Date:18/12/2006 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2006/12/18/stories/2006121804321400.htm

International

"Litvinenko was killed because of dossier on Kremlin official"

Hasan Suroor

British police quiz slain spy's business partner

LONDON: The former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who died in a London hospital last month after mysteriously ingesting a deadly radioactive substance, was murdered because he had a damaging dossier on a senior Kremlin official, a U.S.-based business partner of Litvinenko is reported to have told the British police investigating the case.

Yuri Shvets, himself a former Russian security official, repeated the allegation in an interview to the BBC claiming that he was "pretty sure'' that Litvinenko was killed because of the details he held on a "high-ranking'' Kremlin figure. "I cannot really be 100 per cent sure, but I am pretty sure," he said adding: "Obviously, there is always room for other suspicions, but in a tradecraft there is such a thing as most probable theory, and this is the one."

Business deal

Mr. Shvets claimed that Litvinenko was commissioned by a British firm, which planned to invest in Russia, to provide commercial and political information to help it make up its mind. As a result of the dossier prepared by Litvinenko, the company dropped a proposed deal worth millions of pounds with a Russian firm thought to be linked to the unnamed Kremlin official, he said.

The damaging details in the dossier were "deliberately'' leaked to the official, he said.

Mr. Shvets, who lives in Washington, has handed over a copy of the dossier to Scotland Yard.

Mr. Shvets told the BBC that Litvinenko was convinced that he was poisoned when he met three Russian businessmen— Andrei Lugovoy, Dmitri Kovtun and Vyacheslav Sokolenko — at a central London hotel on November 1. "He drank a tea which was not made in front of him,'' he said.