Badri Patarkatsishvili was at the centre of an intricate web of relationships linking some of Russia’s most controversial figures.

The Georgian-born businessman, worth an estimated £6 billion, made his fortune in the chaotic Russia of the 1990s in partnership with Boris Berezovsky, the oligarch who advised President Yeltsin. The two men formed Logovaz, linked to one of Russia’s biggest car firms, Avtovaz, and controlled the country’s most influential television station, ORT. They also made fortunes from the privatisation of the oil company Sibneft together with Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea Football Club.

Mr Patarkatsishvili had a stake with Mr Berezovsky in Aeroflot, the Russian national airline.

They also held shares in RusAl, the aluminium giant owned by Oleg Deripaska, who rivals Mr Abramovich as Russia’s richest man.

Like Mr Berezovsky, Mr Patarkatsishvili fled Russia after President Putin turned against the oligarchs who surrounded Mr Yeltsin. The Russian authorities charged them with theft from Avtovaz and with plotting the escape from custody of Nikolai Glushkov, a deputy director of Aeroflot, who had been accused of fraud in 2001. Mr Patarkatsishvili, 52, had a six-hour business meeting with Mr Berezovsky and Mr Glushkov in London on Tuesday, the day he died.

The man who was given the task of springing Mr Glushkov from prison was Andrei Lugovoy, then head of security at ORT and responsible for protecting Mr Berezovsky and Mr Patarkatsishvili. Mr Lugovoy is wanted by the Crown Prosecution Service for the murder in 2006 of Alexander Litvinenko, the dissident former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent who was poisoned with radioactive polonium210 in London.

Mr Lugovoy, a former KGB officer, is now a member of Russia’s parliament. He said that he was shocked at news of Mr Patarkatsishvili’s death and said that they had been friends for 15 years. “I am absolutely taken aback since we spoke about five days ago and he did not seem as if he was unwell . . . He did a lot for me,” Mr Lugovoy told Russia Today television.

Mr Lugovoy and Mr Patarkatsishvili were seen socialising together in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, shortly before Mr Litvinenko was poisoned. Mr Litvinenko also knew the businessman.

Sources in Tbilisi have told The Times that he stayed at Mr Patarkatsishvili’s residence in Georgia en route to Turkey when he fled Russia to seek asylum in London in 2000. Russian prosecutors claim that Mr Litvinenko also visited Mr Patarkatsishvili as well as Mr Berezovsky, his former employer, in London soon before he was poisoned. They accuse Mr Berezovsky of plotting the murder as part of a plot to wreck Mr Putin’s international reputation.

Mr Patarkatsishvili moved to Georgia in 2001, where he set up the independent Imedi TV station and bought businesses as diverse as Dinamo Tbilisi football club and the Borjomi mineral water company in the former Soviet republic.

A love of football led him to consider a takeover bid for West Ham United in September 2006. He was also an investor in a company that owned the “economic rights” to the Argentina internationals Carlos Tévez and Javier Mascherano, who joined West Ham from the Brazilian club Corinthians at the same time.

The tycoon helped to finance the Rose Revolution that swept Mikhail Saakashvili to power in 2003. The two men later fell out and he accused Georgia’s pro-Western President of turning into a dictator. Mr Putin loathes Mr Saakashvili, who was seeking to pull Georgia out of Russia’s orbit and towards membership of the EU and Nato. The Kremlin has imposed a 16-month transport blockade between Russia and Georgia, which has accused Moscow of plotting to overthrow Mr Saakashvili. Mr Patarkatsishvili funded an opposition campaign against Mr Saakashvili in the autumn and stood against him in Georgia’s presidential election last month. He accused the Georgian authorities in December of plotting to have him killed in London and released a covert tape-recording of negotiations between a person he said was a Chechen warlord, Uvais Akhmadov, and an official from the Georgian Interior Ministry.

Georgia accused the oligarch of plotting a coup after airing a tape of him offering a $100 million (£50 million) bribe to a police chief to support opposition demonstrators. Mr Patarkatsishvili hired Lord Goldsmith, QC, the Attorney-General under Tony Blair, to represent him as the authorities in Tbilisi investigated his business interests. Lord Bell was Mr Patarkatsishvili’s spokesman in business affairs. He also coordinated Mr Berezovsky’s media campaign as Mr Litvinenko lay dying in a London hospital.

When Georgian police dispersed protests in November, special forces stormed Imedi TV’s studios and forced it to shut. Mr Patarkatsishvili owned 51 per cent of Imedi but signed over management control of his stake in October to News Corporation as he prepared his campaign against Mr Saakashvili. News Corp, which also owns The Times, owns the other 49 per cent of Imedi.

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