Jewish Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky has been found guilty of a £3million ($4.5m) fraud.
Russian prosecutors have demanded a 15 year jail sentence for the London-based billionaire, who has accused the Kremlin of the murder of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.
He was not present at the trial.
Outspoken Kremlin critic, Berezovsky, 63, was found guilty of embezzlement for activities in Russia’s establishment under former president Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
He has claimed there have been several assassination attempts on his life including one in September 2003 when a man was arrested at the Hilton in Park Lane and later deported to Moscow.
Berezovsky’s friend, Alexander Litvinenko, 44, was allegedly assassinated in London by former KGB colleagues in November 2006.
Litvinenko, who was also based in the UK, was poisoned by radioactive plutonium after a meeting in London. Former KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi who was at the meeting denies any wrongdoing.
Russian prosecutors accused Berezovsky of stealing £3million (140million rubles) from car manufacturer Avtovaz, in Southern Russia, and Logovaz, a car dealership he controlled at the time.
The case is the latest of many brought against Berezovsky by Moscow since the billionaire oligarch fell out with the Kremlin after Vladimir Putin became president in 2000.
Berezovsky was found guilty of the theft of millions of pounds from state airline Aeroflot in 2007 and was sentenced in his absence to six years behind bars.
He has dismissed the case as politically motivated.
Berezovsky was granted political asylum in Britain in 2003 and Moscow has repeatedly sought his extradition only to be met with a blank refusal from Whitehall.
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