Litvinenko: Polonium detected at Berezovsky's office

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Polonium detected at Berezovsky's office

Sandra Laville and Tania Branigan
Tuesday November 28, 2006
The Guardian


Detectives have found traces of polonium 210 at the London offices of the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, it was revealed last night. Officers were searching 7 Down Street, Mayfair, after the discovery of the radioactive substance that killed Mr Berezovsky's friend and former employee, Alexander Litvinenko.

A uniformed officer and at least one plain clothes policeman were stationed inside the lobby of the property last night. Outside another 15 officers were on standby in two marked police vans and the area was cordoned off.

Sources confirmed that traces of polonium 210 had been found at the address. Mr Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, refused to comment yesterday on the revelations. "I don't want to comment anything about it," he told the Guardian. "I don't know anything about police at my office."

Mr Berezovsky, a former maths professor, made his millions in the 1990s when he bought stakes in the Russian car, oil and media industries, many of which he sold off for enormous profits. He lives with his fourth wife in a Surrey mansion but has an office at the Mayfair address.

Detectives were also searching the offices of a security and risk management company in Grosvenor Street, in the West End of London, where traces of polonium 210 have been found. A spokesman for the company, Erinys, said it had alerted police because Mr Litvinenko had visited its offices on a "totally unrelated" matter some time before he was admitted to hospital. He added: "None of our staff with whom he had contact have suffered any ill effects."

The development came as the Health Protection Agency (HPA) said three people had been referred for further radiation tests at a special clinic after contacting NHS Direct in the past few days. They were among 18 people referred to the HPA for possible further examination since the radiation alert was issued on Friday.

In the past four days around 500 people have contacted NHS Direct saying they were concerned they may have been contaminated after visiting the Piccadilly restaurant Itsu or the Millennium Hotel in Grosvenor Square on November 1, the day Mr Litvinenko first became ill.

Dr Pat Troop, the chief executive of the HPA, said people referred to the specialist clinic would undergo urine tests for radioactivity over the next couple of days. The decision to refer them for tests was taken on "a very precautionary basis", she stressed. Further tests might be carried out if police identified other locations of concern.

Dr Troop said the HPA had not precisely identified when and where Mr Litvinenko ingested the poison. Working out the time of poisoning on the basis of radioactivity found in his body was "not a precise calculation", she said.

In a statement to the House of Commons, the home secretary, John Reid, stressed that police had yet to open a murder inquiry. He warned against any speculation about the death and said the police were not yet saying that Mr Litvinenko had been unlawfully killed. "The police have been very careful in the words they have used; they are dealing with a suspicious death," he said. "We are not yet at the stage that there is definitely a third party involved."

Mr Reid's statement came in response to an urgent question from the shadow home secretary, David Davis, who said in the House of Commons that there were grounds to suspect that this was a "a particularly cruel, protracted and unpleasant assassination".

Mr Davis said the apparent use of polonium 210 raised "a number of issues" over how such material had been obtained, how it was transported and delivered undetected, and who had the knowledge to use it.

Mr Reid said there were 130 premises in England and Wales with a known use of polonium 210, each regulated and controlled by the Environment Agency. "There has been no recent report of the loss or theft of polonium 210 in England and Wales," he said.

Mr Reid drew back from Peter Hain's outspoken criticism of the Kremlin at the weekend. The Northern Ireland secretary had strained Britain's relations with Moscow further by accusing President Putin of "huge attacks" on liberty and democracy.

Tony Blair and President Putin are due to meet this week at the Nato summit in Riga, Latvia. A spokesman for Mr Blair said yesterday: "The prime minister and other ministers have repeatedly underlined our concerns about some aspects of human rights in Russia. In terms of this particular case, however, we do have to proceed carefully."

Mr Litvinenko, an ex-KGB officer and vocal opponent of Mr Putin, died last Thursday night. A large dose of alpha radiation from the isotope polonium 210 was found in his urine. A statement he composed before he died blamed Mr Putin, a claim denied by the Kremlin.

The inquest into the death is expected to open on Thursday at St Pancras coroner's court, north London. It will be adjourned until a later date. Dr Andrew Reid, London's inner north district coroner, has to decide if and when to conduct a postmortem examination.

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