Alexander Litvinenko helped to author a damaging report which alleged that one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies was involved with cocaine-smuggling and “gangsters”, and which dubbed Putin “not Mr Clean”, the high court has heard.
The inquiry into Litvinenko’s 2006 death heard that in his last months Litvinenko had been investigating a series of top-ranking Russian politicians.
One of them was Viktor Ivanov, a career KGB officer and now head of Russia’s federal narcotics agency.
Litvinenko was working at the time for Titon International, a security firm based in Mayfair. Litvinenko provided Titon with a series of “due diligence” reports.
He got $5,000 for each of them. He split the fee with his source Yuri Shvets, a US-based KGB defector. It was Shvets who wrote the documents, the inquiry heard.
Ben Emmerson QC, the lawyer for Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, said one report contained “staggeringly serious” allegations against both Ivanov and Putin. The report claimed that Ivanov was intimately involved in criminal activities in St Petersburg from 1990 onwards. At the time the local mafia ran a lucrative operation smuggling cocaine from Colombia to western Europe via the city’s seaport.
Ivanov vigorously supported one mafia faction, the notorious Tambov gang, against its rivals, it was alleged.
He became friends with the gang’s leader, Vladimir Kumarin, and acquired a share of the port’s “murky” activities. Ivanov also founded two companies, one with Boris Gryzlov, future speaker of the Russian parliament, the court heard.
Reading from the report in court, Emmerson said that “ironically” while Ivanov was “cooperating with gangsters” he was promoted to boss of the department that was supposed to fight smuggling in St Petersburg.
“His former subordinates described him [Ivanov] as a monster boss – rude, authoritative and stubborn. It was a time when the line between law enforcement officers and professional criminals was often very thin.”
Emmerson said that during this period Putin was head of the foreign relations committee under St Petersburg’s mayor, Anatoly Sobchak.
Quoting from the report, Emmerson said: “When Ivanov was cooperating with gangsters he was protected by Vladimir Putin, who was responsible for foreign economic relations … Putin himself was not Mr Clean at that time.”
Putin became prime minister in 1999 and president in 2000. Ivanov was promoted to run the internal security division of the FSB, Putin’s old spy agency. He subsequently got a job as deputy head of Putin’s presidential staff.
The inquiry heard that Ivanov became Putin’s trusty “right hand”, used to resolve problems that required “pressure and intimidation”. The more emollient Igor Shuvalov, currently deputy prime minister, was Putin’s “left hand”, dispatched when Russia’s president wanted “compromise”.
The explosive report was written in September 2006. It was given to Titon’s chief executive, Dean Attew. Two months later Litvinenko was poisoned with radioactive polonium-210.
Two Russians – Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun – are accused of slipping the polonium into Litivnenko’s green tea during a meeting on 1 November 2006. Litvinenko died in hospital 23 days later. Lugovoi and Kovtun have consistently denied they had anything to do with Litvinenko’s death.
Emmerson said the report was motive enough to have Litvinenko murdered. “This man [Ivanov] is an organised criminal who would kill if he is at risk,” he said.
The inquiry was told that the client who commissioned the report cancelled a major contract after reading it, an action that would have caused Ivanov to “lose out significantly”.
The inquiry heard that Litvinenko regarded Lugovoi as a “trusted friend” with useful secret contacts in Moscow. He had originally asked Lugovoi to dig up background on Ivanov.
But Lugovoi’s subsequent report filled less than a page and was wholly inadequate, Attew said. Litvinenko then got another source, later revealed as Shvets, to write the report instead. The court heard that Litvinenko passed a copy of Shvets’ report to Lugovoi.
According to Emmerson, the report inevitably would have found its way back to the FSB and “others in Moscow”, thereby placing Litvinenko at “lethal risk”.
Attew said he met Lugovoi just once, when Lugovoi flew back from Canada to Moscow via London in June 2006. They met at Heathrow airport’s Terminal 1, with Litvinenko introducing Lugovoi as a potential source.
Attew said he disliked Lugovoi instantly. “There was something [about him] I would describe as scarily cold,” he said.
The inquiry continues.