Over a flamboyant career which saw him become the richest man in Georgia, with $6bn, Badri Patarkatsishvili acquired a lot of enemies. But he also had friends – most notably Russia’s foremost political intriguer, Boris Berezovsky.
It was a meeting with Berezovsky in the early 1990s that transformed Patarkatsishvili’s fortunes. Born in Tbilisi in 1955, he started in business in the late 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev introduced perestroika.
In 1990 he became the director in the Caucasus for Berezovsky’s budding car dealership, Logovaz. In 1993 he moved to Moscow. The pair’s partnership blossomed, taking in oil, TV, aluminum and – it was whispered – arms.
"He was involved in very many deals at that time. He made big enemies," Zaza Gachechiladze, editor of the Georgian Messenger, told the Guardian yesterday. "If he was killed the most likely explanations are these old rivalries."
In less than 10 years Patarkatsishvili became a billionaire – thanks to the oligarchic system, which saw Russia’s state assets sold off for a fraction of their real value.
In 2001 his fortunes changed again. The country’s new leader, Vladimir Putin, fell out with Berezovsky. He and Berezovsky were forced to flee, to Georgia and London respectively. In 2002 Russian prosecutors charged him with fraud and helping a colleague break out of jail. Back in Georgia, and encamped in a luxury mansion, Patarkatsishvili embarked on patriotic projects. He bought Tbilisi’s football club, founded a new media group, Imedi, and bailed out the government when it couldn’t pay its gas bill.
"I met him several times. He was a very kind man, very soft and very gentle," Gachechiladze said. Asked how this kindly nature could be reconciled with his rapacious business career, he said: "Man is a harmonious entity made of disharmonious elements."
Patarkatsishvili became chairman of Georgia’s Olympic committee and funded the 2003 rose revolution, which saw Mikhail Saakashvili come to power.
By 2007, Patarkatsishvili became convinced Saakashvili was leading Georgia to disaster. He gave up business and embraced politics. When riot police beat up opposition protesters last November he led the criticism. The regime responded by taking Imedi off the air and charging him with plotting a coup.
Patarkatsishvili spent his final months in London. In December he said he had uncovered a plot to murder him. He produced a tape recording between Georgian interior ministry officials and Uyais Akhmadov, a Chechen warlord. The hit was to take place in the UK or Israel, where he also lived.
Despite the alleged death threat, Patarkatsishvili stood as a candidate in Georgia’s snap presidential election on January 5. He came third with 7.1% of the vote. His enemy Saakashvili won a comfortable victory.