Alexander Litvinenko was to expose ‘criminal’ Vladimir Putin

ALEXANDER LITVINENKO was assassinated on the orders of the Kremlin to stop him from exposing Putin’s links to Russian organised crime.

Former KGB agent Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in a London hospital in 2006 after alleged thallium poisoning.

ALEXANDER LITVINENKO was assassinated on the orders of the Kremlin to stop him from exposing Vladimir Putin’s links to Russian organised crime at a trial in Spain, it was claimed yesterday.

Litvinenko, 43, a Russian dissident and former spy, was providing information to the Spanish and British security services about criminal gangs in Europe at the time of his poisoning with radioactive polonium-210 in London in 2006, a public inquiry into his death was told. He had an MI6 handler, codenamed Martin, and had helped the organisation since 2003.

“The startling truth, which is going to be revealed in public by the evidence in this inquiry, is that a significant part of Russian organised crime around the world is organised directly from the offices of the Kremlin,” said Ben Emmerson, QC, the lawyer representing Litvinenko’s widow and son, at the opening day of the long-awaited hearing. “Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a mafia state.”

The comments will further chill relations between Britain and Russia, which are at their lowest ebb since the end of the Cold War. Mr Emmerson told Sir Robert Owen, the judge who is chairing the hearing, that Litvinenko, who was a Russian agent before he claimed asylum in Britain in 2000, was murdered as he was trying to expose this “odious and deadly corruption among the cabal surrounding President Putin”.

The inquiry should unmask the Russian president as “nothing more than a common criminal dressed up as a head of state”, the lawyer said.

Litvinenko was a marked man from 1998 when, as a senior officer in the FSB, the Russian security service, which was then run by Mr Putin, he broke ranks to speak out publicly in Russia about alleged corrupt and unlawful practices, the lawyer said.

He was twice prosecuted on “trumped-up charges” and acquitted both times. Demonstrating his status as a “traitor” among the senior echelons of Russia’s security apparatus, Mr Emmerson said that video evidence would be produced of how an image of Litvinenko was used by the Russian special forces as target practice.

He escaped to Britain with his wife and son, Marina and Anatoly, in 2000 and started to write and speak out about Kremlin criminality, the lawyer said. This included a book, The Gang from Lubyanka, which named Mr Putin as having links with the Tambov-Malyshev, an organised criminal gang with a strong presence in Spain. The Spanish authorities were also investigating the activities of the gang.

“In his testimony to Spanish investigators, Mr Litvinenko had provided evidence about the activities of these Russian mafia figures, information which enabled the Spanish authorities to launch the largest operation to date against a Russian organised crime syndicate in Europe,” Mr Emmerson said.

“That raised the prospect of a criminal trial in Spain at which Mr Litvinenko may well have been a credible and reliable expert witness, which would of course threaten to expose Mr Putin’s links to that very organisation.”

Mr Emmerson added: “He was killed, we say, partly as an act of political revenge for speaking out, partly as a message of lethal deterrence to others, and partly in order to prevent him from giving evidence as a witness in a criminal prosecution in Spain, a prosecution that could have exposed President Putin’s direct links to an organised crime syndicate operating in that country.”

Russia, which is not represented at the inquiry, denies any involvement in the murder. The hearing will continue today (Wednesday). The public evidence is expected to last for eight weeks and involve more than 70 witnesses, before secret evidence is given.

Sir Robert is due to deliver his findings by the end of the year.

The Times