Brazil court issues arrest warrant for Boris Berezovsky

A court in Brazil issued an arrest warrant for Kremlin foe Boris Berezovsky on charges of money laundering, ITAR-Tass reported yesterday.

The arrest warrant was issued on Thursday by the federal court in Sao Paolo in a case involving the Media Sports Investment group (MSI), a sponsor of the Corinthians soccer club, the Russian state-owned news agency reported.

In Moscow, a trial in absentia against Berezovsky opened on Thursday in a separate case. Berezovsky, a fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and who has asylum in Britain, is accused of embezzling millions of dollars from Aeroflot.

Berezovsky calls the case a politically motivated farce.

The case in Brazil dates back to 2004, when MSI spent millions of dollars acquiring new players, which raised the interest of Sao Paulo state prosecutors.

They wanted to know more about the investment group, its Iranian-born president and the origin of the money he and his unidentified partners injected into the club.

"Who would invest this much money in a soccer team that has been in the red for years?" said state prosecutor Jose Reinaldo Guimaraes Carneiro when he started his investigation in February 2005. "And why?"

Later that year, he said the answers pointed to the Russian tycoon and money laundering.

"There is enough circumstantial evidence indicating that the MSI-Corinthians partnership is being used for the laundering of money, most of which was received from Boris Berezovsky, who is wanted [by Russian authorities] for crimes committed against the Russian financial system," Carneiro said in the summary of a 15-page report released after the investigation.