Kremlin's public enemy number two fights back

Vladimir Putin says he has nothing to fear from oligarchs in opposition abroad. But judging by recent statements from Kremlin officials - and by some of Mr Putin's own actions - the Russian president seems to have a lingering fear that the oligarchs he chased into exile to consolidate his power could still try to stage a comeback.

A whispering campaign in Moscow is accusing two exiled oligarchs - Leonid Nevzlin and Boris Berezovsky - of joining forces to try to secure Mr Putin's overthrow. Russian officials have hinted the two might have engineered the recent killings of Anna Politkov-skaya, the crusading journalist, and Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent, to discredit the Russian government. Both men deny the allegations.

Mr Berezovsky, among the most powerful men in Russia under Boris Yeltsin, Mr Putin's predecessor, has rarely been out of the limelight. Mr Nevzlin - the Kremlin's public enemy number two after Mr Berezovsky - has generally kept a lower profile. But now, nettled by the Kremlin claims, Mr Nevzlin has spoken out, insisting the Putin administration was creating "cardboard enemies" of the exiled oligarchs.

Mr Nevzlin made his fortune as a partner of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Yukos oil founder jailed in 2003 in a fraud case seen as the Kremlin's revenge on a political opponent. Mr Nevzlin said the accusations, on top of fresh charges filed two weeks ago against Mr Khodorkovsky, showed the Kremlin was becoming jittery ahead of next year's presidential elections. "Suddenly they remembered two years of instability were starting in which there are no guarantees there will be a smooth transfer of power," he told the FT in an interview in his office north of Tel Aviv.

Russia has stepped up attempts to extradite Mr Berezovsky, who fled to the UK in 2000 soon after Mr Putin took power. He is wanted by Russia on fraud charges and prosecutors want to question him over the poisoning of Mr Litvinenko. He denies committing any crime.

Mr Nevzlin fled to Tel Aviv in 2003 facing charges that he ordered killings by Yukos security services in the 1990s. He has also been named by Russia as a suspect in the Litvinenko murder. He claims both charges are politically motivated.

The Kremlin believes Mr Nevzlin and Mr Berezovsky are funding opposition groups in Russia. But what irks Moscow most is the belief that Mr Nevzlin is helping to turn Washington against Mr Putin. Mr Nev-zlin has been welcomed in the US capital several times.

This month he met Tom Lantos, influential new leader of the House international affairs committee, who has urged the State Department to designate Mr Khodorkovsky a political prisoner.

When Mr Nevzlin travelled to the US over the new year, Russian prosecutors dec-lared him a suspect in their investigation into Mr Litvinenko's death. Mr Nevzlin says that statement was timed specifically for his arrival in the US.

He also denies Kremlin accusations that he is involved in politics. But while he might not be directly involved, his activities are intensely political. He has often met Mr Berezovsky, who has vowed to overthrow Mr Putin - most recently last month.

Around the same time, Mr Nevzlin met Alexander Osovtsov, a founder of Other Russia, an opposition coalition headed by Mikhail Kasyanov, Mr Putin's former prime minister, and Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion.

Further riling the Kremlin are the ties between Mr Nevzlin and Mr Litvinenko, who visited him on his own initiative six months before his death to hand over a confidential dossier.

Having already handed the dossier to the authorities in Tel Aviv as a precaution, Mr Nevzlin declined to disclose its contents, saying only it would be useful "for future court cases".

Among others, he was referring to a bn lawsuit filed against Moscow in The Hague by Mr Nevzlin's GML company over the destruction of Yukos, the former oil giant being dismantled by the Kremlin.

The state takeover of the energy sector and other industries under Mr Putin showed the country was being run as a "corporation" for a select few, including Roman Abramovich, the tycoon who made bn selling his Sibneft stake to Gazprom in 2005. Jitters were rising ahead of elections because, without a succession keeping this group at the helm, there was no way of safeguarding the bounty of the last few years.

This message was finally getting through to US politicians. In conversations with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential contender, and Sam Brownback, the Republic senator, not to mention Mr Lantos, he no longer had to explain what was happening in Russia. "It's clear to them what this is called," he said.

By Catherine Belton