Alexander Litvinenko may have been killed after a deal that went wrong
with associates involved in the ruthless world of Russian business.
According to security sources, investigators are looking at the former
spy’s dealings with Russian businessmen involved in the lucrative energy sector
and the shadowy world of private security. “We are looking at a very long list
of Mr Litvinenko’s friends and foes since he has been in London,” one source said.
The list includes exotic figures ranging from billionaire businessmen,
former Kremlin spies and KGB agents to underworld bosses.
In the six years that he was in Britain, Litvinenko appeared to
have acquired a formidable collection of friends and enemies. Although he
described himself as a journalist, Litvinenko tried unsuccessfully to muscle in
on several lucrative business deals with Russians.
On the day that he fell ill he was attempting to broker a gas and oil
exploration deal involving a British conglomerate that he claimed to represent.
He was envious of the money that many of his former colleagues were making.
He also had talks about providing trained personal protection guards
recruited from Russia,
and claimed to represent a number of British interests wanting bilateral deals
with Russian investors.
Police will look at investigations that his friends say he claimed to be
involved in at the time of his death, including smuggling rings for nuclear
material and prostitutes.
People connected to this world are frequently murdered on the streets of
Russia’s cities, but until
now the practice has not spread to London’s
large Russian expatriate community.
The latest line of inquiry will confuse further an already complex
investigation with a cast of characters that already includes President Putin,
his nemesis Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch exiled in London, rogue FSB death squads and the
Chechen mafia.
Even now counter-terrorist detectives have pointedly not used the word
“murder”, preferring “suspicious death”.
Much of the latest focus of attention has been on Andrei Lugovoy, a
former Russian intelligence officer, who met Litvinenko
on the day he was poisoned.
There is no evidence to suggest that he had anything to do with
Litvinenko’s death, but suspicions about him deepened this week after the
suspected poisoning of Yegor Gaidar, the former Russian Prime Minister and
Putin critic.
Mr Gaidar, 50, was recovering in a Moscow
hospital from a mystery illness that he contracted on a visit to the Irish Republic
last week.
Mr Lugovoy was Mr Gaidar’s chief bodyguard in the 1990s. Although the
two have not met for four years, Mr Lugovoy emerged as the one man linking the
two cases.
The focus on his activities has not distracted attention from the
Kremlin. Mr Putin’s many critics have accused the former KGB chief of launching
a campaign to silence, intimidate and eliminate his critics and opponents.
Litvinenko became one of Mr Putin’s most outspoken critics after writing
a book accusing the Russian leader of orchestrating a series of apartment-block
explosions that were blamed on Chechen terrorists. But Western officials doubt
that Mr Putin would have ordered the assassination.
The Kremlin has pointed the finger of suspicion firmly at Mr Berezovsky.
Russian officials maintain that the oligarch has gained most from seeing Mr Putin’s
reputation tarnished by the death.
Although Mr Berezovsky was an ally of Litvinenko, there are also
suggestions that the two men could have fallen out. On the day he died,
Litvinenko visited the oligarch’s Mayfair
offices, which have since been sealed because they contain traces of
polonium-210.
Source: TIME