Part 3: Alexander Litvinenko – his life in Russia and the United Kingdom, his illness and death — The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 3: Alexander Litvinenko – his life in Russia and the United Kingdom, his illness and death

Chapter 1: In Russia

¶3.1 I received detailed evidence regarding the history of Alexander Litvinenko's life in

Russia before he left to travel to the United Kingdom (UK) with his family in November 2000. Very little of this evidence was contentious and much is already in the public domain. For example, a detailed account of Mr Litvinenko's life in Russia is to be found in Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko's book Death of a Dissident, and I am of course aware of other books that have been written about Mr Litvinenko's life, such as Martin Sixsmith's The Litvinenko File and Alan Cowell's The Terminal Spy.

¶3.2 Although many of these matters are well known, I have set them out here in outline

as they are of considerable contextual significance to the questions that I have been charged with investigating. The events that took place during Mr Litvinenko's life in Russia, and in particular the last years before he left, cast a long shadow over his life in the UK. Many of those who played a part in the events of the final weeks and months of Mr Litvinenko's life in 2006 were old friends and adversaries from his days in Russia.

¶Childhood 3.3 Alexander Litvinenko was born on 4 December 1962 in the Russian city of Voronezh.

His parents, Walter and Nina Litvinenko, divorced when he was very young, and it appears that his childhood, in consequence, was not easy. I heard that as a young child Alexander spent periods of time living with his father and his father's parents in Nalchik in the North Caucasus, with his mother in Moscow and with an aunt in another city called Morozovsk. When he was about 12 he returned to Nalchik to live with his grandparents, with whom he spent the rest of his childhood.1 Nalchik is located towards the south of the old USSR, in the foothills of the Caucasus Mountains. It is close to Chechnya. This region and its people would later play an important part in Mr Litvinenko's life.

¶3.4 Both Mr Litvinenko's parents remarried. His mother had a daughter, Svetlana, with

her new husband. Mr Litvinenko's father, Walter, had three children with his new wife, of whom the youngest was a son named Maxim.2 As we shall see, Maxim lived in Italy later in his life, where he spent some time with his older half-brother Alexander.

¶3.5 Mr Litvinenko finished his schooling in 1980 at the age of 17. The evidence of Marina

Litvinenko (who of course had not yet met Mr Litvinenko at that time) was that he applied to go to university, but did not get a place,3 and decided instead to go to military college. He took that decision in part because he would have been required to undertake military service at some point in any event. However, she said that he was also influenced, even at that young age, by a desire to serve and defend his country.

¶The Litvinenko Inquiry

She said that he regarded his grandfather, who had fought in the Second World War, as a model in this respect. I note this evidence because Mr Litvinenko's sense of duty to his country – initially to Russia and latterly also to the United Kingdom – is a strong theme of the evidence that I heard about him.

¶Early military career 3.6 The military college that Mr Litvinenko attended was a training centre for Interior

Ministry forces, located in a city in North Ossetia then called Ordzhonikidze (now called Vladikavkaz). It is about 80 miles from Nalchik – as Marina Litvinenko observed, not too far in Russian terms. Marina Litvinenko's evidence was that he spent five years training at Ordzhonikidze, graduating in or about 1985 as a lieutenant.

¶3.7 Mr Litvinenko then served in the Dzerzhinsky Division of the forces of the Interior

Ministry between 1985 and 1988. His duties appear to have included intelligence work relating to the protection of trains carrying gold bullion. In 1988 Mr Litvinenko was recruited to join what was then still called the Committee for State Security (KGB). He underwent a period of intelligence training at a KGB facility in Siberia, and in 1991 was posted to KGB headquarters in Moscow.4

¶3.8 During this period, as well as securing professional advancement, Mr Litvinenko had

started a family. He married his first wife, Natalia, whilst he was still a student. His first child, a son named Alexander, was born in January 1985.5 His daughter Sonya was born in August 1991.

¶KGB officer 3.9 These were times of considerable instability in Russia. 1991, the year in which

Mr Litvinenko was posted to KGB headquarters in Moscow, saw the attempted coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The KGB was dismantled in November 1991. A series of successor organisations inherited much of its staff and took over responsibility for Russian internal security and counterintelligence. Mr Litvinenko worked for each of these organisations throughout this period. The last of these organisations, which was created in 1995 and which still exists, was the Federal Security Service (FSB).

¶3.10 In 1991 Mr Litvinenko was assigned to the Economic Security and Organised Crime

Unit of what was then still the KGB. He continued to work in that department until about 1994, when he was transferred to the Anti-Terrorism Department of what had by then become the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK).6

¶3.11 The evidence I have heard is that one of the main focuses of Mr Litvinenko's work

during this period was in combating organised crime. In her witness statement, Marina Litvinenko refers, by way of example, to Mr Litvinenko investigating crimes that were then being committed against wealthy Georgians who had moved to Moscow to escape the civil war in their newly independent country. She describes Mr Litvinenko's part in saving the life of a 19 year old boy who had been kidnapped and ransomed for

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US$1 million. She stated; "I saw that Sasha gave himself to his job without reservation and helped people who found themselves in difficulties."⁷⁷ INQ017734 (page 3 paragraph 8) INQ016642 (page 7) INQ017734 (page 23 paragraph 80) Mascall 8/2-4

¶3.12 I heard that it was whilst working for the Economic Security and Organised Crime

Unit that Mr Litvinenko first began to investigate the activities of the Tambov criminal group. This was an organised crime group based in St Petersburg. It was led by Vladimir Kumarin, also known as Barsukov, and another man called Alexander Malyshev. In the course of his investigations, Mr Litvinenko discovered evidence that the Tambov group was engaged in smuggling heroin from Afghanistan via Uzbekistan and St Petersburg to Western Europe. Even more significantly, he became convinced that there was widespread collusion between the Tambov group and KGB officials, including both Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev.

¶3.13 This was the start of what was to become one of Mr Litvinenko's abiding concerns.

As we shall see, he continued to investigate and to seek to publicise links between the KGB/FSB and organised crime both before and after he left Russia. Following his arrival in the UK, he made these allegations in his book The Gang from the Lubyanka, and also in the shorter essay The Uzbek File.8

¶Marriage to Marina Litvinenko 3.14 It was in June 1993, and as a result of another case on which he was working, that

¶Mr Litvinenko met his future wife Marina.

¶3.15 Marina Litvinenko has been an interested person and a core participant throughout

the life of, respectively, the inquest and Inquiry proceedings. As I have described at paragraphs 46 and 50 of Appendix 1, it was her action in bringing a judicial review against the Home Secretary (at considerable financial risk to herself) that resulted in this Inquiry being established. Marina Litvinenko's legal team has engaged with both sets of proceedings in a most constructive manner, and I have been impressed throughout by the dignity and composure that she has shown during what must have been at times a deeply distressing process. Above all, she has demonstrated a quiet determination to establish the true facts of her husband's death that is greatly to be commended. When she gave oral evidence before me, which she did over the course of two days at the Inquiry hearings, I found her to be an impressive witness who gave careful and considered responses to the questions that she was asked, many concerning events that took place ten years and more ago.

¶3.16 In 1993 Marina Litvinenko was a dance teacher living in Moscow. She had been born

in Moscow in 1962 and had grown up and been educated there. She had studied at university for five and a half years, graduating as an engineer economist, but by the time that she graduated, she had already become heavily involved in dancing. On leaving university she became a professional dancer. She married her dance partner and for several years the couple took part in competitive ballroom dancing and also worked as dance teachers. The marriage ended in 1989. She stopped competitive dancing at that point, but carried on with her teaching job.9

¶3.17 Two of Marina Litvinenko's friends from her dancing days, a couple, were receiving

demands for money and threats of violence from a former business associate. They had reported the matter to the authorities and Mr Litvinenko was investigating the

¶The Litvinenko Inquiry

case. The couple got on well with Mr Litvinenko and invited him to a dinner at Marina's flat to celebrate her birthday in June 1993. Mr Litvinenko was still married to Natalia at this time, but the marriage was in difficulties, and ended in divorce shortly thereafter.10

¶3.18 Mr Litvinenko and Marina began a relationship. Their son Anatoly was born in June

Alexander and Marina Litvinenko married in October 1994.11

¶Developing friendship with Boris Berezovsky 3.19 It was at about the same time – 1994 – that Mr Litvinenko first met and started to

develop what was to become a close friendship with Boris Berezovsky. Mr Berezovsky is one of the key figures in the events that form the subject matter of this Inquiry, and it is appropriate to say a few words of introduction about him at this point.

¶3.20 Boris Berezovsky was born in Moscow in 1946. He was a mathematician by training.

For the first part of his life he worked as a government scientist; he also conducted research and published academic articles. Mr Berezovsky became an extremely successful businessman during the liberalisation of Russia's internal market, first under President Gorbachev and then under President Yeltsin, with whom he had a close relationship. His first business, which he founded in the late 1980s, was a car dealership named LogoVAZ, but his business interests diversified into broadcasting, airlines and the oil industry.

¶3.21 During the 1990s Mr Berezovsky acquired both great wealth and considerable political

influence. He was one of the foremost of the so called 'oligarchs' of that period. At the end of that decade, Mr Berezovsky apparently played a role in facilitating the rise to power of Vladimir Putin. However, he fell out with Mr Putin shortly after the latter's election as President in March 2000. He left Russia permanently at the end of 2000 and claimed asylum in the UK. Thereafter, Mr Berezovsky became a vociferous critic of Mr Putin. Repeated attempts by Russia to secure his extradition were unsuccessful, and Mr Berezovsky was granted asylum in the UK in 2003. He spent much of his wealth in opposing President Putin's regime, and in supporting others who did the same – one of whom, as we shall see, was Mr Litvinenko.

¶3.22 When the inquest into Mr Litvinenko's death was resumed in 2011, Mr Berezovsky was

granted interested person status. He was entitled to such status not least because, as we shall see, allegations had been made that he had been involved in Mr Litvinenko's death. Those acting for Mr Berezovsky played a constructive part in the early stages of the inquest proceedings, making submissions at directions hearings and disclosing documentation. Mr Berezovsky's involvement in these proceedings was, however, cut short by his own death in March 2013.

¶3.23 Had Mr Berezovsky been alive at the time of the Inquiry hearings, he would undoubtedly

have been an important witness. Although I was not able to hear Mr Berezovsky give oral evidence, I did adduce a substantial quantity of documentary evidence emanating from and relating to him.12 It included statements given by Mr Berezovsky to the Metropolitan Police team investigating Mr Litvinenko's death and transcripts of interviews. In considering this documentary evidence, I have of course taken account of the fact that I did not have the benefit of hearing Mr Berezovsky's account being tested in oral evidence. I have also borne in mind the fact that Mrs Justice Gloster

¶Part 3 | Chapters 1 to 5 | Alexander Litvinenko

found Mr Berezovsky to be a highly unreliable witness in the proceedings that he brought against Mr Roman Abramovich in the High Court in London.13 In fact (and in contrast to the Abramovich case), a large proportion of Mr Berezovsky's account has been either uncontentious or well supported by the evidence of others. In reaching my conclusion on the question of Mr Berezovsky's alleged involvement in Mr Litvinenko's death (see Part 9), I have been able to rely on a considerably wider array of evidence than Mr Berezovsky's own (untested) denial.

¶3.24 Returning to Moscow in 1994, the account that Mr Berezovsky gave of his first meetings with Mr Litvinenko was in the following terms:

"I first met Alexander Litvinenko, also known as Sasha Litvinenko, in 1994 when he was an FSB officer for the Russian security services (KGB). He came to my offices as he had orders to look into the workings of my company. It was not to investigate me personally, but an investigation into how my business was operating. This was because at the time the FSB were trying to establish how Russia was being transformed.

In June 1994 I was subject to a terror attack against me in Moscow. It was a car bomb. When I left my office the car exploded. My driver was killed, my bodyguard and I were both injured and I spent two weeks in hospital in Switzerland. This incident resulted in Litvinenko and I becoming close friends."¹⁴¹⁴ Berezovsky 25/6-7 Felshtinsky 23/128-131 Service 28/48 lines 3-9 Hohne 32/51 INQ015781 part 1, INQ015781 part 2; INQ015777 part 1, INQ015777 part 2; INQ015778; INQ015779; INQ015780 [videos] Dombey 23/13-39 The Chairman shall ensure that no reference is made to the substance of the evidence given at a closed hearing of the Inquiry in any open ruling, judgment or report arising out of the Inquiry, or otherwise. Amendments to this Restriction Notice November 2014Show full note

¶3.25 Marina Litvinenko had only known Mr Litvinenko for a year in June 1994, but in her

oral evidence she recalled that he had been involved in investigating the assassination attempt against Mr Berezovsky, which she described as having been front page news at the time.15 She also stated that Mr Litvinenko had been ordered at that time to (as she put it in her witness statement) "maintain regular contact" with Mr Berezovsky.16 The precise scope and purpose of this duty was not clear – Marina Litvinenko did not think, for example, that he was acting as a bodyguard. It may be that this was simply a continuation of the attempts by the FSB (or FSK as it was at this time) to keep tabs on Mr Berezovsky, which he described in the first of the two paragraphs quoted from his statement above.

¶3.26 Marina Litvinenko recalled that at that time Mr Litvinenko had a number of meetings

with Mr Berezovsky, and that he accompanied Mr Berezovsky on a trip to Switzerland in 1995. Her evidence was that Mr Litvinenko travelled on that occasion on a diplomatic passport provided by the FSB; so it would appear that the trip had the blessing of his superiors.

¶3.27 Putting the matter shortly, the evidence seems to support Mr Berezovsky's assertion

that the assassination attempt in June 1994 was the start of the process by which he and Mr Litvinenko became close friends.

¶3.28 A second important incident in the development of the relationship between the two

men took place in March 1995, following the murder in Moscow of a man named Vlad Listyev. Mr Listyev was at that time the most popular TV presenter in Russia; he was also the head of the independent television station ORT, which was controlled by Mr Berezovsky. Marina Litvinenko's account of this episode was that police came

¶The Litvinenko Inquiry

to Mr Berezovsky's office to arrest him for Mr Listyev's murder; Mr Berezovsky got a message to Mr Litvinenko, who came to the office and prevented the police from taking Mr Berezovsky away. She explained that both Mr Berezovsky and Mr Litvinenko feared that Mr Berezovsky might be murdered in police custody had he been arrested. In Mr Berezovsky's account of this incident, he said that Mr Litvinenko had taken out his gun and said to the police, "If you try to catch him now I'll kill you."¹⁷¹⁷ Berezovsky 25/7 Goldfarb 26/122 INQ019146 (page 25 paragraph 77) Mascall 8/75 INQ019031; INQ019054 Dombey 23/24-30; INQ020031 (page 2 paragraphs S9-S10) The Minister may amend this Restriction Notice at any time. Marina Litvinenko emphasised that Mr Litvinenko's intervention on behalf of Mr Berezovsky had been authorised by at least one of his superiors, namely General Anatoly Trofimov, who was then the head of the Moscow regional directorate of the FSK.

¶3.29 I am clearly not in a position to make any findings regarding the rights and wrongs

of this affair, including as to whether Mr Berezovsky was in fact involved in any way in Mr Listyev's death (a subject which I am aware remains controversial). Nor is the determination of such matters within the proper scope of this Inquiry. What I think can be said, which certainly is of relevance for present purposes, is that this episode marked a further stage in the developing friendship between Mr Litvinenko and Mr Berezovsky. More than that, it put Mr Berezovsky in Mr Litvinenko's debt. As Marina Litvinenko put it during her oral evidence, "After that, Boris Berezovsky said many times Sasha saved his life, and he was very grateful."¹⁸¹⁸ Marina Litvinenko 3/40 lines 24-25 INQ019146 (page 25 paragraph 79) BLK000134 Mascall 8/76 Bruce Burgess 21/1-171 Mascall 29/77-78 The repayment of that debt is an important backdrop to the story of Mr Litvinenko's subsequent escape from Russia to the UK, and his life here.

¶Involvement in the First Chechen War 3.30 The First Chechen War started at the end of 1994. By this time, Mr Litvinenko was attached to what Marina Litvinenko described as the Anti-Terrorist Centre of the FSK.

¶3.31 It would appear that he had considerable involvement in the Chechen conflict, although

not for the main part in combat operations. Marina Litvinenko described Mr Litvinenko making frequent operational trips during this period to Nalchik, the city where he had grown up. Nalchik was situated close to but away from the fighting in Chechnya, and in her written evidence Marina Litvinenko stated that Mr Litvinenko, "did analytical work and ran agents from the FSB headquarters in Nalchik". She added that he was well suited to that type of work, knowing as he did the customs and traditions of the region from his childhood.19

¶3.32 This account tallies well with the evidence received by the Inquiry from

¶Akhmed Zakayev.

¶3.33 By the time of Mr Litvinenko's death in 2006, he and Mr Zakayev were neighbours in

London and close friends. A decade earlier they had been on opposite sides of the conflict in Chechnya. Mr Zakayev's evidence was that he was at that time a senior official in the Republic of Ichkeria, as the breakaway Chechen republic was then known. Following the death of the Chechen President Ozhokhar Dudaev in April 1996, his widow left Chechnya and was then detained by Russian authorities in Nalchik. Mr Zakayev explained in his oral evidence to the Inquiry that the Chechen leadership had been concerned at that time to discover which FSB officer was interviewing Mrs Dudaev; he said that they had established through informants that she was being interrogated in Nalchik by Mr Litvinenko, who was using the pseudonym

¶Part 3 | Chapters 1 to 5 | Alexander Litvinenko

Alexander Volkov. Mr Zakayev added that when, years later, the two men met on friendly terms, Mr Litvinenko had confirmed to him that he had indeed interviewed Mrs Dudaev in Nalchik at that time.20

¶3.34 Mr Litvinenko's immediate superior in the anti-terrorist unit at this time was a man

named Alexander Gusak. Marina Litvinenko remembered him well. She said that he and Mr Litvinenko had had "a very turbulent relationship". The difficulties between the two men appear to have arisen from their very different styles of work. Mr Litvinenko had, she said, a careful and precise approach to his work, whereas Mr Gusak, in Marina Litvinenko's words, "was more like a hero man and fighting man, and he didn't like to do some job in a very precise and a very correct way". Although they clashed at work, it appears that the two men got on well on a personal level – Mr Gusak attended Alexander and Marina Litvinenko's wedding in 1994 and in 1996/7 the two families built dachas close to each other, making them neighbours.21 Mr Gusak was subsequently to play an important role in the events that led to Alexander and Marina Litvinenko's flight from Russia.

¶3.35 Although Mr Litvinenko's principal involvement in the hostilities in Chechnya appears

to have consisted of conducting intelligence operations from FSB headquarters in Nalchik, the evidence is that there was at least one occasion when he took part in combat.

¶3.36 I am aware of allegations reported in at least two of the books that have been written

about Mr Litvinenko's life and death to the effect that he physically mistreated prisoners whilst serving in Chechnya. It would appear that the source of those allegations was Mr Gusak, who, at least by the time he made them, had a declared animosity towards Mr Litvinenko. I have no further evidence one way or the other regarding these allegations.22

¶3.37 As I have said, the evidence is that Mr Litvinenko did spend at least some time on

combat operations inside Chechnya. He was present at the siege of Pervomayskoye in January 1996. Marina Litvinenko recalled that Mr Litvinenko sustained frostbite to his hands and feet at this time. She also stated that Mr Litvinenko's experiences at Pervomayskoye caused him to start to change his views about the rights and wrongs of the Chechen War. She referred in particular to Mr Litvinenko interrogating a 17 year old Chechen prisoner and realising that all the pupils in the boy's class had taken up arms. She said that he began to compare the Chechen defence of their country with the heroic actions of the Russian army, including his grandfather, in the Second World War.23 Mr Zakayev also recalled this incident, which he had discussed years later with Mr Litvinenko in London. He said that it was at this time that Mr Litvinenko, "started to understand what the Chechen people wanted and what they're fighting for."²⁴²⁴ Zakayev 26/142 lines 9-11 Service 28/30-31; 28/69-70; Felshtinsky 23/175-177 Goldfarb 5/102-107 Elenora Wall 32/77 INQ016403 (page 31)

¶Department for the Investigation and Prevention of Organised Crime 3.38 In the summer of 1997, Mr Litvinenko was transferred within the FSB to the Department for the Investigation and Prevention of Organised Crime, known as URPO.

¶The Litvinenko Inquiry

¶3.39 The evidence that I have heard is that URPO was a secret unit. Its offices, for

example, were not situated at the 'Lubyanka', the main FSB headquarters. In her witness statement, Marina Litvinenko stated that URPO members, "were tasked with special operations, which were on the borderline of legality".25 In his police interview Mr Litvinenko himself put the matter rather more directly. He described URPO as a "top secret department of KGB" whose role was, "killing political and high business men… without verdict."²⁶²⁶ INQ002076 (page 4) Felshtinsky 23/135-137; Goldfarb 5/113-114 Reilly 10/23-26 Elenora Wall 32/81 INQ014604; INQ014605; INQ014607; INQ014608; INQ014609; INQ014610; INQ014611; INQ014612; INQ014613; INQ014620; INQ014621; INQ014623; INQ014624

¶3.40 When he moved to URPO, Mr Litvinenko was put in charge of a section of some eight

or ten officers.27 Some of these men, in particular Victor Shebalin and Andrei Ponkin, were to play an important role in the events that brought Mr Litvinenko's career in the FSB to an end. Mr Litvinenko found that his immediate superior in his new unit was to be Alexander Gusak, with whom he had served in Chechnya. The head of URPO was a man named General Khokholkov, and his deputy was Captain Alexander Kamyshnikov. The overall head of the FSB at the time was Nikolay Kovalyev.28

¶Order to kill Boris Berezovsky 3.41 Marina Litvinenko stated that, by the end of 1997, Mr Litvinenko had been tasked

with the conduct of a number of URPO operations that he regarded as unlawful. This account is supported by claims that Mr Litvinenko himself made at the time.

¶3.42 Marina Litvinenko referred to three operations in particular. 3.43 The first concerned a former FSB officer named Mikhail Trepashkin. Mr Trepashkin

was a critic of the FSB, as Mr Litvinenko was subsequently to become. In 1997 Mr Trepashkin had recently resigned from his post and had brought proceedings against the FSB. The evidence before me was that Mr Litvinenko and his URPO section were ordered to assault Mr Trepashkin, and to take his bag and his FSB identity card away from him.29 Mr Trepashkin and Mr Litvinenko subsequently became friends, and I will refer to him further below.

¶3.44 The second of these operations concerned a man named Umar Dzhabrailov.

Mr Dzhabrailov was a wealthy Chechen businessman living in Moscow. In his book The Gang from the Lubyanka Mr Litvinenko described his section being tasked: "to kidnap a prominent businessman Umar Dzhabrailov [to get money] to pay ransom for our officers in Chechen captivity…".30 The book went on to assert, and Marina Litvinenko also made this point in her oral evidence, that Mr Litvinenko and his section were authorised to shoot policemen who had been tasked with guarding Mr Dzhabrailov if it became necessary in the course of the kidnapping.31

¶3.45 The last, and most important, of these three operations related to Mr Berezovsky. In

legal documents that he filed in Russia in 1998, Mr Litvinenko was very clear about what he had been told to do on this occasion. Referring to "the order to assassinate B.A. Berezovsky", Mr Litvinenko stated: "I was instructed by A.P. Kamyshnikov to physically exterminate Berezovsky and considered his words an order. I disobeyed the order only because it was an illegal order."³²³² HMG000115 Goldfarb 26/19-21; Felshtinsky 23/153-157 Cotlick 25/41-47 INQ006218 INQ022423 (page 2)

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¶3.46 Marina Litvinenko's witness statement describes Mr Litvinenko being tasked with

"looking into the possibility of assassinating Berezovsky"³³³³ INQ017734 (page 6 paragraph 16(c)) Goldfarb 26/20-21 Voronkov 16/193-194 Fitzgerald 8/116-123 INQ020031 (page 4 paragraphs S20-S21) and in her initial oral evidence before me she stated that she did not believe that Mr Kamyshnikov had given Mr Litvinenko a formal instruction to kill Mr Berezovsky; the substance of the exchange, in her view, was limited to Mr Kamyshnikov asking Mr Litvinenko whether he could kill Mr Berezovsky.34 In later questioning, Marina Litvinenko took a firmer line, accepting the proposition from her counsel that Mr Litvinenko understood that he had received, "an unequivocal instruction to commit an act of murder by his superior within the FSB in a secret, unaccountable unit".35

¶3.47 I do not regard these distinctions as being of great importance. I am not in a position

to make any findings about the precise terms in which Mr Kamyshnikov may have discussed the killing of Mr Berezovsky with Mr Litvinenko and his section in late 1997. And that issue, moreover, is not of central importance to this Inquiry. Of much greater importance for my purposes are the decision that Mr Litvinenko took to expose what he regarded as an FSB plot to murder Mr Berezovsky, and the events that were then triggered – events that, as we shall see, may have contributed to Mr Litvinenko's death in London nine years later.

¶Whistleblower 3.48 The evidence I heard was that Mr Litvinenko and his colleagues, including Mr Gusak,

were unhappy with the orders they had been given. They were particularly concerned about the orders relating to Mr Berezovsky. They took a number of steps in response, the culmination of which was the well known press conference on 17 November 1998, in which Mr Litvinenko and others publicly denounced the FSB in front of the world's media. Before dealing with the press conference, I will briefly outline the evidence that I have heard regarding the escalating events that led up to it.

¶3.49 Marina Litvinenko stated that Mr Litvinenko's first act, after considering what to do

for several weeks, was to go to see Mr Berezovsky, and tell him about the orders that he had received. It seems that Mr Berezovsky did not initially take the matter seriously, but this changed when Mr Litvinenko went to see him again (in March 1998), accompanied by some of the officers in his section.36

¶3.50 Acting on Mr Berezovsky's advice, Mr Litvinenko and his colleagues raised their

complaints with Evgeny Savostianov, who was at that time President Yeltsin's Deputy Chief of Staff. He referred the case to the Military Prosecution Service, and told them that they should file an official complaint.37

¶3.51 Mr Litvinenko and his colleagues were concerned at what steps might be taken against

them. There were discussions as to what to do. The men decided to make a video record of their allegations, which could be released, as Marina Litvinenko put it in her oral evidence "in case somebody will be arrested or, worse, somebody will be killed".38 Mr Berezovsky arranged for this to be done by means of a filmed interview conducted by Sergei Dorenko, who was a well known broadcaster at his television station ORT. The interview was filmed during the night of 19 April 1998 at Mr Berezovsky's dacha.

¶The Litvinenko Inquiry

Marina Litvinenko was there. The interview (which featured Mr Litvinenko, Andrei Ponkin and Alexander Gusak) was not, in the event, broadcast until November 1998, shortly after the press conference.39

¶3.52 In his account in The Gang from the Lubyanka, Mr Litvinenko stated that by this

stage both he and Mr Berezovsky had spoken separately to Mr Kovalyev, the head of the FSB, about the order to kill Mr Berezovsky. Mr Litvinenko recorded that after his meeting he heard from Mr Gusak that Mr Kovalyev was "very unhappy" that he had told Mr Berezovsky about the order: "He said it was – a betrayal of the interests of the security services. To go and give everything to a stranger."⁴⁰⁴⁰ BLK000253 (pages 7-8) INQ017384 Attew 13/27-28 Mascall 9/11-12; 9/18-20; INQ019202 Dombey 23/33; 23/39-40

¶3.53 On Marina Litvinenko's account, Mr Kovalyev summoned Mr Litvinenko and all the

URPO officers who supported his claims to his office on the day after the filming with Mr Dorenko had taken place. He demanded that they withdraw their allegations. They refused to do so.41

¶3.54 Mr Litvinenko next followed the advice of Mr Savostianov and filed an official complaint

with the Military Prosecution Service. Some of the official papers relating to that complaint are in evidence before me. They show that Mr Litvinenko complained of having received illegal orders relating to Mr Trepashkin, Mr Dzhabrailov and Mr Berezovsky.42 It would appear that at this stage both Mr Litvinenko and his colleagues and URPO commanders, including General Khokholkov, were suspended from the FSB. In May and June 1998 Mr Litvinenko gave evidence to the Military Prosecution Service.43

¶3.55 On 7 June 1998 President Yeltsin dismissed Mr Kovalyev as head of the FSB and

replaced him with Vladimir Putin. Mr Berezovsky arranged for Mr Litvinenko to meet Mr Putin, in order that he could tell him what he knew about FSB corruption and unlawful conduct. The meeting between the two men took place in or about July 1998. Marina Litvinenko's evidence was that Mr Litvinenko had not been confident that Mr Putin would be an agent of change within the FSB. His view, she said, was that Mr Putin was inexperienced, and also probably mixed up in criminal activity himself from his days in St Petersburg.44

¶3.56 Mr Litvinenko described his first and only meeting with Mr Putin in The Gang from the

¶Lubyanka. He said:

"He came out from behind the desk… to greet me. Apparently, he wanted to show an open, likeable personality. We, operatives, have a special style of behaviour. We do not bow to each other, do without pleasantries – and so everything is clear. Just look into each other's eyes and it becomes clear, do you trust the person or not. And I immediately had the impression that he is not sincere. He looked not like an FSB director, but a person who played the director."⁴⁵⁴⁵ BLK000253 (page 10) HMG000308 Attew 13/37 Mascall 9/27-28 INQ019146 (page 15 paragraph 46)

¶3.57 The evidence was that in October 1998 the URPO investigation by the Military

¶Prosecution Service was closed. The conclusion of the investigation was that no

¶Part 3 | Chapters 1 to 5 | Alexander Litvinenko

crimes had been committed. Put shortly, as I understand it, the allegations made by Mr Litvinenko and the others had been rejected.46

¶3.58 Although Marina Litvinenko did not recall this when giving oral evidence,47 the

documents before me indicate that Mr Litvinenko almost immediately made a formal application to have the investigation reopened.48

¶3.59 On 13 November 1998 an open letter from Mr Berezovsky to Mr Putin was published

in the Russian media. A copy of this letter is in evidence. The letter detailed the allegations made by Mr Litvinenko and the others and was critical of what it described as an attempted cover up. In the final paragraphs of the letter, Mr Berezovsky made a direct appeal to Mr Putin:

"Vladimir Vladimirovich, no doubt, the legacy you received from your predecessors is not easy. Criminals and corrupted functionaries at different levels, even in your institution, are hitting those who do not want to go back to the pigsty. The wave of criminal terror is rising in the country. Mafia and the 'red-brown' elements are striving for power. They do not understand that there is no place for people like them in a free country where democracy is firmly secured by law.

I do not consider the facts and problems raised in my letter isolated, I see a tendency here and this tendency is mortally dangerous for Russia.

¶I am asking you to use the power vested on you to secure the constitutional order."⁴⁹⁴⁹ BER002661 Goldfarb 5/123 Shvets 24/100 Scott 9/43-44 Marina Litvinenko 3/141-142

¶3.60 Mr Berezovsky's open letter made a clearly worded request to Mr Putin to reform

the FSB. A few days later, on 17 November 1998, Mr Litvinenko went public with his criticisms of the FSB at a press conference in Moscow that was attended by the world's media. It appears likely that the press conference was part of a larger reform strategy directed by Mr Berezovsky.

¶3.61 The press conference was held at the RIA Novosti international news agency in

Moscow. Mr Litvinenko appeared before the press without a mask and was the main speaker. Also present and unmasked was Mr Trepashkin, with whom Mr Litvinenko had by this time struck up a friendship.50 Four of Mr Litvinenko's fellow officers from URPO, including Mr Shebalin and Mr Ponkin, also appeared, wearing either skiing masks or sunglasses. Marina Litvinenko described the press conference in the following terms:

"Never in the history of the Russian security services has the FSB experienced such a public exposure. [Mr Litvinenko] and the others talked about corruption, criminalisation of the FSB and the fact that the system that was set up to protect people was turning into the system from which people needed to be protected. They also aired the details of extrajudicial acts that the FSB conspired to undertake against Trepashkin, Dzhabrailov and Berezovsky."⁵¹⁵¹ INQ017734 (page 10 paragraph 33) Goldfarb 5/125; 26/21-22 Shvets 24/102 INQ017809 (page 58) INQ019146 (page 19 paragraph 61)

¶The Litvinenko Inquiry

¶3.62 The press conference received widespread publicity in the broadcast and print media.

¶3.63 At the time of the press conference, Yuri Felshtinsky was in Moscow, undertaking

preparatory work on a biography of Boris Berezovsky. In his evidence he emphasised that Mr Berezovsky and Mr Putin were still friends at this point. He said that Mr Berezovsky was, "hoping that he will use Putin in order to make major changes within the FSB". According to Mr Felshtinsky, it was Mr Berezovsky's hope: "that as a result of that press conference, all those old KGB generals would be fired from the FSB and the new generation, new people, like Litvinenko, would replace them."⁵²⁵² Felshtinsky 23/127 lines 11-17 Goldfarb 26/25 Marina Litvinenko 4/6 Reilly 10/83 INQ019146 (page 20 paragraph 62) Mr Putin's reaction to the open letter and the press conference was not, however, as Mr Berezovsky had hoped.

¶3.64 Professor Robert Service was until 2014 Professor of Russian History at Oxford

University; he gave expert evidence to the Inquiry on matters of Russian history (see below 9.41 – 9.43). He suggested that, far from seeing the press conference as a welcome step towards reform, Mr Putin probably regarded it as the first of a series of occasions on which Mr Litvinenko was guilty of breaching the FSB code of loyalty.53 As we shall see, there were some in the FSB who certainly did take that view.

¶Dismissal, arrest, prosecution, imprisonment 3.65 The period between the press conference in November 1998 and Mr Litvinenko's

decision to leave Russia for good in September 2000 saw his position gradually deteriorate.

¶3.66 In December 1998 Mr Litvinenko and all the officers involved in the press conference were dismissed from the FSB. Mr Berezovsky gave them jobs as consultants. 3.67 An official investigation was opened into Mr Litvinenko's record. Marina Litvinenko

recalled that he told her that the situation would develop in one of two ways, "they will kill him, or he will be arrested".54

¶3.68 Mr Litvinenko was arrested on 25 March 1999. He was charged and detained in

the FSB Lefortovo prison in Moscow. The charges against Mr Litvinenko were of exceeding his authority by assaulting a suspect. However, Mrs Litvinenko stated that the investigator, named Nikolay Barsukov, had told her that the charges had been brought in response to the press conference, and that; "if they were unsuccessful in making the charges stick this time… they would come up with something else".55 The events that followed certainly lend credence to this threat.

¶3.69 Mr Litvinenko spent eight months in detention at Lefortovo prison. Marina Litvinenko

stated that Mr Berezovsky made representations to Mr Putin on Mr Litvinenko's behalf, but without success. She also stated that Mr Litvinenko's former colleagues were pressured to give false evidence against him, but refused to do so. When the trial eventually took place before the Moscow Regional Military Court on 26 November 1999, Mr Litvinenko was acquitted of all charges.56

¶3.70 That, however, was far from the end of Mr Litvinenko's difficulties. As Mrs Litvinenko described, at the very moment that Mr Litvinenko was formally acquitted of the first

¶Part 3 | Chapters 1 to 5 | Alexander Litvinenko

set of charges: "immediately people came to this courtroom and they said they are from the FSB and they have another order against my husband, and they need to arrest him."⁵⁷⁵⁷ Marina Litvinenko 3/87 lines 16-18 Marina Litvinenko 3/135-136 Shvets 24/82-84 Krgo 9/57 INQ019146 (page 23 paragraph 73)

¶3.71 Marina Litvinenko's evidence was that the new charges against Mr Litvinenko

concerned allegations of mishandling suspects and stealing goods during an operation at a Moscow market in which he had been involved several years previously. The investigator was again Mr Barsukov. Mr Litvinenko was again detained, but in a different prison. He was released on bail in mid December 1999.58

¶3.72 The evidence before me was that these new proceedings collapsed before trial when

Mr Litvinenko produced evidence that he had not been at the market on the day in question. A third set of proceedings was then brought against Mr Litvinenko, again at the instigation of Mr Barsukov. The charge on this occasion was that Mr Litvinenko had planted evidence on a suspect. Mr Litvinenko was not arrested but his passport was confiscated and he was told not to leave Moscow without permission.59

¶3.73 There is evidence that on this occasion as previously an associate of Mr Litvinenko

was put under pressure to give false evidence against him.60 I have also seen evidence that Mr Litvinenko's father, Walter, was complaining of being harassed by the Russian authorities at this time.61

¶3.74 This third set of proceedings was still in train when Mr Litvinenko left Russia in October

Mr Litvinenko was ultimately convicted on those charges in 2002.62

¶The Litvinenko Inquiry