A Very Expensive Poison

by Luke Harding

  Much hinged on what precisely happened in London. The judge accepted that Lugovoi and Kovtun’s refusal to give oral evidence to the inquiry didn’t necessarily mean they killed Litvinenko. But he took a dim view of the contradictory accounts they’d given over the years. He dismissed these versions – one of which had Litvinenko grabbing the Pine Bar teapot, and gulping down two cups of tea – as having ‘serious deficiencies’. They were consistent with ‘a deliberate attempt to mislead’.

  Owen found that one or both men had lied about important details. In an interview with the German tabloid Bild, Lugovoi claimed the Pine Bar was fitted out with surveillance equipment (‘he was lying’). Lugovoi said that Litvinenko had repeatedly rung him (‘it’s plain from the telephone schedule that Mr Lugovoi and Mr Kovtun were wrong about this’). The judge dismissed too Kovtun’s ‘elaborate’ explanation as to why he called C2, the cook, in London. Kovtun claimed he wanted to offer C2 a job at a Moscow fish restaurant (‘a tissue of lies’; ‘fabricated’).

  By contrast, Owen found the testimony given by D3, Kovtun’s Hamburg restaurant manager friend, to be credible: ‘Mr Kovtun’s boast that he was planning to poison Mr Litvinenko with “a very expensive poison” may have appeared outlandish to D3, but there is a wealth of independent evidence before me that shows that that is exactly what he was planning to do.’ He went on: ‘Making unwise comments is something Mr Kovtun appears to have done from time to time.’

  Again and again, the report returned to the polonium trail. The forensic evidence was ‘highly compelling’, the judge found. In part six, under the question ‘Who administered the poison?’, he ruled that the two Russians had indeed handled Po-210 in three of their London hotel rooms. They had even got into a ‘routine’ connected with the ‘preparation and/or disposal’ of the poison. In the Millennium and Best Western hotels, the ‘natural inference’ was that they had tipped it ‘down the sink’.

  Sometimes Owen made no finding, especially if the subject was on the margin of his inquiry. If the judge didn’t know something he said so. One intriguing example: when Litvinenko arrived at the Millennium Hotel, Lugovoi made a six-minute call to Vladimir Voronoff. Voronoff was an ex-Soviet ‘diplomat’ who was based in the early 1990s at the Soviet embassy in London. He is now a British citizen. His testimony to the inquiry was evasive. Why the call? ‘It is unexplained,’ Owen wrote.

  The other central part was nine – ‘Who directed the killing?’ Owen ruled out many of the fantastical theories supplied by Moscow: Berezovsky, the mafia, Chechens and the UK’s own spy agencies. There were ‘several reasons’, however, why the Kremlin might want him dead, not least the ‘undoubted personal dimension’ to Litvinenko and Putin’s antagonism. A core theme was Litvinenko’s claim that the FSB carried out the 1999 apartment bombings (‘an area of particular sensitivity for the Putin administration’). The judge said he was satisfied that by 2006, Putin, the FSB, and those around, ‘had motives for taking action’.

  But what had prompted them to act? Owen diverged from Emmerson’s view: that there was a causative link between Litvinenko’s scandalous Ivanov report and his subsequent murder. ‘The difficulty is in the timing,’ the judge noted. Litvinenko gave Lugovoi his report in late September 2006; it was only a matter of days afterwards that Lugovoi and Kovtun made arrangements for their first trip to London. Still, Owen conceded that the Ivanov dossier ‘may have provided extra motivation and impetus to a plan that had already been conceived’.

  It was more likely, in his view, that the plot to assassinate Litvinenko was cooked up earlier, possibly much earlier. Lugovoi had first flown to London to meet with Litvinenko as far back as October 2004. Owen: ‘I regard it is entirely possible that Mr Lugovoi was already at that stage involved in a plan to target Mr Litvinenko, perhaps with a view to killing him.’ There was ‘no evidence at all’ that either Kovtun or Lugovoi had ‘any personal reason’ for murder. Someone else had directed the ‘protracted and costly operation’.

  *

  From the High Court, the protagonists minus Sir Robert headed across Holborn to Gray’s Inn Road and the offices of Matrix Chambers, Emmerson’s law firm. Here, Marina and Anatoly gave a small press conference. Marina thanked her son for his ‘extraordinary support’. She said she found the government’s non-response to Owen’s report unpersuasive. Yes, Russia played a role in international relations. But this was no reason to ignore the judge’s ‘very important message’, she said.

  Emmerson pointed out that David Cameron had always taken a tough line on terrorism, promising that he had ‘zero tolerance’ for this modern scourge. It appeared, the QC suggested, that Cameron was only tough on terrorism done by non-state actors.

  ‘It would be surprising if the prime minister, who prides himself in keeping London safe from terrorism, could sit on his hands in the face of a judicial finding of state-sponsored terrorism. I don’t think the British people think this is the right outcome.’ As it was, he risked looking cowardly. ‘It would be the abdication of his responsibility to do the thing which is the first function of a state: to keep its citizens safe.’

  Others, including Bill Browder, said the UK government was making an error that might later haunt it. In a letter to the prime minister, Browder argued: ‘Had this attack been perpetrated by Isis or al-Qaida there would be bombing runs, huge intelligence operations and pledges to never let it happen again.’ Cameron’s analysis was wrong: ‘Putin and others like him look for weakness wherever they can find it.’ The government’s inaction, he wrote, would embolden Putin and ‘surely lead to more killings on British soil’.

  In the wake of Owen’s report there was recognition that neither of Litivnenko’s killers would face a jail cell in the near future. ‘It would only be possible after the final fall of Vladimir Putin. It’s inconceivable he could send them for trial after he sent them to commit a murder,’ Emmerson said. And what about Putin? Might he stand trial in the international court? The short answer, according to Emmerson, was no.

  The lawyer had a word of caution, though. ‘History shows us that political sands shift. People who seem invincible suddenly find themselves on the receiving end of an indictment. Mr Putin is not in a position to sit comfortably.’

  In the meantime, Marina was going to sue the Russian government in London. Inevitably, Moscow would claim state immunity. Nevertheless, Emmerson thought, there was a reasonable chance of success. She would also revive a 2007 claim made against the Kremlin in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. To anyone who had been following the case, it was obvious that Marina was broke. She had, for some years, been living on a pittance. She was entitled to compensation from Russia, Emmerson said. He added that MI6 hadn’t made her an ex gratia payment.

  Afterwards, I met Marina in a side-room. We kissed on the cheek. Through high windows came a delicate winter light; you could see trees, a moving car, city life. It had been an overwhelming morning. Minutes earlier, Anatoly had shifted uncomfortably when asked what he remembered of his father. ‘It isn’t easy. It’s still difficult for him,’ she told me, adding that he was months away from his final summer exams.

  Had she expected that Owen’s report would be so bold? ‘We looked at it and thought: “Yes!” It surprised us.’ Not because she disagreed with his conclusions, but because few people were willing to accuse Putin so directly. ‘It was a very strong message,’ she said. Marina added the classified intelligence material – which she hadn’t seen – was decisive, adding: ‘One day we will know the details.’

  The report marked another victory, over sceptics who doubted that she could beat Britain’s political establishment, which had fought her most of the way. ‘We have achieved a tremendous amount. So many people said: “You’ll never get an inquiry. It won’t happen.” Then they didn’t believe Sir Robert would deliver his report. Now we have hard facts. I feel very emotional.’

  She acknowledged that Sasha’s murder would invariably be seen as a ‘political moment’ and another
low in the UK’s eternally vexed relations with Moscow. But, she said: ‘For me it’s personal. I was able to get through all these long years because it was my personal case. It was my husband who was killed. It was my thirst to know who killed him and who was responsible.’

  I wondered if she could envisage ever going back to Russia. ‘I very much miss my mother, who is now alone,’ she replied. In the summer of 2015, shortly after the inquiry wound up, her father died. ‘I couldn’t go to the funeral. I realised you had to pay the “price”. Unfortunately, the price is I cannot go to Russia.’ The current political reality, she said, meant that she didn’t ‘feel safe there’. The danger wasn’t only from the state: it was possible a ‘patriot’ might take matters into his own hands.

  She said her conflict was never with her fellow Russians – or her Moscow friends, whom she misses. Rather it was with the regime. ‘I wish Russia to be a successful place, a happy country,’ she said. She saw herself as a real patriot, in contrast to the phoney ones inside the Kremlin who typically have secret property in the west and offshore bank accounts. ‘I want my son one day to go back to Russia, to do something in Russia, to be proud of Russia,’ she said.

  Sir Robert’s report had brought to an end an almost ten-year saga of international intrigue and Cold War-style recrimination. At the end of it: vindication. Marina quoted from what Litvinenko had said in his dying declaration: that Putin might snuff out one man but not ‘the howls of protest from around the world’. ‘I believe what my husband Sasha said. You can of course silence one person. But you can’t silence the world.’

  A Note on Sources

  The Litvinenko inquiry website, www.litvinenkoinquiry.org, is an invaluable source of information about the Litvinenko case, much of it used in this book. For more than eight years, details of Scotland Yard’s murder investigation remained secret. Now the evidence is publicly available: witness statements, including Litvinenko’s; a forensic report into every location contaminated by polonium; testimony by expert scientists; police interviews with the two killers in Moscow. The website features transcripts of all thirty-four days of hearings at the High Court, and the evidence of sixty-two witnesses.

  This was one of the UK’s most extensive murder inquiries. Many details are remarkable. The Met’s modelling department mapped radiation readings onto graphic 3D reconstructions of key locations. We can see for the first time the object used to murder Litvinenko. (The actual photo reveals an ordinary white ceramic teapot. The graphic version is a lurid purple; purple is the colour code used to illustrate deadly levels of alpha radiation.)

  There is CCTV footage of Litvinenko arriving at the Millennium Hotel; it freezes the moment before he was poisoned. Plus phone logs that confirm Dmitry Kovtun, one of history’s more inept murderers, was looking for a cook to administer what he called ‘a very expensive poison’. We get some of the official record: confidential e-grams from Britain’s ambassador in Moscow; a brush-off from the Home Office to Litvinenko’s solicitor, in the wake of death threats from Moscow. And Litvinenko’s own writings and interviews.

  The evidence we are missing belongs to the UK government. This was presented in secret to Sir Robert Owen. It informed his final report, but wasn’t made public. I asked one former MI6 officer when the agency’s files on Litvinenko might be released. He replied: ‘Never.’ He added: ‘We haven’t declassified anything since the beginning of the service in 1909.’ These documents might compromise serving agents, he said.

  Still, we live in an era of large data leaks: Edward Snowden, WikiLeaks, the banking secrets of the rich and powerful. I’m confident that the files will eventually find their way into daylight. (If anyone wants to hasten this process, please send me what you can in a brown envelope.) Inside Russia there are likely to be few written documents: state murder is a clandestine business; Stalin’s instruction to assassinate Trotsky was delivered orally. But when Putin’s reign in Russia ends, new details may emerge, including from inside the FSB itself.

  Most of the quotations in this book come from two primary sources: my conversations with those involved, and their public evidence before the inquiry. I’m grateful to the following who agreed to be interviewed: Marina and Anatoly Litvinenko; Alex Goldfarb; Ben Emmerson; Yuli Dubov; Nikolai Glushkov; Viktor Suvorov; Vladimir Bukovsky; Akhmed Zakayev; Olga Kryshtanovskaya; Professor Norman Dombey; Bill Browder; and others. One or two of my interlocutors didn’t want to be named.

  In Moscow, I interviewed Andrei Lugovoi twice, in 2008 and 2010, and Dmitry Kovtun in 2008. In Italy, I interviewed Litvinenko’s father and siblings. Before their deaths I met Boris Nemtsov, in Sochi, and Boris Berezovsky, in London.

  I give a fuller account of the harassment my family and I faced in Moscow in my 2011 book Mafia State: How One Reporter Became an Enemy of the Brutal New Russia (published in the US in 2012 as Expelled). Some details are retold here when they are relevant to Litvinenko’s story. Others are new: the fact that I inadvertently flew to Moscow on Lugovoi’s polonium plane, sitting a few rows away from his contaminated seat.

  I’m grateful to my colleagues at the Guardian – especially Kath Viner, Paul Johnson and Jamie Wilson – for allowing me to combine book writing with international reporting. And to Laura Hassan and my wonderful publisher Guardian Faber. Most of all, thanks to my wife Phoebe Taplin, my first and best reader.

  Acknowledgements and Photo Credits

  The author would like to thank:

  Fiona Bacon, Louis Blom-Cooper, Robert Booth, Irina Borogan, Oliver Bullough, Barbara Caspar, Paula Chertok, Lindsay Davies, Lizzy Davies, Martin Dewhirst, Norman Dombey, Ben Emmerson, Michael Fleischer, David Godwin, Alex Goldfarb, Felicity Harding, John Harding, Laura Hassan, Henning Hoff, David Leigh, Anatoly Litvinenko, Marina Litvinenko, Robin Milner-Gulland, Peter Neyroud, Richard Norton-Taylor, Robert Service, Alex Shprintsen, Andrei Soldatov, Adam Straw, Phoebe Taplin, Andrei Terekhov, Elena Tsirlina, Cyril Tuschi, Federico Varese, Shaun Walker, Jamie Wilson.

  Photo credits

  Page 1: (top) courtesy of Marina Litvinenko; (bottom) © Rex

  Page 2: (top left and right) courtesy of Marina Litvinenko; (bottom) Litvinenko Inquiry, www.litvinenko.org

  Page 3: (all images) www.litvinenko.org

  Page 4: (top and bottom) www.litvinenko.org

  Page 5: (top and bottom) © Getty Images

  Page 6: (top left) Berezovsky © Rex; (top right) Abramovich © Getty Images; (middle) Perepilichnny courtesy of the Guardian; (bottom left) Nemtsov

  © Associated Press; (bottom right) Nemtsov © Getty Images

  Page 7: (top) © EMPR/Barcroft; (bottom) © Reuters

  Plate 8: (top and bottom) © Getty Images

  All images used within the text are reproduced by kind permission of the Litvinenko Inquiry (www.litvinenko.org) apart from p. 280, CCTV still taken from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (www.occrp.org) and p. 361, author’s own

  Index

  (the initials AL refer to Alexander Litvinenko)

  Abeltsev, Sergei 1

  Abramovich, Roman: Berezovsky vs 1; judgment in 1

  Chelsea FC bought by 1

  property portfolio of 1

  and Putin 1

  and Sibneft 1

  Aeroflot 1

  Akhmetov, Rinat 1

  Aksyonov, Sergey 1, 2, 3

  Akulov, Vitaly 1

  Alexashenko, Sergei 1, 2

  Andrade, Norberto 1, 2

  Andropov, Yuri 1, 2, 3

  Atlangeriev, Ruslan 1

  Atomic Weapons Establishment 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Attew, Dean 1, 2

  Aulov, Nikolai 1

  Avakov, Arsen 1

  Balfour, Charles 1

  Bandera, Stepan 1

  Barsukov, Vladimir 1

  Bastrykin, Alexander 1, 2, 3

  Baturina, Elena 1

  Bedford, Peter 1

  Bell, Tim 1

  Berezovsky, Boris 1 passim, 2 vs Abramovich 1; judgment in 1

  AL
begins work for 1

  AL ordered to kill 1

  AL paid by 1

  AL’s closeness to 1

  AL’s cooling dealings with 1

  and AL’s deathbed statement 1

  and AL’s escape 1, 2, 3, 4

  birthday party of 1

  carelessness of 1

  death of 1; and funeral 1;

  and inquest 1

  failed biography of 1

  FSB’s criminal inquiry into 1

  Kremlin tries to destroy 1

  Kremlin’s accusation against 1

  open letter of, to Putin 1

  political asylum for 1

  and Putin 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  revolution plotted by 1

  self-exile of 1

  and T-shirt 1

  Beria, Lavrenty 1, 2, 3

  Berlusconi, Silvio 1

  Beyrle, John 1

  Bezler, Igor 1

  Black, Stuart 1

  Blair, Tony 1, 2, 3

  Blowing Up Russia (Litvinenko) 1, 2, 3, 4

  Bonnetti, Bruno 1

  Borodai, Andrei 1

  Bortnikov, Alexander 1

  Brenton, Tony 1, 2

  Brezhnev, Leonid 1

  Brinkmann, Prof. Bernd 1

  Browder, Bill 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

  Brown, Gordon 1

  Brown, CI Kevin 1

  Bukovsky, Vladimir 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and public inquiry, see under Litvinenko, Alexander

  Burgess, Bruce 1