Free Death of a Dissident by Alex Goldfarb Page A

via a small foyer, in the middle of which was a little burbling Baroque fountain.
    “What do you think, would George be interested in an investment project of about $50 million?” Boris began before I even got in the door.
    After the fiasco over the loan for ORT, it seemed pointless to go to Soros with another proposal like this, but before I had a chance to say a word Boris began throwing information at me. “This time, I don’t have an unprofitable television station but a real, profit-making oil company, vertically integrated, with an oil field, a refinery, and an export terminal—a crown jewel of the Soviet energy complex. We are gearing up for the auction and are just a bit short of cash. So I’d like to propose to George to go into this with me 50-50.”
    “Wait a minute,” I objected. “They don’t allow foreigners into these auctions.”
    “Not a problem,” exclaimed Boris. “A Russian legal entity is set up, with George having 50 percent minus one share. By world standards, the oil reserves here would be worth maybe $5 billion. Less the political risk, of course. Tell George he must agree. Here’s thedocumentation package. This is really urgent. I could fly to New York at any minute.”
    I carried the offer to New York and was surprised to discover that Soros was willing to consider it. He pondered it for two weeks. I watched him, making bets with myself: would he cross the line and join in the gold rush of robber capitalism?
    George Soros does not hide the fact that he is made up of two personalities: a shrewd fund manager acting in the interests of his shareholders, and a social reformer who strives to change the world for the better. To avoid a conflict of interest, he prefers not to do business in those countries where he does philanthropy. But this was an opportunity of a lifetime.
    In the end, he declined. “This package is worth nothing,” he said. “I’ll bet you a hundred to one that the Communists will win and cancel all these auctions. And my advice to Boris is this: he should not do it either. He is putting into this all he has got, and he will lose it all.”
    Soros was not alone in this evaluation. Boris went around to all his Western and Eastern partners, from the bosses of Mercedes in Germany to the owners of Daewoo in Korea, but nobody wanted to buy into Sibneft. Everyone thought that Chubais’s gambit with dubious auctions would not last a month after Yeltsin’s departure, which seemed all but certain.
    In the end, Boris did find a partner, an unknown oil trader named Roman (Roma) Abramovich. Roma was a shy, rosy-cheeked fellow of twenty-nine, slightly pudgy, who wore jeans and a sweater and who drove to The Club on a motorcycle. Where he got the $50 million no one knew.
    “Let me introduce you,” said Boris one day at The Club when I returned with Soros’s rejection. “This is Roma, my new partner. He is very interested in philanthropy, and I think we need to put him on the board of the new foundation.”
    Boris was talking about my latest project, the Russian Society for Science and Education, which I was trying to organize with donations from various budding oligarchs.
    I started my spiel about the Gilded Age and the pillars of Americanphilanthropy. Roma listened politely, lowering his gaze and smiling shyly in response to Boris’s cooing that he was one of those young people Russia needed “to make it into a normal country.”
    “Well, what do you think? A wonderful guy, we need more like him!” Boris enthused after Roma left without ever having said a word.
    Boris would come to regret bitterly the day that he brought Roma into his circle: five years later, taken control of Sibneft and ORT, the shy young man would become the next gray eminence of the Kremlin and the richest man in Russia.

CHAPTER 4 T HE D AVOS P ACT
    January 9-18, 1996: Chechen rebels led by the warlord Salman Raduyev attack the town of Kizlyar, Dagestan, inside the Russian border. They take with them