Oligarch who lived in fear found dead

A billionaire who lived in fear of assassination has been found dead at his Surrey home.

Badri Patarkatsishvili, 52, was with his wife and close friends at his £9 million house near Leatherhead when he fell ill last night. His family believe he may have suffered a heart attack but Surrey police said today they were treating the death as suspicious and have passed the case to their senior crime team.

This afternoon the body was still inside the house while detectives and forensic science officers continued their investigations-Police said they would be lookingat his recent movements.

The Georgian, a former business associate of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, is one of the so-called oligarchs who made his £6billion fortune in the carve-up of Russia's oil industry. Mr Patarkatsishvili, a close friend of exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, had told Surrey police in recent weeks of his fears he would be murdered.

Mr Patarkatsishvili was wanted in Georgia for allegedly plotting to overthrow the country's president, against whom he stood in elections last month, but had also made enemies with the Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Mr Patarkatsishvili's spokesman Lord Bell said today: "The death needs to be investigated. He had advised police recently that he was fearful of an assassination attempt."

Mr Berezovsky said today: "It is a terrible tragedy. I have lost my closest friend. This is a huge loss for all of his family and friends. I shall make no further comment on the circumstances of Badri's death. I shall wait for the authorities to complete their investigation."

His death will inevitably raise suggestions that he is the latest victim of a political assassination following the death of Alexander Litvinenko, another close friend of Mr Berezovsky, who died from radiation poisoning in London in 2006.

Mr Patarkatsishvili said in December that he had 120 bodyguards but did not feel safe anywhere. Neighbours today he would never leave the home without guards, including always having a car full of them following him.

Police received the 999 call from Downside Manor at 10.48 last night. Mr Patarkatsishvili lived there with his wife Inna Gudavadze, in whose name the house was registered. It is thought they bought the house two years ago. They have two grown up daughters aged 24 and 27.

The house is on the same road as the home of Michael Caine.

Lord Bell, who had spent six hours with Mr Patarkatsishvili, Mr Berezovsky and two other exiled Russian tycoons at a meeting yesterday at the offices of his lawyers in the City, said he had been in good health.

He added: "At one point during the meeting he complained he was a little overcome by the warmth of the room and left to get some fresh air. Knowing Badri he was probably having a cigarette. When he came back he seemed absolutely fine and full of energy."

Lord Bell said his client had no previous history of heart disease although he smoked around a packet of cigarettes a day.

Professor Peter Collins, professor of clinical cardiology at the Royal Brompton Hospital, said it would be possible for the dead man to have been administered with a poison to induce a heart attack but that this would be extremely difficult to do.

He said the most likely cause of death would be a heart condition that had not been picked up, adding: "Fifty two year old men do drop dead of heart attacks."

Mr Patarkatsishvili's sister Mzia is an MP in Georgia and member of the opposition New Rights party. A political associate, Nona Gaprindashvili, said: "It is said that heart failure was the cause of death but he had been feeling very well as far as I know."

In an interview with the Sunday Times in December, Mr Patarkatsishvili, claimed to have in his possession an audio tape recording of an official in his country's interior ministry asking a Chechen warlord Uvais Akhmadov to murder him while he was London.

According to transcripts published in the Sunday Times, the Georgian official described Mr Patarkatsishvili as "a political problem" and said Georgia did not want to be seen to be involved in an assassination abroad.

The official adds: "Because of that I called you. This person is very frequently in London, constantly. In a month he'll spend two weeks there, two weeks in Israel.

"I've been given a clear order to check whether there is the possibility on your side to help us in this business. We want this person to disappear completely, with his escorts, with everything."

Mr Patarkatsishvili said of his enemies: "I believe they want to kill me." Yuri Felshtinsky, a friend of Mr Patarkatsishvili, told the Standard the pair had met five days ago in London. The 52-year-old ex-KGB officer, who had known Mr Patarkatsishvili for 10 years, said he looked "fit and healthy" and quite happy despite losing in the Georgian elections last month. Mr Felshtinsky, who co-wrote a book, Blowing Up Russia, with Mr Litvinenko, said: "I saw him just on Friday and he was well and looked his usual self, which is cheery and happy. What happened is obviously very sad and although we have to wait and see exactly what took place yesterday, we can't ignore that he did have many enemies. The Russian government, the Russian secret service and the president of Georgia are just a few people who were on his list of enemies. Of course, knowing all this, he did fear for his life." Mr Patarkatsishvili recently hired the former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith, now a partner at the US firm Debevoise & Plimpton, to act for him. He met Lord Goldsmith at his offices at Tower 42 in the City yesterday before leaving to go to Mr Berezovsky's Mayfair office. He is then thought to have gone straight home at about 7pm. Although an opponent of Mr Putin, the most likely threat is believed to come from Georgia. He is accused there of plotting a coup after being caught on tape allegedly trying to organise the overthrow of president Mikhail Saakashvili.

A spokesman for the Georgian embassy in London said at the time the alleged plot "sounded like a conspiracy theory most probably designed to boost a presidential candidate's profile". The Georgian government was unavailable for comment today. Mr Patarkatsishvili was seen as a driving force behind anti-government protests in Georgia in November. Mr Patarkatsishvili was the owner of football club Dinamo Tbilisi as well as a television station and a theme park in the country. His headquarters and home in Tbilisi was based in an extravagant building known as the Wedding Palace, formerly state owned which was previously used as a secular cathedral for marriage ceremonies.