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MOSCOW - A powerful Russian prosecutor said today self-exiled Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky could be behind the murder of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, a charge dismissed by a friend of Litvinenko.
Litvinenko, a former Russian FSB security service officer exiled in Britain, published a Berezovsky-sponsored book accusing the Kremlin of exploding apartment houses in Moscow to justify a new war in the rebel Chechnya province.
He died in a London hospital last year after being poisoned with polonium, a rare radioactive substance. In a posthumous letter, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being responsible for his death. The Kremlin denied the charge.
British police have accused former KGB bodyguard Andrei Lugovoy of killing Litvinenko. He has denied any involvement.
Alexander Bastrykin, appointed on Friday as new head of the powerful National Investigation Committee, was quoted by local media as saying Russian prosecutors were investigating other possibilities.
Asked if Berezovsky could have been involved, Bastrykin said: "We cannot exclude such a version."
Bastrykin's words drew ire from a friend of Litvinenko.
"Initially, the plan was to kill Litvinenko and to pin it on Berezovsky and (exiled Chechen separatist leader Akhmed) Zakayev, exactly as it's happening now," Alex Goldfarb told Reuters by telephone from the United States.
"I think to reasonable people, polonium makes a difference because polonium can only come from the Russian side."
Russia's FSB security service opened a criminal espionage investigation last week into Lugovoy's own accusations that Litvinenko and Berezovsky were both British spies.
Russia has declined to hand over Lugovoy to Britain after prosecutors accused him of murdering Litvinenko with polonium.
Britain has also declined to extradite Berezovsky to Russia where the once all-mighty tycoon is accused of money laundering.
Asked about chances of Berezovsky's extradition, Goldfarb said: "The British system will not send an innocent person to his death ... Secondly, it's obvious, it's political."
- REUTERS
