Nikolai Glushkov

Nikolay Glushkov (Russian: Николай Алексеевич Глушков; born 24 December 1949 in Maykop) is a former Deputy Director-General of Aeroflot and a former Finance Manager of AvtoVAZ.

Glushkov had been AvtoVAZ's Finance Chief until he left his job in autumn 1995 and was appointed as Deputy General Director of Aeroflot on request from Yevgeny Shaposhnikov in February 1996.^[1]

According to the claim of Alexander Goldfarb, employee of the Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky employee, he found that the airline company worked as a "cash cow to support international spying operations":^[2] 3,000 people out of the total workforce of 14,000 in Aeroflot were FSB, SVR, or GRU officers. All proceeds from ticket sales were distributed to 352 foreign bank accounts that could not be controlled by the Aeroflot administration. According to Alex Goldfarb, Glushkov closed all these accounts and channeled the money to an accounting center called Andava in Switzerland.^[2] He also sent a bill and wrote a letter to SVR director Yevgeni Primakov and FSB director Mikhail Barsukov asking them to pay the salaries of their intelligence officers in Aeroflot in 1996.^[2]

However, Glushkov and Berezovsky were main shareholders of Swiss company Andava at that time, and they both were accused of stealing money from Aeroflot.^[3]

Glushkov was arrested in 2000 by Russian authorities on fraud charges (channeling money through his accounting center Andava), being seriously ill. He was a close ally of Berezovsky, who gave up his shares of the ORT TV channel^[4] (and, according to some sources, transferred them to Roman Abramovich's Sibneft) for the promise to release him, which was not fulfilled.^[5]

In April 2001 Andrei Lugovoi was arrested and charged with organizing the escape of Glushkov from a hospital (Scientific Hematological Center). However, according to Glushkov, that was a set-up by FSB. He had no intention to escape and "was walking in his slippers to the hospital gate to go home for the night, with his guards' knowledge, as he had done a few days earlier".^[2]

During his trial, Glushkov was incarcerated in Lefortovo prison, he was cleared of the original fraud and money laundering charges by the court in March 2004 but found guilty of attempted escape and "abuse of authority".^[2]

References

1. Paul Klebnikov: Godfather of the Kremlin: The Decline of Russia in the Age of Gangster Capitalism, ISBN 0-15-601330-4; P.176
2. Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko. Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, The Free Press (2007) ISBN 1-4165-5165-4
3. Aeroflot case. What Berezovsky is accused of? Rian.ru.22/11/2007. (Russian)
4. ORT OFFICIALS ACCUSED OF CONTRABAND AND EVADING CUSTOMS TARIFFS.
5. Russian: Владимир Прибыловский, Юрий Фельштинский. Операция "Наследник". Штрихи к политическому портрету В. В. Путина The Operation "Successor" by Vladimir Pribylovsky and Yuriy Felshtinsky