170. The Murder of Litvinenko: Putin’s Plan To Kill (Ep 2)

19:37David:That was his job. So in some ways, he's really well placed. And he works for three firms mainly, Risk Management Limited, Titan International Limited, and Eranus UK Limited. It's interesting. Just we won't go -

19:52Gordon:Are they all based in Mayfair, Gordon? They're all based in Mayfair. How did you know? Just a wild guess.

19:59David:Just a wild guess. Because anyone who's been around Mayfair, particularly in those years, will have not been surprised by the Russian accents and the Russian money that was very, very evident. So risk is one of them. Risk is really interesting because it grew out of an earlier business set up by a guy called Stephen Curtis. And he'd been a lawyer who worked for oligarchs, including Berezovsky. He dies in a suspicious helicopter crash in the UK in 2004. And it's fair to say that as we go on through this series, odd, unusual deaths are going to be a feature, not just for Litvinenko himself. But this is the world that we're talking about.

20:38David:And the company is, of course, pretty vague and secretive about what Litvinenko is doing and what cases they've got. But for instance, for Risk, one case that they asked him to help with was acting for a big vodka business, which thought that the Russian government was trying to put them out of business by sponsoring rivals and they're looking for help on that. So this is the kind of work he's doing.

21:00Gordon:He is doing some work as well in this period that's more spy adjacent, espionage adjacent, isn't he?

21:07David:So, yeah, he's looking at transcribing tapes of conversations from a president of Ukraine looking for dirt. But he's involved in the Chechen cause thanks to his friendship with Ahmed Zakhaev. And, David, you'll be pleased to know, here's where Vasily Matrokin comes into the story as well. So my favorite KGB archivist.

21:25Gordon:There's a relatively new book out, isn't there, Gordon, about Vasily Matrokin. Oh, David. Oh, it's nice you mentioned that. Is it in paperback yet, Gordon?

21:34David:How funny you mentioned that. And it's not like I'd noted it, put it in my notes in bold. But there is a paperback book, which is all about Vasily Matrokin, the man who tried to kill the KGB, which is a brilliant book. Oh, no, I can't really say that because I wrote it. But anyway, it's a book. It is a book. And it's out in paperback. It's a book. It is a book. It is a book. And we never plug our books here. But there is a relevant here. This is relevant to the story, I promise. And we'll come back to it. Because Matrokin had fled to Britain with KGB secrets. 1999, some of the archive gets published.

22:08David:And it stirs up interest in countries about what details about KGB operations interfering in politics, paying politicians are in the files. And in 2002, the Italian parliament established a commission to investigate the claims that come out of the Mitrokin archive. And an interesting character who I've met called Mario Scaramella, does sound like something from a Bond film. Who was the guy in the man from the Golden Globe? Scaramanga. Sorry, I'm getting confused. But Scaramella becomes a consultant to this commission. the Mitrokin Commission, looking at whether KGB money had been financing political parties in Italy.

22:42David:And he is introduced to Litvinenko, 2003, who agrees to help him with these investigations. They meet three or four times in Italy and London. Litvinenko is passing on information, including about organized crime, the entanglement of the FSB with arms dealing and other things. So that, and we'll come back to that because Scaramilla is actually an interesting character in this story.

23:03Gordon:And he's also going to get much more involved in the spy world. And maybe there, Gordon, let's take a break and we come back. We will see how Litvinenko comes to cross paths with MI6.

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25:19Gordon:Welcome back. Now, of course, Gordon, when Litvinenko had arrived in the UK, he had clearly been interviewed by MI5 and MI6 before being, I guess, granted asylum or while being granted asylum. And one thing that he had warned them was that he could see that the Russian organized crime world that he had been examining and tracking as an FSB officer throughout the 1990s was now exporting its work into London. Of course, that's going to be of significant interest or should be of significant interest to Britain's spy agencies.

25:58David:Yeah, that's right. I think he can see that all this dark corruption overlap with security services that had existed in Russia is being transferred to London because so much Russian business and money and some of the oligarchs were moving to London. So it was coming with them. He's also starting to engage more with MI6 particularly, partly because the money from Berezovsky is being reduced over time and he's looking for other income. And he starts working for MI6 as a consultant. Now, it's crucial here. We're quite specific about what he was doing and what he wasn't doing. But there is also a separate question, which we'll get to, which is what the Russians thought or knew about what he was doing.

26:45David:But one thing to be clear about is he wasn't a spy for MI6 when he was in Russia, when he was in the FSB. He was not an agent being run by them in that sense. And the UK government obviously always, you know, neither confirm nor deny, but we're sure about that. But when he comes over to the UK, he does start doing some work for them as a consultant. Marina always says he was never an agent.

27:07Gordon:You can immediately see how the Russians might perceive. I mean, yeah, the diff might not be happy about that. Seen from Moscow, what is the difference between him being an agent and him being a consultant? Consultant, yeah.

27:23David:And he's going to get, he's on the payroll. He gets a steady£2 ,000 a month. It's not insignificant from 2004 directly into his bank account from MI6. And the Brits put him in touch with European security services, particularly the Spanish. So the Russian mafia had put down deep roots in Spain, all these Russian businessmen buying property on the Spanish coast. And so Litvinenko starts to travel out there from late 2004. A Spanish judge is investigating these criminals and Litvinenko is helping him. And the Spanish judge will say that Litvinenko's thesis that the intelligence agencies controlled organized crime in Russia had proved accurate.

28:04David:So his argument, Litvinenko's argument to the Spanish is that the FSB at this point is absorbing the mafia. It's taking control over it, eliminating non-compliant mafia bosses. And he, Litvinenko, is providing information to the Spanish to go after some of those mafia bosses who have taken residency in Spain.

28:26Gordon:He's also going to do something much more sensitive, isn't he? Because he's going to start potentially pitching people to actually work with MI6. So again, seen from Moscow, this looks a lot like a guy who's defected and who is helping a hostile security service target Russians.

28:51David:And that's what's interesting is this is, I think, one of the deeper layers of Litvinenko's work, which has still not entirely been unearthed in all the inquiries, but which I spent a bit of time investigating. And it's to explain them, a lot of these different strands of the work he's doing, the due diligence, the politics, but also this spy world and the consultancy world and even the pitching world, they're actually all going to collide with his relationship with one other person who he thinks of as a friend, but who, it's alleged, will kill him. And that person's name is Andrei Lugovoy. So let's spend maybe a few moments on this other character, Andrei Lugovoy, and how he meets Litvinenko.

29:37David:Because Andrei Lugovoy is born in Baku in the Soviet Union, 1966, four years younger than Litvinenko. Family involved in the military. His grandfather fought in the Second World War. His brother serves on nuclear subs. He goes to a military college. And then he joins the KGB's ninth directorate, which provides security for senior officials. And it's going to become the Federal Protection Service. this. So it's kind of high-end bodyguards. But in 1996, he leaves that to go work for Boris Berezovsky. So he goes to work as head of security for Berezovsky's TV station. And then in 2001, after Berezovsky flees, Lugovoy is arrested for trying to help one of Berezovsky's allies, a guy called Nikolai Glushkov, also escape, flee Russia.

30:22David:And just as a very brief footnote, worth saying. Glushkov will be found dead in the UK in his home in South London, 2018. Another one of those people.

30:31Gordon:I mean, from here on out in the story, Gordon, you could almost assume that anybody who is mentioned will wind up dead because the whole cast of character basically goes. Yeah.

30:42David:I mean, Glushkov is found strangled, but it's made to look like suicide in his home in South London, 2018. But Glushkov, Berezovsky ally, Lugovoy arrested for trying to help Glushkov escape Russia. Now, this is where it gets murky, if it's not murky enough. Lugovoy was said to have spent 15 months in prison. Now, it's possible that when he was in there, he might have been approached by the FSB to work for them and infiltrate Berezovsky's circle, which would make perfect sense, wouldn't it? But others even wonder if he never even ended up in prison, that he'd never actually spent a day there. But that was all a ruse to kind of get him to look like he was loyal to Berezovsky because other prisoners, including Glushkov, say they never saw him in prison.

31:29David:But something is happening here. Because after he's released from prison in 2002, he sets up his own private security company in Moscow, which is quite successful.

31:39Gordon:Which seems odd for someone who had gone to prison for helping essentially a Putin enemy, right? So that's odd.

31:49David:Yeah, I think it's odd. The fact he can travel, he can go to London, but he's still running a successful business in Moscow and he's in contact with Berezovsky. All of that feels to me like he's already being run by the FSB at that point. yeah but Litvinenko and Lugovoy had known each other in in Berezovsky's circle in the mid-1990s they'd both been around Berezovsky they'd lost contact but then again it's interesting isn't it because Lugovoy gets back in touch with Litvinenko October 2004 Lugovoy says I'm over to see a football match someone one of the teams one of the Russian teams playing Chelsea uh he's a big football fan.

32:31David:Come back to that. They have dinner, Litvinenko and Lugavoy, the Chinese restaurant in Soho. And Lugavoy says, Alexander, if you'd like to work with me, we can earn some good money together.

32:44Gordon:And I guess Litvinenko, I mean, I guess this would on one face of it seem to be a failure of his due diligence capabilities, because it does seem like Lugavoy's prison story and the fact that he's now successful would be odd to Litvinenko. But on the other hand, Litvinenko knew him, right? I mean, Lugovoy had been in Berezovsky's circle. So he's got a personal connection with him that maybe doesn't set off his antenna when he's thinking about Lugovoy's recontact. It makes sense. It's plausible. Yeah, it does.

33:24David:Yeah. And you can also see why it's kind of useful for Litvinenko because he's doing this due diligence work. He needs money. But Litvinenko can't go back to, yeah, he needs money and he can't go back to Russia to talk to people. But Lugovoy is going back and forth between Russia and London and he's a former FSB officer. So the idea of kind of doing some business together, it seems pretty good. So it looks like Litvinenko did trust Lugovoy. And I think that will be proved obviously a mistake. He's going to introduce Lugovoy to Marina. Berezovsky's big. I mean, Beresowski has this crazy birthday party at Blenheim Palace in January 2006, which Lugavoy is going to attend.

34:01David:I don't know where you have your birthday party, David, but Blenheim Palace is not where I have mine. Mine's normally down the curry house down the road, if anywhere.

34:08Gordon:I think if the podcast continues to do well, Gordon, I mean, don't cross it off the list. Don't cross it off the list. But that's where I think it'll be Sandbrook or Holland to have their birthday party there first before we do.

34:21David:Yeah, the rest is history, guys.

34:22Gordon:Guys can dream.

34:23David:Throw us an invite. We'll serve drinks or something like that. So they're going to start doing some business together. Litvinenko gets Lugavoy to help with the vodka investigation, spring 2006. These different companies are employing Litvinenko. He's realizing it's useful. One of the companies is trying to do deals with Gazprom. Litvinenko says, I've got a friend who's got contacts in Russia and he can help us. So Lugovoy is coming to the offices, coming to some of the meetings in Mayfair, this swanky bit of London with Litvinenko to meet some of these companies. Lugovoy is even going to Litvinenko's home whilst Marina and Anatolia away on holiday.

35:07David:And it does seem like Litvinenko seems to have viewed him as a good friend. and you know that that i think is going to be a little bit embarrassing for him and awkward for him when that judgment is proved wrong and then lukevoi is also going to introduce litvinenko to a second person a guy called dimitri kovtun and i'm afraid this is the second of the two people accused although they of course deny it of killing litvinenko and i guess kovtun i think lukevoi comes across as when you see him being interviewed as a kind of russian fsb hard man you know whereas kovtun i think is a little bit less professional in his background than lugovoy i mean perhaps even somewhat clownish but i think that's maybe overplaying it slightly because it's you know he is said to be a killer well and who is kovtun where does he where does he come from kovtun and Lugovoy had been old friends as children because their fathers had served together in the army.

36:08David:Kovtun joins the army, gets posted to East Germany, marries his first wife there. And then only a few months after marrying, discovers he's going to be sent to Chechnya. This is like 1991. His wife doesn't want to leave Germany. She's German. And Kovtun doesn't want to go. So he deserts in Germany in 1991 and claims asylum. And he ends up in this hostel for asylum seekers in hamburg he drinks heavily and his wife has a great description of him she says he had all sorts of dreams and plans none of which he realized however dimitri wanted to be a porno star i mean i mean

36:45Gordon:hold on that came out of nowhere where you just like gotta drop drop that in was that that was his wife saying that that was his wife that's a quote so he's telling his wife i mean so i mean

36:57David:It's one thing for your wife to go, he was a bit of a dreamer. He's always trying to come up with schemes.

37:02Gordon:He's a bit of a dreamer. Wanted to be a porno star.

37:07David:So bizarrely, that marriage breaks down.

37:09Gordon:Yeah, it's odd. Didn't see that coming. Didn't see that coming.

37:12David:But then he's in Germany. He marries again in Hamburg in 1996. He's living off benefits. He works, and this is part of the story we'll come back to. He works in a restaurant called Il Porto as a waiter, cleaning dishes. and his second wife says of him, I love these descriptions from his second wife. Every woman finds Dimitri charming. It's just he does not fancy working and he's not a family man. He's more of a man about town. I had to do everything. I had to set up letters on the computer. He was not able to do this. Dimitri was no handyman. He could not even bang a nail into the wall.

37:53Gordon:I mean I mean these are devastating quotes from the XY I think we're getting a picture of Kovtun here so Kovtun though

38:02David:he goes back to Moscow he goes back it's kind of interesting isn't it he claimed asylum he goes back and he gets involved in technical surveillance so bugging and of course he knows Lugovoy so Lugovoy is going to in 2005 say well maybe you can help me out with your surveillance skills for my security firm. So we've got this relationship between Lugovoy and Litvinenko. And this is, I think, we're talking about layers of this story. And this is where we get to this, I think, the deepest layer. We hinted at it earlier, this idea Litvinenko is also potentially pitching at people on behalf of MI6. And he, Litvinenko, is going to realise that Lugovoy could be useful, potentially, to be pitched at.

38:48David:I think this is the bit which I've looked at this and I've investigated it and it is murky. And my sense of this is that this is not MI6 tasking him to do this. He's a kind of consultant on organized crime, but he's trying to prove himself to be useful to them. so he is to some extent almost freelancing at points asking people suggesting people to mi6 trying to kind of broker contacts so he's not a spy spy i mean i don't know is he what you'd call an access agent i'm not sure but it's he's it's an interesting role i i guess i i don't

39:31Gordon:find the definitional point to be that murky. I think he is acting as an agent. You know, it just seems, and I agree, access agent, maybe a social broker, he's someone who I could imagine, you know, in this kind of early 2000s period, he's being paid, as we said, he's being paid 2 ,000 pounds a month from MI6. It's going directly to his bank account. As part of that, I could imagine at any point an MI6 officer sitting down with him somewhere in London and depending on what operations MI6 has going in Moscow, I could see them asking all kinds of questions of Litvinenko about where certain people fall or their political beliefs, their connections, their network.

40:22Gordon:there's all kinds of questions that would it's not that he's providing foreign intelligence that's then being written up in a report and is being incorporated into you know an analytic product like a like a gordy ebski right he's not that um he doesn't have you know ongoing access inside the fsb but if you're trying to get a sense of the of the networks and the sign of the kind of social context, the familial context for people, the background, the history. It's almost implausible to be that MI6 wouldn't have sat down with him and tasked him for that kind of information. Yeah. So yeah, I think he's an agent.

41:02Gordon:He's just not in Russia and he's just not providing FI, but he's an agent.

41:07David:There is one report which will come out later and it's only in the Russian media, so it could be disinformation, can't be sure about it, but there'll be a major in the Russian tax police who will claim that Litvinenko in 2002 had introduced him, this major in the Russian tax police, to an MI6 officer who then starts paying him€2 ,000 a month for consulting services. And then they have, you know, the major has meetings with MI6 over whiskey in third countries like Turkey and Finland, Litvinenko sometimes attending and that he's provided with a mobile phone or a special SIM card. So, you know, there are these claims that he's involved in this kind of spy work.

41:45David:The people I spoke to are obviously very careful about what they say, but the sense I get is he was not easy to control. He was often doing his own thing, trying to prove his worth. I think senior people in British intelligence from the time, I think, concede they weren't always aware enough of what he was doing and some of the risks he was taking and some of the things that are going on. Because this is where it gets back to Lugavoy. Because Litvinenko looks like he was trying to provide access to andre lugovoy for british intelligence now maybe doing it off his own back maybe at their instigation that's a bit unclear but we know about this because lugovoy himself later talks and you've got to you know take it with a pinch of salt but i also think it you know there's reason to think it's plausible lugovoy will later talk about being approached by mi6 these claims get dismissed later but it's him muddying the water trying to kind of make it sound like MI6 is behind the murder and things like that.

42:43David:But the suggestion is that Lugovoy is introduced to British intelligence. And Lugovoy will claim, he will later say, it began to dawn on me that these meetings for business consultancy, which had been set up, were not -

42:57Gordon:Again, slowly it began to dawn on me.

43:00David:Oh, maybe this is, he's being paid through an offshore company in Cyprus. and then he says like i was alarmed because it was public domain information which could be easily found on the internet it became clear the boy will say that the purpose of the remuneration was to involve me gradually into cooperation now i have to say this is i don't know what you think but we know this is how spy services work don't they do this thing where they'll lure people in for business consultancy just remember that next time you get asked and you get overpaid for some bits of information, but it's about establishing a relationship and then you slowly dial up how secret or how sensitive the information is.

43:43David:That does feel plausible. That's what happened with

43:46Gordon:Lugovoy. Does it make sense that MI6 would want to recruit Lugovoy? Would he make sense as an asset of some kind?

43:54David:Yeah. What do you think? I think he's got contacts in the FSB. He's running a security company in Moscow. He's being asked to do things. I mean, that's kind of interesting, I'd have thought. He's going to pick up stuff on who's close to Putin, what's going on, who's got business rivalries or animosity because they're employing him to spy on the other one. That could be all useful information.

44:21Gordon:He's got a company, so he could provide all kinds of services, cover services, things like that for agents or officers who want to go in and out. So, yeah, all kinds of interesting things you could do with a guy like that. Yeah, I think so.

44:35David:And so he's going to claim that the Brits were trying to gather dirt on President Putin and his family and incriminate people, do things like that. You know, who knows? Hard to know. And there's definitely a bit of him trying to smear MI6 afterwards. So you have to slightly aim off at least a little bit. But he's going to claim, again, these are claims from Lugovoy, he's given a special phone by MI6 officers who he meets that he's to use when calling from Moscow. But here's the thing. He says, well, when the British agent started to approach me, one of the first things that I did was to inform the FSB so they wouldn't accuse me of being a traitor or a spy.

45:16David:now that may be true but equally as we said before maybe he was already working for the fsb having been turned around the time of that prison sentence in 2002 i think i'm more in the him being turned earlier but even if he hadn't been turned earlier he's definitely now telling the fsb and this is the crucial bit he's telling the fsb that he is being recruited or attempting to be recruited by MI6. And the person who put them in touch was Litvinenko. I mean, that's a big deal,

45:52Gordon:isn't it? And of course, Litvinenko and British Intelligence think that they're cultivating Lugovoy as some kind of agent. And at the same time, though, what's more likely, I think we're saying going on, is that Lugovoy has already, he's already acting as an FSB agent, and he is effectively using this access to this community of Russians in London to feel out the Putin opposition and to penetrate the Putin opposition and report that back to Moscow. And I guess after this set of interactions, what the Russians now think is that former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko is in the middle of this swirl and is working actively with MI6 to penetrate Russia and Russian institutions, right?

46:47Gordon:So I think what we've established, Gordon, is that there's a lot of different reasons for Putin and the Russian state to want Alexander Litvinenko out of the picture.

46:55David:And then at this point, so now we're getting into 2006, and this is where everything starts to heat up. So the due diligence work as well is going to get more sensitive. One of the companies, Titan, asked Litvinenko in the summer of 2006 to do a report on a senior Russian politician called Viktor Ivanov, former KGB man, risen with Putin from St. Petersburg, becomes head of the Federal Anti-Narcotics Agency. And, you know, this, you know, someone's thinking of doing a deal with him. They want to know about him. First report Litvinenko hands over about him was only a third of a page long and not very good.

47:31David:And it had been co-authored with Lugavoy. It's really short.

47:34Gordon:It's really short. It's not very good, is it? A couple paragraphs. Yeah.

47:38David:Yeah. So he's been doing this work with Lugavoy. And it's a pretty crappy report. And the guy who runs the company is like, you know, that's not good enough. And he meets Lugavoy as well. And he's like, I don't like this guy. So Litvinenko is told, go do another report. So this time he turns to Yuri Shvets, former KGB officer who now lives in America, once met him at a diner in Virginia.

47:58Gordon:And he... Well, hold on, hold on. What diner? What was the context for the diner visit with Yuri Shvets?

48:04David:Well, I was in a... Maybe it was a little more like a mall. I can't remember what kind of food. Maybe it was like a diner in a big mall in Virginia. And he's a very kind of suave, you know, former KGB officer who just left at the end of the Cold War and now does this kind of due diligence work. He's kind of an interesting character. Wrote quite a good book, actually, about being a KGB officer in America at the end of the Cold War, which I was talking to him about. But so Litvinenko, the Lugovoy cooperation created a crappy third of a page report. Now he does something with the Schweiz and it's like eight pages, you know, about Viktor Ivanov, you know, really interesting.

48:39David:But here's the thing, Litvinenko, late September, gives this eight page version that he's done with the Schweiz to Lugovoy and says, hey, this is how you do it. This is how you write a really good due diligence report with loads of, you know, interesting information on Russian politicians. And he's given it to Lugovoy. And Shvets, when he finds out, is furious. He's like, what are you doing? This is dangerous, handing out this stuff. It should be confidential. And the report leads to the collapse of a business deal and losses of, it's thought, between$10 and$15 million.

49:12Gordon:For Ivanov.

49:13David:For Ivanov, or for Putin's friends, yeah. So now you're also getting a kind of insight into the other motives that are going on, because Litvinenko's reporting for due diligence is costing people millions of dollars. And Lugovoy knows about it. Lugovoy flies back to Moscow. And of course, what happens? That report about Ivanov written with Shvets and Litvinenko finds its way to the FSB. He'll say, oh, I was stopped at the airport. They found it on me. Hmm. More likely, he gives it to the FSB because he's working for them. Either way, it now means the FSB and probably Ivanov himself know Litvinenko is producing reports which are kind of crashing business deals for them, which are costing them millions and millions of dollars.

49:58Gordon:So you've got another motive now, haven't you? We've got a commercial motive because the due diligence is costing Putin allies money. We have a political motive because Litvinenko has essentially said that – and he's published a book that says that Putin and the people around him are responsible for the apartment bombings. And I guess we have a sort of counterintelligence or security motive because Lydvinenko is an access agent, a social broker of some kind, a consultant for MI6. So there's a lot of reasons to do it. So as we get into the middle of 2006, Lydvinenko has been in the UK for how many years?

50:51Gordon:Five. Five to six years. Yeah. And he's heating up. It's heating up. There's been this kind of build. Maybe in isolation, none of these things were quite important enough for the Russian state to order a hit. But all of them together, by the time we get to 2006, it's just, you know, this is a guy who's causing problems on many different fronts. And time to act.

51:14David:Time to act. I mean, it's the thing. Sometimes you're looking for a motive. I think in the case of Litvinenko, you don't have to look that hard. It's choosing which one or trying to work out which one of many because there just are so many reasons why the Russian state might want to kill him.

51:30Gordon:Well, maybe there, Gordon, let's end this episode. When we come back next time, we're going to have a look at the crucial weeks leading up to Litvinenko's murder, including the fact that his assassins will try multiple times to poison him before they finally manage to do the deed.

51:48David:That's right. And just a reminder that if you want to hear that right now, you can. You don't have to wait. Join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com, where you get the early access to all these episodes to the bonuses where we're going to go deep into some of the topics surrounding the Litvinenko case and talk to people who are directly involved and you get ab-free listening all kinds of other things as well so do remember that don't forget as well live show we've got a live show 4th and 5th of September on the South Bank in London part of the Rest is Fest the two of us on the Friday with the Mooch Anthony Scaramucci on Saturday isn't it so that should be entertaining and enlightening.

52:27Gordon:Well, at least one of those two things, Gordon.

52:30David:At least one. Yeah. Do get your tickets for that because they're going fast. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.

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