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LONDON - Alexander Litvinenko was murdered by radioactive poisoning because of a dossier he compiled on a high-ranking Russian close to President Vladimir Putin, says a former agent.
Yuri Shvets, an ex-spy based in the United States, said Litvinenko, who died in a London hospital on November 24 from polonium 210 poisoning, was working for a British company to provide information on five potential Russian clients before the company invested. Shvets helped the former KGB man with information on one of the five.
Shvets told the BBC Litvinenko's report had led the British company to pull out of a deal, losing the Russian figure potential earnings of "dozens of millions of dollars".
He named neither the Russian nor the British company, but asked if the report had lead to Litvinenko's death, he replied: "I can't be 100 per cent sure, but I am pretty sure."
Scotland Yard, which sent nine detectives to Russia to investigate the murder, has a copy of the dossier. The BBC said it had extracts, which contained damaging personal details about a "very highly placed member of Putin's Administration".
More than three weeks after Litvinenko died, the trail constantly leads back to Russia, where he served in the KGB and its successor organisation, the FSB. He came to Britain in 2000 after alleging he had been ordered to assassinate Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch who fell out with the Kremlin and also sought refuge in Britain.
According to associates, Litvinenko blamed Putin for his poisoning. The Kremlin has denied involvement, and sent its chief spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, to Britain last week to dampen media speculation. Although the British Government had not fallen for "media hysteria", he told the Independent on Sunday, Russia's reputation was in jeopardy because of "Cold War thinking".
The Kremlin has sought to portray Litvinenko as a low-level operative who did not have any information worth killing for. On Saturday, the Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov, said he had never been a spy, but an ex-prison guard who was sacked by the FSB amid questions over his integrity.
He was fired during Putin's brief spell as head of the FSB.
According to the Kremlin, only those who wanted to discredit Russia would have reason to murder Litvinenko. Privately, however, Russian officials concede that it is impossible to rule out involvement by well-connected Russians, though they insist that none of them hold official positions in the Kremlin or the FSB.
Investigators following the trail of radiation from the polonium 210 that killed Litvinenko are focusing on a meeting with Moscow-based associates at the Millennium Hotel in London on November 1, the day he fell ill. German police have discovered that Dmitry Kovtun, one of the men at the meeting, left radiation traces in Hamburg before going to London.
But polonium 210 may have been brought to Britain as early as mid-October, when the ex-FSB man held the first meeting with Andrei Lugovoy, a former colleague whom he had known for many years. Lugovoy, too, has left traces of radiation in several places, including the British Embassy in Moscow.
Shvets said Litvinenko showed a copy of the dossier to Lugovoy in late September or early October, adding: "I believe that triggered the entire assassination."
He claimed Lugovoy still worked for the FSB, and had leaked the dossier to the Russian figure.
Lugovoy has repeatedly denied having anything to do with Litvinenko's death. On Saturday he told AP that when he spoke to the Scotland Yard detectives in Moscow, it was as a witness, rather than as a suspect. "As for all that is being said - it's nothing but hysteria in the media."
- INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY
