Alexander Litvinenko inquiry: five more things we’ve learned
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Version 0 of 1. 1) Litvinenko’s alleged killers ‘prepared the poison in the gents’ loo’ Alexander Litvinenko’s deadly encounter with Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun – they allegedly put polonium in his tea – is well-known. He met them in the Pine Bar of the Millennium hotel. It was 1 November 2006. CCTV footage from hotel cameras made public this week caught Lugovoi and Kovtun visiting the gents’ toilets, just before the meeting. Lugovoi asked the front desk for directions to the bathroom, up a short flight of steps, and opposite the business centre. Kovtun popped in a few minutes later. Tests later revealed extraordinary quantities of radiation coming from one cubicle. Super-high readings were also found on and immediately beneath the bathroom hand-dryer. The two killers, it appears, were mixing or preparing the poison behind a heavy oak cubicle door. Lugovoi told Scotland Yard detectives in Moscow he arrived at the hotel at 4pm. In fact, he got there half an hour earlier: just enough time to prepare the polonium in the privacy of the gents. CCTV reveals Litvinenko never visited the bathroom. The video captures Lugovoi on his way in there, furtive and purposeful, one hand clasped in a pocket. It’s unclear exactly who slipped the polonium-210 into the teapot. The suspicion tends towards Kovtun. Heavy contamination was found in room 383 of the Millennium hotel, which Kovtun shared with another man, Vyachslav Sokolenko. Traces were also found on Lugovoi and Kovtun’s plane seats on their BA flight back to Moscow. The readings on Kovtun’s seat were higher. 2) The evidence against Lugovoi and Kovtun is overwhelming Three weeks on, the case against Lugovoi and Kovtun looks unassailable. Evidence of their guilt has piled up. They left radioactive polonium across London: a lurid map of where they had been, in precise technicolour detail. Radiation experts found traces in their five-star hotel rooms, and at the restaurants where they ate dinner (Itsu, Pescatori). They even discovered it on a shisha pipe Lugovoi smoked in an al fresco Moroccan bar. According to the Met, the “highest readings of the entire investigation” came from Room 848 of the Sheraton Park Lane hotel. (Lugovoi stayed there on the second of three trips to London, on 26 October 2006. Police believe an earlier attempt to poison Litvinenko had failed; he succeeded second time round, almost a week later.) The two scientists who examined it had to be “stood down” because the room was so dangerous. Two towels from the room were discovered at the bottom of a laundry chute. They showed “full scale deflection”: in other words, massive contamination. It appears Lugovoi may have chucked the polonium away, mopping it up with towels. Why? We don’t know, but Lugovoi was an expert in surveillance from his previous jobs head of security at a TV company, and Kremlin close protection officer. The Park Lane’s Palm Bar where Litvinenko and Lugovoi met had CCTV; the Pine Bar at the Millennium hotel didn’t. 3) Lugovoi enjoyed the finer things in life Lugovoi has always said he “can’t remember” what drinks he ordered at the Pine Bar. After Litvinenko’s death, police traced the bar receipt. We now know Lugovoi ordered three cups of green tea with honey and lemon, followed by four gin and tonics, and a champagne cocktail. Noberto Andrade, the hotel’s veteran head barman, said he brought the tea to the table in a white ceramic teapot. He didn’t pour. Lugovoi called him back and asked for extra honey, he said. Litvinenko dropped in shortly afterwards, and is visible on CCTV waiting for Lugovoi in the lobby. Earlier Lugovoi had asked the bar for a Romeo and Julieta cigar, No 1, added to his tab. The bill came to £70.60. Lugovoi paid it on his credit card. There were numerous other purchases during his London visits: oysters and champagne; fancy shirts, ties and cufflinks from Hawkes and Curtis; a zip-up fleece from Uniqlo; a trip down Regent’s Street. Why so much shopping? One explanation is that Lugovoi was a prosperous Russian businessman with a penchant for garish and colourful menswear. Another that someone in Moscow was paying him a very large sum. 4) There is an Etonian connection to the Litvinenko murder plot Dmitry Kovtun travelled to the UK at the behest of an old Etonian aristocrat. The Hon Charles Balfour – who lists his interests in Debrett’s as “gardening, shooting, fishing and beekeeping” – invited Kovtun to London. Balfour is the chairman of Continental Petroleum Ltd, an oil and gas exploration company with an office in Mayfair. In October 2006 Balfour wrote a letter to the British embassy in Moscow “kindly requesting” a UK entry visa for Kovtun. Kovtun described himself as the general director of Global Project Ltd, a firm offering consulting services to the Russian gas industry. Police suspect global Project was actually made-up: a cover story or “legend” designed to disguise the real purpose of Kovtun and Lugovoi’s trip to London, which was to murder a man long regarded by the Kremlin as an incorrigible traitor. Kovtun’s German ex-wife describes him as a hopeless businessman. Still, the letter did the trick. On 16October 2006, Kovtun and Lugovoi flew to London’s Gatwick airport. Hours later they made their first attempt to poison Litvinenko on the fourth floor of an office in Mayfair. 5) How much did MI6 know about Lugovoi? The WikiLeaks cables suggest that British and US intelligence have few, if any, sources deep inside the Kremlin. In May 2007, Lugovoi told a press conference in Moscow that MI6 had tried to recruit him. He turned down their approach, he said. On the face of it, it’s hard to take the claim seriously, given that Lugovoi implausibly denies any involvement in Litvinenko’s murder. But what if Lugovoi was on this occasion telling the truth? Lugovoi first met Litvinenko in 1994, when they both came into the orbit of Boris Berezovsky. Later, when Berezovsky and Litvinenko were in Britain, Lugovoi provided security for Berezovsky’s daughter in St Petersburg. Litvinenko worked for MI6 from 2003. Soon after that, Lugovoi began travelling regularly to Britain. In 2005 Lugovoi and Litvinenko had a meal together in Chinatown. The pair then went into business, trading secret information to western firms wanting to invest in Russia. It’s likely that Litvinenko sought approval from “Martin”, his MI6 handler, for his business venture with Lugovoi. In 2006 Litvinenko was travelling regularly to Spain, where he gave advice to Spanish intelligence on the activities of the Russian mafia. At the time he was poisoned Litvinenko was planning another trip to Spain – with Lugovoi. By this point Lugovoi should have been on “Martin’s” radar. The government won’t release its files, so we are in the dark over what MI6 knew of Lugovoi, and whether it considered him a potential asset. * Luke Harding is the author of Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia, published by Guardian Faber |