There was also a fresh wound on the back of Berezovsky’s head and a fractured rib, as well as the presence of an unidentified fingerprint on the shower rail. The police case was that Berezovsky sustained the injuries when his body fell from the shower rail and concluded that “we are content and believe Mr Berezovsky took his own life”. But Elizaveta offered the inquest a very different perspective: “I can think of many people interested in my father’s death,” she said. Asked by Bedford if she knew who these people were, she replied: “Yes, I think we all know.” The Russian government had wanted to silence her father, she said, and she believed they had succeeded. “He was saying that Putin was a danger to the whole world and you can see that now,” she said.

As a result of the conflicting testimony, the coroner said he could not determine beyond reasonable doubt the cause of Berezovsky’s death. He recorded an open verdict.

Several senior counter-terror officers, who had been monitoring continual threats against Berezovsky for years, told BuzzFeed News that they would always suspect that he had, finally, been murdered. Walton, Scotland Yard’s former counter-terror commander, said that behind the scenes his department had investigated Berezovsky’s death “very thoroughly” and had not been able to find any evidence of murder, but he would never be able to shake “lingering doubt”. Davenport, another counter-terror officer involved in the Berezovsky case, said that in some cases where Russian assassins “have effectively killed someone and faked suicide”, they do “such a good job of it that medically and legally, you’ve got to say that’s where it all points to” – despite intelligence to the contrary. Sophisticated agents were also adept at planting evidence to make a person appear to have been “saying they feel down, anxious, like they’re losing control” in preparation for a staged suicide, he said.

Behind the scenes, BuzzFeed News has learned, British spies received intelligence from their American counterparts suggesting that Berezovsky was assassinated. Though they could not assert with certainty that the killing was carried out on orders from the Kremlin, the evidence linking the oligarch’s death to Russia was considered compelling, four US intelligence sources said.

Young was, by now, a shadow of his former self: hounded day and night by angry creditors, ever more terrified about the threats he believed he faced, and fighting tooth and nail to suppress the secrets of his dealings with Berezovsky. After seven years, 65 divorce hearings, and three months in prison for contempt, he had still failed to provide a satisfactory explanation for the sudden disappearance of his fortune. The High Court judge was forced to make his final ruling blind. “Doing the best I can, I find that he still has £45 million hidden from this court,” the judge ruled. Young was ordered to give Michelle half of that, and several million more to cover her legal costs. The judge acknowledged that “the Wife will have difficulties in enforcing my order” but told Young “this debt will exist for all time”.



Stephen Jones, the offshore lawyer who arranged the Project Moscow buyout, had remained close to Young and said the hard-drinking, high-living wheeler-dealer had in 2014 made the surprise move of turning to religion. The pair would go to an evening church service every Wednesday and then would have dinner at Jones’ home. But anyone who knew Young could see that he was not at peace – Jones observed on several occasions that he was being tailed by a “rough, unshaven man”, and Brown said Young seemed increasingly “shifty” and “desperate”.

When the awful news finally came on a cold morning in December, Michelle was the first in Scot Young's family to hear it. Shaking all over, she came into her youngest daughter’s bedroom and said: “Your father has jumped off a building.” Sasha didn’t believe it. A few days before, her father had called to tell her he was checking himself into a psychiatric unit to stay out of danger, and he was not due out for several more days.