The oligarchy reduced

Eulogies always flow for the recently deceased and despite fulsome praise for those close to him (what else would they say?), Boris Berezovsky cannot be said to be a pleasant individual they way he defrauded the Russian state and impoverished millions in the 1990s.  Acting like a robber baron, he bought stakes in key industries at ridiculous knockdown prices through the corrupt cultivation of contacts at the Kremlin, growing wealthy as many Russians were laid off.  He came unstuck after backing the wrong horse in Vladimir Putin, who punished him for the critical commentary Berezovsky's TV channel offered in the wake of the Kursk submarine sinking and the botched rescue in 2001.
I can't say I feel much sympathy for him.  Coming from a humble background, he lived in opulence of which few of us could dream and even if he did face 'financial ruin' he still had assets of over £200 million in property and would be more comfortable than 95% of the British population.  He had become too accustomed to luxury and had forgotten his roots, if suicide proves the verdict at the inquest.  Fellow oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been far more dignified in his confinement (safer maybe) while Berezovsky has enjoyed the best things in life.  The tragi-comic aspect of his passing was that after a paramedic pedimeter was set off, his house was investigated for radiation by a specialist police squad, after the Alexander Litvinenko death by polonium affair - an undignified epitaph.