Alexander Litvinenko Tells ALL. ~PUTIN A MURDERER~PART 2 !

Report: Dead Former Spy Had Russian Oil Secrets
Sunday, November 26, 2006
LONDON — A dossier drawn up by Alexander Litvinenko on the Kremlin's takeover of the world’s richest energy giant will be given to Scotland Yard today as police investigate the former KGB spy's secret dealings with some of Russia's richest men.

It emerged yesterday that Litvinenko travelled to Israel just weeks before he died to hand over evidence to a Russian billionaire of how agents working for President Putin dealt with his enemies running the Yukos oil company.

He passed this information to Leonid Nevzlin, the former second-in-command of Yukos, who fled to Tel Aviv in fear for his life after the Kremlin seized and then sold off the $40 billion company.

Nevzlin told The Times that it was his “duty” to pass on the file. “Alexander had information on crimes committed with the Russian Government’s direct participation,” he said.

“He only recently gave me and my attorneys documents that shed light on the most significant aspects of the Yukos affair.”

Investigators have told The Times that Litvinenko had apparently uncovered “startling” new material about the Yukos affair and what happened to those opposing the forced break-up of the company.

Several figures linked with Yukos are reported to have disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances while its head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and others have been jailed.

Originally it was Litvinenko’s vocal opposition to President Putin’s rule that led to accusations of Russia’s secret service involvement in his death, but police are investigating whether he made enemies through his links with a number of oligarchs.

Detectives involved in what they admit is one of the most complicated inquiries Scotland Yard has faced say that they are working through Litvinenko’s formidable list of friends and foes, which includes some of the world’s wealthiest men.

One figure close to the investigation said: “At present we have a bewildering number of theories and names put to us, and we must establish some firm evidence.”

Friends of the former spy have claimed that on his deathbed Litvinenko named a number of men linked to the Kremlin who he claimed were targeting him.

They reportedly include a diplomat based at the Russian Embassy in London until last year who is now back in Moscow. Litvinenko reportedly complained that the man was harassing him after his home was firebombed a fortnight before he was poisoned.

Police are still piecing together how Litvinenko spent the last 72 hours before he fell ill and searching for any further traces of the radioactive isotope, polonium-210, that is thought to have poisoned him.

A post-mortem examination is expected to be carried out today on the former KGB colonel, who acquired British citizenship last month.

Forensic scientists are hoping that polonium-210 found in the Itsu sushi bar in Piccadilly and the Millennium Hotel, both of which Litvinenko visited on November 1, may yield a fingerprint that could help investigators to track down where it came from.

Experts have begun decontaminating the sushi bar, but police were last night still examining guest rooms at the hotel in Grosvenor Square and Litvinenko’s North London home.

His wife, Marina, 44, and 12-year-old son, Anatole, have been examined and neither has been contaminated.

Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch, who employed Litvinenko and who has accused the Kremlin of having a hand in his poisoning, is also reported to have been tested.

More than 300 people have contacted a helpline set up by the Health Protection Agency to be checked for contamination. So far nobody has proved positive.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, said that the Government was doing all it could to warn the public of possible health risks, but added that he had no plans to make a statement to MPs about Litvinenko’s death.

David Davis, the Shadow Home Affairs spokesman, will raise the matter in the Commons today. He said: “It is essential that other dissidents living in Britain are reassured about their safety and there are also questions about how polonium-210 came to be used in Britain.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, said that the Government should have been “much tougher” on Mr Putin and relations would have to be carefully considered if Litvinenko’s death turned out to be the result of “state terrorism”.

Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, admitted in a BBC TV interview yesterday that relations with the Kremlin were now “very tricky”. He accused Putin of “huge attacks” on liberty and democracy. He told Sunday AM on BBC One that the President’s record had been “clouded” by events including the “extremely murky murder” of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials have asked Yuri Fedotov, the Russian Ambassador, to have the authorities in Moscow make available any information that might assist in the investigation.

Energy Giant

— Yukos was formed by the Russian Government in April 1993 with the merging of hundreds of state-owned oil industry entities

— It became Russia’s first fully-privatized oil company in 1996

— It employs 100,000 people and is involved in every aspect of the oil industry from drilling to the filling station

— In the past five years it has increased its overseas operations, acquiring significant stakes in Slovakian and Lithuanian oil pipeline operators. It is also involved in a proposed Russia-China pipeline
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British Minister Criticizes Putin in Probe of Soviet Ex-Spy's Death
Sunday, November 26, 2006


LONDON — A British Cabinet minister accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of "attacks on individual liberty and on democracy" and said Sunday that relations with Moscow were strained after a former KGB agent was poisoned to death in London.

Peter Hain, the government's Northern Ireland Secretary, said Putin's tenure had been clouded by incidents "including an extremely murky murder of the senior Russian journalist" Anna Politkovskaya.

They were the strongest comments leveled at Moscow since Alexander Litvinenko died Thursday from poisoning by the radioactive element polonium-210. In a dramatic statement dictated from his hospital bed and read outside the hospital after his death, the Kremlin critic accused the "barbaric and ruthless" Putin of ordering his poisoning.

"His success in binding what is a disintegrating nation together with an economy that was collapsing into Mafioso style chaos, his success in that must be balanced against the fact there have been huge attacks on individual liberty and on democracy," Hain said of Putin. "And it's important that he retakes the democratic road in my view," he told British Broadcasting Corp. He agreed when asked if relations with Moscow were at a "tricky stage."

British officials have so far avoided blaming Moscow for Litvinenko's death and Hain did not comment directly on the case.

But opposition leaders demanded Sunday that the government explain what it knows about the poisoning and, in particular, how the deadly nuclear material used to poison the 43-year-old Litvinenko found its way into Britain.

Litvinenko told police he believed he was poisoned Nov. 1 while investigating the October slaying of Politkovskaya, another critic of Putin's government. The ex-spy was moved to intensive care last week after his hair fell out, his throat became swollen, and his immune and nervous systems suffered severe damage.

London's Metropolitan Police said they were investigating a "suspicious death," rather than a murder. They have not ruled out the possibility that Litvinenko may have poisoned himself.

Litvinenko's friends and allies in London's Russian emigre community blamed Putin, who has denied any involvement and called the death a tragedy.

Russian officials could not be reached for comment Sunday on Hain's remarks.

Home Secretary John Reid, Britain's top law-and-order official, refused to speculate about who might have killed Litvinenko. "I don't think it's for me as a politician to be making judgments that a policeman should make," he told Scotland's Radio Clyde.

The main opposition Conservative Party demanded the government make a statement in the House of Commons on Monday outlining what it knew about the case and how polonium-210 — a rare radioactive element usually produced in a nuclear reactor or particle accelerator — got into Britain.

"It is essential that other dissidents living in Britain are reassured about their safety and there are also questions about how polonium-210 came to be used in Britain," said David Davis, the Conservative law-and-order spokesman.

Relations between Russia and Britain have remained cool since the end of the Cold War. London has infuriated Moscow by offering refuge to self-exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky, a Kremlin critic wanted in Russia on money-laundering charges, and Akhmed Zakayev, a representative of late Chechen rebel chief Aslan Maskhadov.

In January, Russia's Federal Security Service, the FSB, accused four British diplomats of spying, showing on state-run television sophisticated communications equipment concealed in a fake rock, which it said the Britons hid in a Moscow park to use to contact Russian agents.

The ex-spy's death sparked a huge public health alert, with authorities preparing to test scores of people who may have come into contact with Litvinenko for traces of radiation.

"There is a lot of radioactivity involved," the Health Protection Agency's director of radiation, chemicals and environmental hazards, Roger Cox, told Sky News television.

But the agency insisted the risk to others was low because polonium-210 can only contaminate if it is ingested, inhaled or taken in through a wound.

Litvinenko's contaminated body was released to a coroner late Saturday, and government pathologists were awaiting advice on whether it was safe to perform an autopsy.

On Sunday, Alexander Lebedev, a former KGB spy who is a member of the Russian parliament, said Putin's government played no part in the death.

"I completely rule out the possibility of that being done on official orders from anyone in the authorities," Lebedev told Sky News.

The Sunday Times reported that as he lay dying, Litvinenko named an alleged Russian agent he feared had been sent to hunt him down. Litvinenko claimed the Russian agent was not directly involved in his poisoning but had been sent to monitor his activities, the newspaper said.

Police said they could not immediately confirm whether officers would seek to interview the alleged Russian agent. The Foreign Office said it has asked Moscow for help with the investigation.

Litvinenko worked for the KGB and its successor, the FSB. In 1998, he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill Berezovsky and spent nine months in jail from 1999 on charges of abuse of office. He was later acquitted and in 2000 sought asylum in Britain.