The FBI has been dragged into the investigation of Alexander
Litvinenko's death after details emerged that he had planned to make tens of
thousands of pounds blackmailing senior Russian spies and business figures.
The Observer has obtained remarkable testimony from a Russian academic, Julia
Svetlichnaja, who met Litvinenko earlier this year and received more than 100
emails from him. In a series of interviews, she reveals that the former Russian
secret agent had documents from the FSB, the Russian agency formerly known as
the KGB. He had asked Svetlichnaja, who is based in London, to enter into a business deal with
him and 'make money'.
Litvinenko also handed a series of pictures of himself to Svetlichnaja
that are published by The Observer today. One shows him with murdered Russian
journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another serving as an army officer in an elite
Russian army unit two decades ago and the third draped in the Union flag
celebrating getting his British passport just before he was poisoned.
We can also reveal that Scotland Yard officers involved in the
investigation travelled to Washington
to interview a former KGB agent, Yuri Shvets, who said he had vital
information. He was a contact of Mario Scaramella, the Italian security
consultant being treated at London's University College Hospital
after having been found to have been contaminated with polonium. His doctors
said yesterday that he did not appear to be suffering from radiation poisoning.
'I believe I have a lead that can explain what happened,' Shvets
confirmed last week before he was interviewed as a witness in the presence of
FBI agents. Shvets, who lives in Virginia
and is now apparently in hiding, declined to elaborate. However, a business
associate of Shvets, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Observer that
Litvinenko had claimed in the weeks before his death that he possessed a
dossier containing damaging revelations about the Kremlin and its relationship
with the Yukos oil company. The associate claimed that Shvets compiled the
dossier.
Yukos was once owned by the oligarch Mikhail Khordorkovsky, who is
serving seven years in a Russian jail for tax evasion. His supporters say he
was convicted as a result of a show trial orchestrated by the Kremlin.
The claims that Litvinenko had a dossier containing damaging information
about the Kremlin echo separate claims he made to Svetlichnaja, who interviewed
the former KGB agent earlier this year for a book she is writing about Chechnya.
In today's Observer, Svetlichnaja, a politics student at the University of Westminster, says Litvinenko claimed he
had access to Russian intelligence documents containing information on
individuals and companies that had fallen foul of the Kremlin.
'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 that 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's access to such documents could have made him an enemy of
both big business interests and the Kremlin. However, his claims are almost impossible
to verify and some political analysts have gone as far as to dismiss him as a
fantasist.
Shvets, 53, emerges as yet another character in an espionage saga
linking Britain, Italy, the US
and Russia.
Like Litvinenko, Shvets worked for the Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky,
whom the Kremlin has tried unsuccessfully to extradite from Britain. Shvets
was a KGB major between 1980 and 1990, during which time he worked undercover
in Washington
as a correspondent for the Russian news agency, Tass. He emigrated to the US in 1993 and
wrote a book about his experiences.
Shvets met Scaramella in Washington
last year to discuss the Italian's role as a consultant to the Mitrokhin
commission, set up by the Italian government to investigate Russian infiltration
during the Cold War. It has been alleged that Scaramella discussed with the
commission's chief, Paolo Guzzanti, whether they should look for evidence that
Romano Prodi, Italy's
Prime Minister, was linked to the KGB. Prodi denies any link.
Last night another link connecting the worlds of Italian politics and
Russian intelligence emerged. Gerard Batten, an MEP for the UK Independence
Party, confirmed Litvinenko had told him a man called 'Sokolov', who worked
undercover as a Russian agent in the Seventies as a reporter for Tass, was the
key link between senior Italian politicians and the KGB.
This week Scotland Yard will interview two Russians who met Litvinenko on the same day he had lunch with Scaramella.
Andrei Lugovoy, a former agent with the FSB, and Dmitry Kovtun met Litvinenko
in the Millennium Mayfair hotel. Traces of polonium have been found on the
planes on which they are believed to have travelled between London
and Moscow.
Source: Observer
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