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Roman Abramovich has won his $6.5bn (€5.1bn) legal battle with his former mentor and business partner.
The Chelsea FC owner, one of the richest and most private men in the world, was accused of blackmailing Boris Berezovsky into selling his interests in the oil company and aluminium conglomerate they founded together at a knock-down price.
Mr Abramovich in turn, accused Mr Berezovsky of extorting money from him for political influence and claimed he had paid him $1.3bn (€1.03bn) to buy his freedom when Mr Berezovsky fell out of favour with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Mrs Justice Gloster said that because of the nature of the factual issues "the case was one where, in the ultimate analysis, the court had to decide whether to believe Mr Berezovsky or Mr Abramovich". In a lengthy summary of her judgment, she said: "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.
"At times the evidence which he gave was deliberately dishonest; sometimes he was clearly making his evidence up as he went along in response to the perceived difficulty in answering the questions in a manner consistent with his case; at other times, I gained the impression that he was not necessarily being deliberately dishonest, but had deluded himself into believing his own version of events.
"On occasions he tried to avoid answering questions by making long and irrelevant speeches, or by professing to have forgotten facts which he had been happy to record in his pleadings or witness statements. He embroidered and supplemented statements in his witness statements, or directly contradicted them."
The judge said "the burden of proof was on Mr Berezovsky to establish his claims".
The judge said she had concluded that "in the absence of corroboration, Mr Berezovsky's evidence frequently could not be relied upon, where it differed from that of Mr Abramovich, or other witnesses".
Cynical
She added: "I regret to say that the bottom line of my analysis of Mr Berezovsky's credibility is that he would have said almost anything to support his case."
Announcing that she found Mr Abramovich to be a truthful and reliable witness, the judge said she rejected the "serious allegations" that he was a thoroughly "dishonest and cynical witness" who deliberately called witnesses whom he knew would give "as they were intended to do, thoroughly untrue evidence designed only to mislead the court".
The judge added: "Neither the evidence, nor my analysis of it, supported that allegation."
Outside court Mr Berezovsky accused the judge of rewriting Russian history.
In a year-long case that became highly personal, one of Mr Abramovich's associates even accused Mr Berezovsky of sending a threatening text message to a potential witness, signed "Dr Evil", the pantomime villain from the James Bond spoof films, Austin Powers. The message was never produced.
Mr Abramovich's lawyers also accused Mr Berezovsky of "truly prodigious powers of self-deception" and giving evidence coloured by his "vanity and his self-obsession". © (Daily Telegraph, London)
Irish Independent
