‘Pedophile Putin’: claim that may have got Alexander Litvinenko killed
Deborah Haynes
The Times
January 22, 2016 12:27PM
Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin this week.
President Putin is a paedophile with links to the Russian mafia and Colombian drug barons, who rose to power on the back of a deliberate bomb attack that killed hundreds of civilians, according to Alexander Litvinenko.
The allegations, made by the former Russian spy, were listed by the inquiry into Litvinenko’s death as “powerful motives” for the Kremlin and the Russian president to have wanted him silenced. Another factor was a belief that he was working for MI6.
Sir Robert Owen, the chairman of the inquiry, went even further. He raised the possibility that Mr Putin’s Russia had authorised the killing of as many as seven other perceived enemies of the state prior to Litvinenko’s murder in November 2006.
“These cases suggest that ... the Russian state may have been involved in the assassination of Mr Putin’s critics,” he said in a report summing up his findings.
More: Putin ‘approved’ ex-spy’s murder
More: Time to eject Putin’s spooks
Litvinenko, who became a British citizen just weeks before his death from radiation poisoning at the age of 44, was not the last to be targeted. Sir Robert highlighted an apparent assassination attempt against Boris Berezovsky, an opponent of Mr Putin, in 2007. The Russian oligarch was found dead at his home in Berkshire in 2013.
If true, “this event is evidence that at very much the time of Mr Litvinenko’s death, the FSB [Russia’s domestic spy agency] was prepared to arrange the assassination of leading opponents of the Putin regime in London,” Sir Robert wrote. Russia has denied any involvement in the murder of Litvinenko.
The Russia described by Litvinenko, in books, speeches, interviews and evidence submitted to British and Spanish intelligence agencies as well as the Italian authorities, was effectively a mafia state under Mr Putin.
His allegations were far-reaching and sensational. They included claims that Mr Putin assisted in the laundering of Colombian drug money and slept with under-age boys, while the FSB allegedly supported sales of arms to al-Qa’ida. Members of the president’s inner circle were accused of having links to organised crime syndicates.
Litvinenko also pointed the finger at Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club and a friend of the president, and Romano Prodi, a former Italian prime minister. He alleged that Mr Abramovich once encouraged Mr Putin when he was head of the FSB to blackmail a senior Russian official over a sex-tape scandal. He claimed that Mr Prodi had been an agent of the KGB, the predecessor to the FSB.
Sir Robert said that there was “undoubtedly a personal dimension” to the dislike felt by Mr Putin towards Litvinenko. This was partly based on allegations that the president, during his early years at the FSB, missed out on being sent to the elite foreign service because his bosses knew that he was a paedophile, the inquiry heard.
Litvinenko’s falling out with the Kremlin began when he was an officer in the FSB in the late 1990s. He claimed that he was ordered to kill Mr Berezovsky, but refused and went on to expose what he regarded as corruption in the agency. The move marked him out as a traitor among members, including Mr Putin, who was then its head.
His allegations of corruption ended his spy career and forced him to flee to Britain with his wife, Marina, and their young son, Anatoly. From London, supported financially by Mr Berezovsky, he built up a profile as an outspoken and vocal critic of Mr Putin.
Litvinenko also co-authored a book called Blowing Up Russia, in which he sensationally blamed the FSB, rather than Chechen rebels, for carrying out a series of bomb attacks against four apartment blocks in Russia in 1999.
The massacre, which killed more than 300, was used to help justify a subsequent war in Chechnya and helped to boost Mr Putin, who at the time was prime minister, to president, the inquiry was told. A second book by Litvinenko, Gang from Lubyanka, listed allegations of criminality and corruption on behalf of the FSB.
He also agreed to help an Italian inquiry into a range of issues relating to Russia, including alleged links between the Russian secret service and organised crime and terrorism in Italy.
Litvinenko met Mario Scaramella, an Italian lawyer, on about eight occasions between January 2004 and his death. During these meetings he claimed that a man called Semion Mogilevich, described as a Russian mafia boss, was “in a good relationship” with Mr Putin.
He said that Mr Mogilevich was an arms dealer who sold weapons to al-Qaeda. Mr Litvinenko claimed that he knew “beyond doubt that Mogilevich is FSB’s longstanding agent and all his actions including the contacts with al-Qaeda are controlled by FSB”, the inquiry was told.
Litvinenko started to work for private security companies towards the end of his life, drawing up reports on targets within the Russian administration. This included a document that alleged that a protege of Mr Putin’s developed close links with a gang in St Petersburg, the president’s home city. Mr Putin was aware of Viktor Ivanov’s alleged activities, according to the report. Litvinenko handed a copy of the report to an associate called Andrei Lugovoy, a businessman. Lugovoy is one of two men named as Litvinenko’s killers.
The sharing of the report in September 2006 was described by the lawyer for the Litvinenko family as a “fatal mistake”. However, Sir Robert said that it would at most have merely added an additional motive for Litvinenko’s murder because he believed that the plan to kill the Russian dissident had been long hatched already.
The Times
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