Mark Townsend, Jamie Doward and Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Sunday December 3, 2006
The Observer
Litvinenko claimed to have made contact with senior sources in the heart of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, who would supply him with a stream of confidential dossiers on any target that the 43-year-old exile requested.
These documents would, according to Litvinenko, be used to 'blackmail' some of Russia's most shadowy and formidable figures. It was simple: either they would pay or the world would learn their blackest secrets.
As Scotland Yard's inquiries widened to the US and Italy yesterday, it emerged that officers were looking at whether Litvinenko's money-making ploy precipitated his poisoning.
In early May, Litvinenko first approached Julia Svetlichnaja, a 33-year-old Russian-born academic who is examining the roots of the Chechen conflict for a book she is writing. Litvinenko asked if she was interested in becoming involved in his 'blackmail' project.
'He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin,' she said. 'He mentioned a figure of £10,000 they would pay each time to stop him broadcasting these FSB documents. Litvinenko was short of money and was adamant that he could obtain any files he wanted.'
Litvinenko proved he had sources in the heart of the Russian security services by producing what he said was a 100-page confidential FSB report from 2005 and forwarding it to Svetlichnaja, a politics student at the University of Westminster.
The report alleged links between Russian organised crime gangs and the Duma, the Russian parliament, and named a number of prominent politicians allegedly embroiled in high-level criminal activity.
The report, apparently genuine, was stored on a computer disc and is believed to have been smuggled from Moscow to London. It hailed from the most secret department of the FSB, the Department for the Analysis of Criminal Organisations, where Litvinenko worked as a senior operational officer in the Nineties.
It appears Litvinenko, a vociferous critic of President Vladimir Putin, may have finally acquired the firepower to hurt some of the Kremlin's most powerful interests. Svetlichnaja said: 'He did not seem worried. Quite the opposite; Litvinenko sensed he could finally make some money of his own after years of being supported by his friend [and fellow Russian exile] Boris Berezovsky.'
Litvinenko had apparently even started hawking around his plans during the immediate period before his death. Shortly before his death, Litvinenko claimed that some FSB files documented the business practices of British firms.
But the file that most excited him was the so-called 'Yukos dossier', which allegedly includes damaging material about how the Russian oil company once owned by oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky - recently jailed on fraud and tax-dodging charges - came to be taken over by the state. Three months ago, Russian prosecutors launched an investigation into Yukos bosses, accusing them of asset-stripping, charges they deny and say are politically motivated.
Litvinenko's claims that he had such a document were yesterday corroborated by another former Soviet intelligence officer, Yuri Shvets, during questioning by Scotland Yard and the FBI. It is likely that Litvinenko's ownership of the Yukos file may have come to the attention of Russia's security services shortly before he was poisoned. Weeks before he was contaminated with polonium 210, Litvinenko had travelled to Israel to hand over the dossier to Leonid Nevzlin, a Yukos executive whom Russia has been trying to extradite. Nevzlin is currently in self-imposed exile in Israel, but denies any wrongdoing and has given the dossier to the authorities.
The British police investigation has already taken counter-terrorism officers to the US in a line of inquiry that may prove to be connected. The questioning of former KGB spy Shvets by the Metropolitan Police and the FBI in Washington focused on an October meeting between Litvinenko and 'a contact'. Shevts, also an undercover spy in Washington during the Eighties, was the man who actually compiled the Yukos dossier, a business associate said.
The associate said: 'Shevts gave it to Sasha [Litvinenko], who then showed it to a Russian in London, boasting that he wrote it himself.'
Litvinenko's email list of confidantes reveals how Shvets, 53, and Italian security consultant Mario Scaramella frequently exchanged information on Russian politics. Last year, Shvets met Scaramella in Washington to discuss a parliamentary investigation that the Italian was conducting into Soviet spy activities.
Both knew it was an investigation that would make enemies. On 1 November, Scaramella told Litvinenko over lunch in an Itsu sushi restaurant in London, that they, along with Italian senator Paolo Guzzanti, were assassination targets. With Litvinenko now dead and Scaramella 'significantly' poisoned, Italian detectives have contacted Guzzanti to ascertain his safety.
Of interest to Scotland Yard are a number of emails sent by Litvinenko in the weeks before he was poisoned. One, seen by The Observer, was written by him just four days after the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who had met Litvinenko shortly before she was shot in the head.
'This is why Putin's secret service killed Anna,' began one message sent to Svetlichnaja. Had the knowledge that Litvinenko's sudden access to humiliating FSB documents meant that, suddenly, he could no longer be ignored? Would it be better if he were silenced?
At the start of last week, Litvinenko's poisoning was being likened to the type of fiction woven by John Le Carre. Now, as the investigation's spread widens, the case has assumed a fantastical aura. Few dare predict its next twist.
So far, the radioactive trail touches some of London's best-known five-star hotels and, unexpectedly, the Ashdown Park hotel in East Sussex, where Scaramella was staying. Increasingly clear, though, is that the trail continues to lead to Moscow. But allegations that the Kremlin sanctioned the poisoning remain unfounded, as do claims that renegade Russian spies with a personal vendetta were to blame.
Elsewhere, forensic teams from the atomic weapons research establishment at Aldermaston are still trying to locate the source of the polonium. Evidence suggests the assassins struggled to contain the polonium with which they were working, leaking radioactive material wherever they went.
Among the theories that remain open is that the poisonings were an accident that happened while Litvinenko tried to assemble a dirty bomb for Chechen rebels. Those who know him believe he was crazy enough to attempt such a thing and, in the past week, some have implicated him in the smuggling of nuclear materials from Russia.
This week should bring the results of the postmortem on Litvinenko. For the first time, detectives will know how much polonium he ingested. Vast quantities would point to a murder; smaller quantities possibly to accidental contamination. From Washington to London to Moscow, detectives, governments and spies are watching and waiting.
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