Hiding From Putin On The French Riviera

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Tsar Nicholas II, Sergei Pugachev looks out on to a view worthy of any ruler of the Russian empire.

The red rooves of the ornate stucco-fronted city of Nice falls away below into the rippling Cote d'Azur. If you're in "hiding" this isn't a bad spot to find yourself.

Mr Pugachev is on the run. He says he left London, where his partner and their three children live in Chelsea, fearing for his life and their safety after suspicious devices were found under their cars.

He already lived with several bodyguards as he is locked in apparently endless litigation with Russia's state.

Those who fall foul of the Kremlin, he observes, have a hard time.

Oligarch Boris Berezovsky, a staunch opponent of Vladimir Putin, was found hanged in England - the coroner recorded an open verdict .

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, another oligarch who railed against the Russian President, spent 10 years in jail there.

Mr Pugachev plans to sue the Russian state for what he claims is the illegal appropriation of his very considerable assets, shipyards and mines, worth $15bn (£9.5bn), at the Hague next month.

Russia's Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) is trying to freeze what assets remain to the former Putin intimate, alleging that he embezzled the equivalent of £1.1bn of state money from a bank he controlled in Russia following a post-2008 bailout.

It's an expensive and potentially dangerous business - taking on the Russian state - but one that he feels he has to pursue even though he is down to his "last $70m" (£45m) plus several houses in Nice and London.

One of his properties serves, for now, as a luxury fortress overlooking Nice.

Armed guards (Russian-speaking former foreign legionnaires) discreetly patrol grounds that are looked on by CCTV and surrounded by a largely hidden fence that wraps around the terraces of the gardens as they descend below the house, built in 1904 by "the richest man in the city".

Why bother? I ask.

"It's not simple to be in my role, but I have to do it and I am ready to face the consequences for what I am doing," he said.

"I am fighting using legal methods, but I know we can't expect the Russian government to use legal methods as well.

"They put immense pressure on me, expropriated all my assets in Russia that cost billions of dollars and put unthinkable charges against me, this is the situation I am in today."

Lawyers for the Russian DIA said the tracking devices were fitted at their client's request because of a fear that he would abscond, even though he had submitted his French and Russian passports to the court.

Ironically he did indeed flee - vanishing for three weeks before surfacing in Nice.

His partner, Alexandra Tolstoy, said she feared for the safety of their three children and would soon be returning to London for their schooling.

"That will mean leaving Sergei behind and never knowing when or how or where I might see him next," she said.

It's a game of high-stakes cat and mouse, in and out of a gilded cage.