russian assets.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: From his new home in the UK, Stanley House, where he and associates including Akhmed Zakayev, Alexander Litvinenko and Alex Goldfarb became known as "the London Circle" of Russian exiles, Berezovsky publicly stated that he was on a mission to bring down Putin "by force" or by bloodless revolution. He established the International Foundation for Civil Liberties, to "support the abused and the vulnerable in society – prisoners, national minorities and business people" in Russia and criticized Putin's record in the West.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky launched a concerted campaign to expose alleged misdeeds of Vladimir Putin, from suppressing freedom of speech to committing war crimes in Chechnya. He also accused Russia's FSB security service of staging the Moscow apartment bombings of 1999 in order to help Putin win the presidency. Many of these activities were funded through the New York-based International Foundation for Civil Liberties directed by Berezovsky's friend Alex Goldfarb.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky bought a Belgravia flat, the 125-acre Wentworth Park estate near Virginia Water in Surrey, and for a while owned the 172-acre Hascombe Court estate in Godalming. In 2012, he sold his Wentworth Park house.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: On 9 September 2003, Berezovsky was granted refugee status and political asylum by the British Home Office which he, according to Alex Goldfarb (the head of the New York-based "Foundation for Civil Liberties" funded by Berezovsky) welcomed.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: On 12 September 2003, judge Timothy Workman of Bow Street Magistrates' Court in central London dropped extradition proceedings against Berezovsky, ruling that it would be pointless to pursue the case as the granting of asylum status to Berezovsky made the proceedings redundant.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: However, when Berezovsky told Reuters in early February 2006 that he was working on plans to overthrow Russian President Vladimir Putin, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw warned the London-based Russian tycoon not to plot against the Russian President while living in Britain. His refugee status could be reviewed if he continued to make such remarks.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: After Berezovsky gained political asylum in Britain, the Russian authorities vigorously pursued various criminal charges against him. This culminated in two trials "in absentia". From London, Berezovsky called the trial, which sentenced him to six years in prison, "a farce". In June 2009, the Krasnogorsk City Court near Moscow sentenced Berezovsky to thirteen years imprisonment for defrauding AvtoVAZ of 58 million rubles (US$1.9 million) in the 1990s. Berezovsky was represented by a court-appointed lawyer.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In spite of Berezovsky's successes in Britain in fighting off extradition requests and exposing Russian court convictions as politically motivated (see below), some other jurisdictions cooperated with Russian authorities in seizing his property and targeting his financial transactions as money laundering. Berezovsky succeeded in overturning some of these actions. In July 2007, Brazilian prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Berezovsky in connection with his investment in the Brazilian football club Corinthians. However, a year later the Brazilian Supreme Court cancelled the order and stopped the investigation. On Russian requests, French authorities raided his villa in Nice in search of documents, and seized his two yachts parked on the French Riviera. However, some months later, the boats were released by a French court. Swiss prosecutors have been assisting their Russian colleagues for over a decade in investigating Berezovsky's finances.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky's meteoric enrichment and involvement in power struggles have been accompanied by allegations of various crimes from his opponents. After his falling out with Putin and exile to London, these allegations became the recurrent theme of official state-controlled media, earning him comparisons with Leon Trotsky and the "Nineteen Eighty-Four" character Emmanuel Goldstein.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 1996, "Forbes", an American business magazine, published an article by Paul Klebnikov entitled "Godfather of the Kremlin?" with the sub-heading "Power. Politics. Murder. Boris Berezovsky could teach the guys in Sicily a thing or two." The article linked Berezovsky to corruption in the car industry, to the Chechen mafia and to the murder of Vladislav Listyev. In 2000, the House of Lords gave Berezovsky and Nikolai Glushkov permission to sue for libel in the UK courts. Given that only 2,000 of the 785,000 copies sold worldwide were sold in the United Kingdom, this led numerous scholars to cite "the case" as an example of libel tourism. The case slowly proceeded until the claimants opted to settle when "Forbes" offered a partial retraction. The following statement appended to the article on the "Forbes" website summarises: 'On 6 March 2003, the resolution of the case was announced in the High Court in London. "Forbes" stated in open court that (1) it was not the magazine's intention to state that Berezovsky was responsible for the murder of Listiev, only that he had been included in an inconclusive police investigation of the crime; (2) there is no evidence that Berezovsky was responsible for this or any other murder; (3) in light of the English court's ruling, it was wrong to characterize Berezovsky as a mafia boss; and (4) the magazine erred in stating that Glouchkov had been convicted for theft of state property in 1982. Klebnikov elaborated his allegations in his 2000 book "Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the looting of Russia" (the 2001 edition was titled "Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism").


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 2006, a UK court awarded Berezovsky £50,000 in libel damages against the Russian private bank Alfa-Bank and its Chairman, Mikhail Fridman. Fridman had claimed on a Russian television programme that could be watched in the UK that Berezovsky had threatened him when the two men were competitors for control of the Kommersant publishing house, and that making threats was Berezovsky's usual way of conducting business. The jury rejected the defendants' claim that Fridman's allegations were true. Berezovsky accepted the apology and withdrew his libel suit.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In March 2010, Berezovsky, represented by Desmond Browne QC, won a libel case and was awarded £150,000 damages by the High Court in London over allegations that he had been behind the murder of Alexander Litvinenko. The allegations had been broadcast by the Russian state channel RTR Planeta in April 2007 on its programme "Vesti Nedeli", which could be viewed from the UK. In his judgement, Mr Justice Eady stated: "I can say unequivocally that there is no evidence before me that Mr Berezovsky had any part in the murder of Mr Litvinenko. Nor, for that matter, do I see any basis for reasonable grounds to suspect him of it." Berezovsky had sued both the channel and a man called Vladimir Terluk, whom Mr Justice Eady agreed was the man who had been interviewed in silhouette by the programme under the pseudonym 'Pyotr'. Terluk had claimed that to further his UK asylum application Berezovsky had approached him to fabricate a murder plot against himself, and that Litvinenko knew of this. Mr Justice Eady accepted that Terluk had not himself alleged Berezovsky's involvement in the murder of Litvinenko, but considered that his own allegations were themselves serious and that there was no truth in any of them. As RTR did not participate in the proceedings, Terluk was left to defend the case himself, receiving significant assistance (as the judge noted) from the Russian prosecutor's office.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: "The Guardian" described the 2010 libel case as "almost anarchic at times as officials from the Russian prosecutors' office repeatedly intervened despite not being party to proceedings. So obvious was their intention that when one of their mobile phones went off in court one day, Desmond Browne quipped: 'That must be Mr Putin on the line.'" The defendants appealed to the Court of Appeal but the appeal was dismissed, Lord Justice Laws giving a judgment with which the Chancellor of the High Court and Lady Justice Rafferty agreed. The Lord Justice described a witness statement of Andrei Lugovoi, newly adduced by the defendants, as 'not sensibly capable of belief'.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In 2011, Berezovsky brought a civil case against Roman Abramovich in the High Court of Justice in London, accusing Abramovich of blackmail, breach of trust and breach of contract, and seeking over £3 billion in damages. This became the largest civil court case in British legal history.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky's claimed past ownership of Sibneft – which constituted the bulk of his fortune – was put into question by Abramovich, who in a statement to the High Court in London asserted that Berezovsky had never owned shares in Sibneft, and that US$1.3 billion paid in 2001 ostensibly for his stake in the company was actually in recognition of Berezovsky's "political assistance and protection" during the creation of Sibneft in 1995. The hearings, which started on 3 October 2011, examined Berezovsky's US$5.5 billion claim against Abramovich for damages arising from the sale of his assets under alleged "threats and intimidation".


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: On 31 August 2012, the High Court found for Abramovich. The High Court judge stated that because of the nature of the evidence, the case hinged on whether to believe Berezovsky or Abramovich's evidence. In her ruling, the judge observed: "On my analysis of the entirety of the evidence, I found Mr. Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes. ... I regret to say that the bottom line of my analysis of Mr. Berezovsky's credibility is that he would


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: have said almost anything to support his case." She ruled that the monies paid represented a final payment in discharge of all obligations.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky conducted business with Neil Bush, the younger brother of the US President George W. Bush. Berezovsky was an investor in Bush's Ignite! Learning, an educational software corporation, since at least 2003. In 2005, Neil Bush met with Berezovsky in Latvia, causing tension with Russia due to Berezovsky's fugitive status. Neil Bush was also seen with Berezovsky in his box at an Arsenal F.C. match at the Emirates Stadium in London. There had been speculation that the relationship might have become a cause of tension in Russo-American bilateral relations.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: It had been speculated that Berezovsky's wealth may have been depleted with the onset of the late 2000s recession. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, in 2011 his net worth was about US$900 million.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In September 2005, Berezovsky said in an interview with the BBC: "I'm sure that Putin doesn't have the chance to survive, even to the next election in 2008. I am doing everything in my power to limit his time frame, and I am really thinking of returning to Russia after Putin collapses, which he will." In January 2006, Berezovsky stated in an interview to a Moscow-based radio station that he was working on overthrowing the administration of Vladimir Putin by force. Berezovsky also accused Putin of being "a gangster" and the "terrorist number one".


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky declared that he was plotting the overthrow of President Putin on 13 April 2007 during an interview "The Guardian" conducted: "We need to use force to change this regime. It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." He also admitted that during the last six years he had struggled hard to "destroy the positive image of Putin" and said that "Putin has created an authoritarian regime against the Russian constitution. ... I don't know how it will happen, but authoritarian regimes only collapse by force."


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Soon after Berezovsky's 2007 statement, Garry Kasparov, a figure in the opposition movement The Other Russia and leader of the United Civil Front, wrote the following on his website: "Berezovsky has lived in emigration for many years and no longer has significant influence upon the political processes which take place in Russian society. His extravagant proclamations are simply a method of attracting attention. Furthermore, for the overwhelming majority of Russian people he was a political symbol of the 90s, one of the 'bad blokes' enriching themselves behind the back of president Yeltsin. The informational noise around Berezovsky was specifically beneficial for the Kremlin, which was trying to compromise Russia's real opposition. Berezovsky has not had and does not have any relation to Other Russia or the United Civil Front." Berezovsky responded in June 2007 by saying that "there is not one significant politician in Russia whom he has not financed" and that this included members of Other Russia. The managing director of the United Civil Front, in turn, said that the organization would consider suing Berezovsky over these allegations, but the lawsuit has never been brought before the court.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: The Russian Prosecutor General's Office had launched a criminal investigation against Berezovsky to determine whether his comments could be considered a "seizure of power by force", as outlined in the Russian Criminal Code. If convicted, an offender faces up to twenty years imprisonment. The British Foreign Office denounced Berezovsky's statements, warning him that his status of a political refugee might be reconsidered, should he continue to make similar remarks. Furthermore, Scotland Yard had announced that it would investigate whether Berezovsky's statements violated the law. However, in the following July, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Berezovsky would not face charges in the UK for his comments. Kremlin officials called it a "disturbing moment" in Anglo-Russian relations.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In September 2005, the former president of Ukraine, Leonid Kravchuk, accused Berezovsky of having financed Viktor Yushchenko's 2004 Ukrainian presidential election campaign, and provided copies of documents showing money transfers from companies he claimed were controlled by Berezovsky to companies controlled by Yuschenko's official backers. Berezovsky claimed that he met Yushchenko's representatives in London before the election, and that the money was transferred from his companies, but he declined to confirm or deny that the companies that received the money were used in Yushchenko's campaign. Financing of election campaigns by foreign citizens is illegal in Ukraine. In November 2005, Berezovsky also claimed he had heavily financed Ukraine's Orange Revolution (that had followed the presidential election). In September 2007, Berezovsky launched lawsuits against two Ukrainian politicians, Oleksandr Tretyakov, a former presidential aid, and David Zhvaniya, a former emergencies minister. Berezovsky was suing the men for nearly US$23 million, accusing them of misusing the money he had allocated in 2004 to fund the Orange Revolution. Yushchenko has denied Berezovsky financed his election campaign.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky called on Ukrainian business to support Yushchenko in the 2010 presidential election of January 2010 as a guarantor of debarment of property redistribution after the election. On 10 December 2009, the Ukrainian minister of interior affairs Yuriy Lutsenko stated that if the Russian interior ministry requested it, Berezovsky would be detained upon arriving in Ukraine.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In February 2012, in an interview for the independent Russian Dozhd channel Berezovsky reiterated that he had personally provided approximately $50 millions to the Ukrainian Orange revolution. () and Oleksandr Tretiakov were among the ones who allegedly received money.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In October 2005, Latvian Prime Minister Aigars Kalvitis signed a decree placing Boris Berezovsky on the list of "personae non gratae". The exact reasons for blacklisting Berezovsky were not disclosed. Kalvitis called Berezovsky a "threat" to national security. Previously, the National Security Council of Latvia took the decision to recommend that exiled Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky be barred from traveling to Latvia. The decision to bar the one-time Russian oligarch came swiftly after Berezovsky's trip to Riga in September 2005. Berezovsky was in Riga along with Neil Bush, the brother of the U.S. president, to discuss a project with Latvian businessmen.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: The Baltic News Service quoted the former Russian oligarch as saying that he believes Latvia's decision to declare him "persona non-grata" was the result of intense pressure by Russia and structures linked with George Soros, the U.S. business magnate who had had acrimonious relations with Berezovsky. Kalvitis however denied the theory that the banning came on pressure from the Kremlin or the White House.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: According to Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officer in London was preparing to assassinate Berezovsky with a binary weapon in September 2003. This alleged plot was reported to British police. Hazel Blears, then a Home Office Minister, said that inquiries made [into these claims] were "unable to either substantiate this information or find evidence of any criminal offences having been committed".


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In June 2007, Berezovsky said he fled Britain on the advice of Scotland Yard, amid reports that he was the target of an assassination attempt by a suspected Russian hitman. On 18 July 2007, the British tabloid "The Sun" reported that the alleged would-be assassin was captured by the police at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. They reported that the suspect, arrested by the anti-terrorist police after being tracked for a week by MI5, was deported back to Russia when no weapons were found and there was not enough evidence to charge him with any offence. In addition, they said British police placed a squad of uniformed officers around Akhmed Zakayev's house in north London, and also phoned Litvinenko's widow, Marina, to urge her to take greater security precautions.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky again accused Vladimir Putin of being behind a plot to assassinate him. The Kremlin had denied similar claims in the past.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: According to the interview given by a high-ranking British security official on BBC Two in July 2008, the alleged Russian agent, known as "A", was of Chechen nationality. He was identified by "Kommersant" as the Chechen mobster Movladi Atlangeriyev; after returning to Russia, Atlangeriyev was forcibly disappeared in January 2008 by unknown men in Moscow.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Alexander Litvinenko, one of Berezovsky's closest associates, was murdered in London in November 2006 with a rare radioactive poison, Polonium 210. The British authorities charged a former FSB officer and head of security at ORT, Andrey Lugovoy, with the murder and requested his extradition, which Russia refused. Several Russian diplomats were expelled from the UK over the case. The UK government has not publicly expressed a view on the matter, but allegations that the murder was sponsored by the Russian state have been expressed by "sources in the UK government", according to the BBC, and by officials of the US Department of State, as revealed by WikiLeaks; they were reflected in a 2008 resolution by the US Congress. The intricate details of the murder, the relationship between Litvinenko and Berezosvsky, and the implications of the case have been described in the 2007 book, "Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB" by Alex Goldfarb with Marina Litvinenko.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: An alternative, more dubious narrative —– that the murder was orchestrated by Berezovsky and his associate Alex Goldfarb with the aim of "framing" the Russian government and discrediting it on the global stage – has aired in Russian state-funded media by Lugovoy, by Litvinenko's Italy-based father, by Nikita Chekulin and by Russian officials. Berezovsky won a UK libel suit against Russian State Television over these allegations in 2010 (see above), following which he commented, "I trust the conclusions of the British investigators that the trail leads to Russia and I hope that one day justice will prevail."


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: In the evening of Tuesday, 12 February 2008, Georgia's richest man, billionaire Arkady "Badri" Patarkatsishvili, a close friend and long-time business partner of Berezovsky, collapsed and died in his bedroom after a family dinner at Downside Manor, his mansion in Leatherhead, Surrey, England, at the age of 52.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Patarkatsishvili, who as a presidential candidate had also been campaigning to oust Georgia's President Mikhail Saakashvili, spent his last day in the City of London office of international law firm Debevoise and Plimpton. He was preparing along with his lawyer Lord Goldsmith QC and fellow exiles, the Russians Nikolai Glushkov and Yuli Dubov. Shortly after dining at Downside Manor, Patarkatsishvili told his family he felt unwell and went upstairs to his bedroom where he was found unconscious after a heart attack. Resuscitation attempts were unsuccessful. As in any other case of unexpected death, Surrey police treated the case as "suspicious" and launched an official investigation. Preliminary reports indicated a heart attack as the cause of death.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: On 23 March 2013, Berezovsky was found dead at his home, Titness Park, at Sunninghill, near Ascot in Berkshire. His body was found by a bodyguard in a locked bathroom, with a ligature around his neck.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: His death was announced in a post on Facebook by his son-in-law. Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer who had represented Berezovsky, wrote that he may have committed suicide, adding that Berezovsky had fallen into debt after losing the lawsuit against Abramovich, and had spent the final few months of his life selling his possessions to cover his court costs. Berezovsky was also said to have recently been depressed and to have isolated himself from friends. He reportedly suffered from depression and was taking antidepressant drugs; a day prior to his death he told a reporter in London that he had nothing left to live for.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: The Thames Valley Police classified his death as "unexplained" and launched a formal investigation into the circumstances behind it. Specialists in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials were deployed to Berezovsky's home as a "precaution". These specialists later "found nothing of concern".


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: A post-mortem examination carried out by the Home Office pathologist found the cause of death was consistent with hanging and there was nothing pointing to a violent struggle. At the March 2014 inquest into the death, however, Berezovsky's daughter Elizaveta introduced a report by German pathologist Bernd Brinkmann, with whom she had shared the autopsy photos, noting that the ligature mark on her father's neck was circular rather than V-shaped as is commonly the case with hanging victims, and called the coroner's attention to a statement by one of the responding paramedics who found it strange that Berezovsky's face was purple, rather than pale as hanging victims usually are. The body also had a fresh wound on the back of the head and a fractured rib (injuries police believed Berezovsky could have suffered in the process of falling as he hanged himself). An unidentified fingerprint was found near the body, and one paramedic's radiation alarm sounded as they entered the house.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Following the inquest the coroner, Peter Bedford, recorded an open verdict commenting, "I am not saying Mr Berezovsky took his own life, I am not saying Mr Berezovsky was unlawfully killed. What I am saying is that the burden of proof sets such a high standard it is impossible for me to say." He specifically cited the Brinkmann report as casting reasonable doubt on the suicide theory, even though Brinkmann had not been able to personally examine the body.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky was buried on 8 May 2013 in a private ceremony at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. The burial timing had been changed on several occasions to try to avoid interest from the Russian media.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: After Berezovsky's death, a spokesman for President Putin reported that he had sent a letter to the Russian president, asking for permission to return to Russia and asking "forgiveness for his mistakes." Some of Berezovsky's associates doubted the letter's existence, claiming that it was out of character. However, his girlfriend at the time, Katerina Sabirova, later confirmed in an interview that he did in fact send the letter:


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: It was claimed by anonymous sources that rival Roman Abramovich delivered the letter to Putin personally, having received an apology from Berezovsky himself. Both Putin's chief of staff, Sergei Ivanov, and Abramovich's spokesman alluded to the letter being passed by a "certain person", but did not go into details due to the personal nature of the issue.


title: Boris Berezovsky (businessman)

text: Berezovsky was a doctor of technical sciences and author of many academic papers and studies such as "Binary relations in multi-criteria optimizations" and "Multi-criteria optimization: mathematical aspects". In the mathematical review index MathSciNet, B.A. Berezovsky is credited with 16 publications from 1975 to 1989 on operations research and mathematical programming, earning 9 citations in other publications. Most cited is the book "The Problem of Optimal Choice" with A.V. Gnedin (Nauka, Moscow 1984), devoted to secretary problems.