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A
For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com. Former Russian security service officer Alexander Litvinenko is in exile in London. But his clash with Vladimir Putin is only going to increase in its intensity and the two men are going to be on a collision course. Well, welcome to the Rest is classified. I'm David McCloskey.
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B
And I'm Gordon Carrera.
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A
And Gordon, we are in the second part of our six part series on Alexander Litvinenko versus Vladimir Putin. We left off last time looking at Litvinenko's very interesting career inside the fsb, the Russian security service, where he had become this kind of, I don't know if it's too strong to say, crusader for reform Gordon, but certainly someone who was appalled by the FSB's close relationship with organized crime and many of the sort of dangers, dastardly deeds the FSB undertook during the 1990s. Litvidenko has become close to oligarch Boris Berezovsky and has has gotten into the middle of this, this clash between Putin and the oligarchs that has ended with both Berezovsky and Linvinenko fleeing essentially to London. And in this episode we are going to look at the life and times of Alexander Litvinenko as he settles into lo. And really as we frame this, you know, at the start of the series is kind of this murder mystery to begin examining the multiple motives for the Russian state and Vladimir Putin in particular, to want to kill Alexander Litvinenko.
- [02:10]
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All episodes now Streaming on Acorn TV. We left Alexander Litvinenko arriving at Heathrow Airport, November 2000. The UK say he can stay while his asylum application is considered and he takes the name Edwin Carter. Don't know where he gets that from, but to keep a low profile while he waits. So he's obviously worried the FSB might be on his tail. He's going to get asylum in May 2001. There's a story he tells about this which I think is quite powerful. He says, when, after we were given asylum here, I took my son Anatoly to the Tower of London and I showed him the British crown. And I told him, sonny, you must defend this country in future until the last drop of your blood. And he said, yes, Dad. I told him, remember, for the rest of your life, this country saved us and do everything, whatever you might be able to do in order to defend this country. So it's very interesting he's immediately feeling quite allied and grateful for this. As we said. Berezovsky, this plotting, oligarchical figure, has also fled to the uk and Berezovsky is going to financially support Litvinenko and his family. They're going to move to a house in Muswell hill in north London, 2002, where they're going to live for the rest of his life. The family take English lessons, but Alexander struggles, I think, a bit more with learning the language than his wife Marina. Marina gets a job as a dance teacher in Finchley. Could, of course, been a quiet life, but it's not going to be because he's got this obsessive nature. He's got this desire to confront what he sees as the corruption inside Russia and inside the Security Service. And he's moving in a circle of Russian exiles and dissidents. One of them is a guy called Vladimir Bukovsky, who was released from Soviet prison in 1976. And he talks to Litvidenko about the dark history of the kgb. And Marina will say, these conversations help change Alexander Litvinenko, make him a dissident. Another friend who lives nearby and is Also under Berezovsky's wing is Ahmed Zakaev, who's a Chechen leader in exile, who's a political Chechen leader, but the FSB will say is an extremist, a terrorist, all these things. So he's moving very much still in these circles.
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A
And of course, there's this interplay between him and his patron, Berezovsky, because Berezovsky himself is becoming a very active supporter of anti Putin people and organizations. Lidvinenko is sort of all swirled up in this. And Lydvinenko does seem obsessive, doesn't he?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Obviously, Litvinenko had seen during the 1990s while working for the FSB a lot of really terrible stuff that the organization was doing. So why is it that these conversations in London are so formative in shaping his anti Putin and anti FSB worldview? Because it seems like the reason he's in London in the first place is because he had become a dissident from within the system.
- [06:45]
B
True. I guess he'd seen the recent history and the recent corruption. But what Bukovsky and others will say is this is deeper, and there are deeper roots into the KGB and into the Soviet Russian past, which explains some of this. So I think it will change him. And, you know, Berezovsky is there, and Berezovsky is plotting. Litvinenko is obsessed with telling people about the truth about what the FSB is up to. Berezovsky's backing him, and he's quite useful to Berezovsky. He acts partly as a security advisor. He's an ex security service officer, but he's also going to carve out a new career backed by Berezovsky as a writer, an investigator. And here I think we get to a really important moment in the story, because in 2001, Litvinenko is going to co author a book with Yuri Felchinsky, who we heard about last time helped him get out of Russia, also allied to Berezovsky, who investigates the fsb. And the book is going to be called Blowing Up Russia. And this, David, makes a massive allegation against Putin and the FSB doesn't?
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A
It does. And the book claims that elements in the FSB had been behind the bombing of those apartment buildings that we had discussed back in the first episode in Russia in 1999. The bombings, I think, had been influential in tilting many Russians into seeing someone like Putin as a necessary kind of. You needed a strong former security service leader to run Russia because you had these Chechen terrorists conducting these bombings. And Litvinenko says, no, no, these bombings were actually designed, conducted by elements of the fsb, to provide a pretext for a second intervention in Chechnya to cement Putin's rise to power. So the idea here is that this first intervention in Chechnya, which began in 1994, had not gone well at all. And there was a bunch more muscular effort that would be needed to subdue the Chechen rebels. And I think it is true, Gordon, that Putin used that second Chechen war as a way to, to justify many of the sort of strongman or more authoritarian tactics that he'll need to rule Russia. And at this point right now in this pod, we're not going to go super deep into this theory, but there is one particular event that I think does bear some mentioning here because it's critical to Litvinenko's argument.
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B
Yeah. Because after the bombing campaign starts, locals spot three people in Ryazan, a city in southern Russia, unloading sacks from the back of a car with Moscow license plates. They put the sacks in the basement of an apartment block. This looks suspicious. Police are called, and the police initially say the sacks contain the explosives that were used in some of the other attacks. But those who planted those sacks turn out to be agents of the fsb. Now, the FSB will say the sacks actually contain sugar, and it's all part of a training exercise. But this will be one of the incidents, you know, and as you said, I think we're not here going to go really deep into this. But this is just one piece of evidence which, you know, people use to support the idea that perhaps this was a false flag operation run by the Russian state to blame Chechens, create a fear of terrorism, create a sense you need a strong man, justify a new war. Putin's your guy, we should say.
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A
I mean, the bombings killed 200 people, if I'm not mistaken, maybe more. The idea that Litvinenko is proposing is that Vladimir Putin killed 200 or so Russian citizens to create a pretext for a conflict that would cement his hold on power.
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B
It's a wild allegation in some ways, isn't it?
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A
Yeah, it's a big if true story.
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B
Yeah. Yeah. And so the book which Litvinenko is going to author or co author about, this comes out in Russia first, then in the uk Berezovsky in London helps bankroll and publicize the book. And actually, this is when I meet Berezovsky. We talked last time that I'd actually met him, 2002. I go to his offices in Mayfair, August of that year. And sit down. Very memorable for me. Sit down in a big conference room. There's Berezovsky and an interpreter, because Berezovsky's English is a little bit, you know, wasn't great. And he starts talking to me about the corruption of the Putin regime, and he starts talking to me about the apartment bombing. So I've got. I'm there kind of radio reporter with my mic in front of him going, this is crazy. You know, this is wild stuff. I mean, it was a real insight. You know, I came out of it at the time going, I don't know what to make of this. We did broadcast some of the interview on the Today programme, ready for. But not that much of it, because it was full of these really wild allegations about Putin, which at the time, you got to remember, now we know what Putin's like.
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A
But at the time, it seemed crazy, right? It seemed like a conspiracy theory.
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B
Yeah. He's sitting around the table with other leaders. It just didn't. Didn't compute. But that's the time I met Berezovsky, but not, unfortunately, Litvinenko. And Litvinenko continues to work on the theory, continues to collect evidence. He's working on another book called the Gang from the Lubianka, which is about his favorite subject, the FSB and organized crime. He's. He's obsessively documenting this stuff. It is worth saying, isn't it, that a lot of people who investigate the apartment bombings end up dead? I think parliament deputies who pushes a film about it, you know, another member of an newspaper team who publicizes a book about it, other MPs. There are lots of people who investigate this who do end up dead, which some people will also use as evidence to point to possible FSB involvement. Obviously, it doesn't prove it, but it is interesting, and Litvinenko is one of them.
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A
What's your take on this? Was Litvinenko's theory credible? Was there evidence for it?
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B
Well, there's a lot of evidence there. I think at the time, I think I viewed it as a bit out there, and I think a lot of people did. But of course, as time has gone on and you see more and more what Putin is capable of, the bit of you which goes maybe just grows. So I don't have a conclusive answer. I wouldn't pretend I could prove it or no. But it's interesting. I think over the years, over the last 25 years or more, since the apartment bombings, I think the number of people who go, maybe has definitely grown. And I think already we've got one possible motive for Litvinenko's murder there, which he's pushing very aggressively.
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A
He's one of the people in the Russian system. Of course, now he's in London, but he's one of the people who's come out of that system who is linking Putin to this atrocity, really. I mean, he's claiming that Putin and the people around him killed hundreds of Russians.
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B
It's a really, really big claim.
- [13:43]
A
Yeah, well, and I guess there's the fact that, I mean, the FSB already views Litvinenko as a traitor.
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B
Right?
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A
I mean, even. Even before he started to make these claims, it seems like he wouldn't have been. It wouldn't have been so implausible that he would have been on the FSB's hit list, because he's a. Seen from the FSB's lens, he's a defector.
- [14:05]
B
He may not have been a spy defector in that way, but he's gone. He's left the country. He's confronted them about corruption, then fled. So he is getting harassed in London. Russian diplomats from the embassy turn up at the Litvinenko family home and say they want to see him. He's getting calls from people, a former colleague, emails from Moscow, and says another FSB officer had said the book had led to him being sentenced to extrajudicial elimination. So Already this is 2002 to 2003, though, so we're still a bit away from his murder. But you've already got one motive, I guess, if we're trying to put that together.
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A
And Litvinenko also, I mean, just very practically, he needs to find work, doesn't he? I mean, he. His English is not great. He's initially bankrolled by Berezovsky, but seems like those payments are reduced, you know, starting in 2003. And Litvinenko is increasingly needing to earn money for himself, so he moves into doing something that, you know, sounds like what a private equity firm does, due diligence. But it's also. It's a little bit shadier, I would say a little bit operating in kind of more of a gray area.
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B
So this provides another possible motive for his murder. His work in what's called due diligence, as you said, a murky world. And these are the years when London gets known as Londongrad. Late 90s, early 2000s, because Russian money is flooding into Britain. You've got a wealthy Russian community embedded in London life. Oligarchs, businessmen, some of them here for Good. Some just kind of coming briefly in and out of Moscow. It's a short plane ride. Visas in those days were pretty easy. Lots of places to shop, football, all those things. There's a lot of Russian dirty money coming into Britain. These were the years when lots of money was being taken out of Russia because of the corruption, the fear politics could take it away. So you get hundreds of billions of pounds of what is often criminal money laundered through London and the City. Light touch regulation.
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A
More like no touch. Right. It feels like no touch. Looking, looking back, the amount of money that comes through the UK is astounding. Some estimates put the number at around £100 billion over the past 20 years. So now, post Ukraine, it's kind of hard to imagine it was ever like this. But, you know, I mean, this was a time period where exiles like Berezovsky are in London. You also have Putin's people there, you know, in 2003, Roman Abramovich buys the Chelsea Football Club. And Abramovich had been. He'd been. Which is crazy, he'd been a Berezovsky protege at the time, but of course ends up being closely allied to Putin.
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B
So you.
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A
You have this. You have a real Russian stew abortion of Russians in London in those years. Litvinenko is just. Just one of them.
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B
Yeah. And that's exactly right about Abramovich and Berezovsky, because you've got both a guy plotting to get rid of Putin and, you know, one of Putin's wealthy allies all mixing in London. British intelligence, MI5, closely following the matter, Right.
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A
Very closely watching these Russians.
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B
Well, I love the fact that, you know, one MI6 officer finds out in the 90s that they've stopped even monitoring the phone line of the head of Russian intelligence at the embassy in London. And he's like, what are we doing? Which is crazy. And of course, this is. Now we're into after 9, 11, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, when terrorism is the priority. So within MI5, the amount of resource they're devoting to following Russian spies is going down, down, down, down, down. And the amount of resource they're spending on chasing terrorists is going up. So that's one of the problems. It's giving the Russians also freedom to maneuver in the city. And Litvinenko knows this. But the key thing is you've got all this Russian money coming into London. You've got people wanting to make money in Russia, and that's when you need this due diligence work, because what it's effectively Doing is saying, if you're a British company, you're going into partnership or you're opening up a factory with someone in Russia, or you're having a Russian business partner come here. Who are they? You know, are they, Are they who they say they are? Are they legitimate? Are they. And this is the big question, people want to know, is their money dirty? Are they involved in organized crime?
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A
Seems like the answer to that would almost always bs.
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B
Well, maybe not always.
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A
Maybe not. Maybe not always. Maybe.
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C
Maybe.
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B
It's also a question of degrees. How, how much was it? And that you can see absolutely why there. Litvinenko is really valuable, isn't he? He's a former security service officer who is involved.
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A
He'd been involved in investigating corruption. Yeah, that was his job.
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B
That was his job. So in some ways he's really well placed. And he worked for three firms, mainly Risk Management Limited, Titan International Limited and Erinus UK Limited. It's interesting. Just. We won't go in.
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A
Are they all. Are they all based in Mayfair, Gordon?
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B
They're all based in Mayfair. How did you know?
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A
Just a wild guess. Just a wild guess.
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B
Anyone who's been around Mayfair, particularly in those years, will have not been surprised by the Russian accents and the, the, the, 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. And the company's, 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.
- [20:32]
A
He is doing some work as well in this period that's more spy adjacent, espionage adjacent, isn't he?
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B
So, yeah, he's looking at transcribing tapes of conversations from a president of Ukraine looking for dirt. 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 Mitrokin comes into the story as well. So my favorite KGB archivist.
- [20:57]
A
There's a relatively new book out, isn't there, Gordon, about Vasily Matroka?
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B
Oh, David, it's nice you mentioned that.
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A
Is it in paperback yet, Gordon?
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B
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.
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A
It is a book.
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B
It's out in paperback.
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A
It's a book.
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B
It is a book. It is a book. And we never plug our books here. But there is irrelevant here. This is relevant to the story, I promise. And we'll come back to it. Because Matrock had fled to Britain with KGB secrets. 1999. Some of the archive gets published 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 establishes a commission to investigate the claims that come out of the Metruckin archive. And an interesting character who I've met called Mario Scaramella does sound like something from a Bond film. Who was the. Who's the guy? And the man from the Golden Gate was 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. And he is introduced to Litvinenko2003, 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, that. And we'll come back to that, because Scaramella is actually an interesting character in this story.
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A
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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C
Hi, this is Gary Lineker from Goal Hangers. The rest is football. This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your Money across borders. You want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries. And with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid market exchange rate like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees. So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise T's and C's apply.
- [23:51]
A
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, 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.
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B
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 is. 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. 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 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.
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A
You can immediately see how the Russians might perceive. I mean, yeah, the difference. I'll be happy about that scene from Moscow. What is the difference between him being an agent and him being a consultant?
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B
Consultant, yeah. And he's going to get. He's on the payroll. He gets a steady £2,000amonth. It's not insignificant. From 2004 directly into his bank account from MI6 and the Brits put him in touch with European security services, but 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, 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 has had proved accurate. So his argument, Litvinenko's argument to the Spanish is 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.
- [26:59]
A
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, who's defected and who is helping a hostile security service target Russians.
- [27:24]
B
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. 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 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. 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. 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.
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A
I mean, from here on out in the story garden, you could almost assume that anybody who is mentioned will wind up dead, because the whole. The whole cast of characters basically, basically goes, yeah.
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B
I mean, Glushkov is found strangled, but it's made to look like suicide in his home in South London, 2018. But Glishkov, 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. 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, which
- [30:13]
A
seems odd for someone who had gone to prison for helping, essentially, a Putin enemy. Right, so that's odd.
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B
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 close to. He's in contact with Berezovsky. All of that feels. I don't know, what do you think, but it 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've 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, he's a big football fan. But come back to that. They have dinner, Litvinenko, Lugovoy, at a Chinese restaurant in Soho. And Lugovoy says, alexander, if you'd like to work with me, we can earn some good money together.
- [31:17]
A
And I guess Litvinenko, I mean, I guess this would on, on one face of it, seem to be a failure of his due diligence capabilities, because it does seem like Lugovoy's prison story and the fact that he's now successful would. Would be odd to Litvinenko. But on the other hand, you know, Litvinenko knew him, right? I mean, yeah, Lugovoy had been in Berezovsky's circle. So he's got a. He's got a personal connection with him that maybe, you know, doesn't set off his, you know, set off his antenna when he's thinking about Lukavoy's recontact. It makes. It makes sense. It's plausible.
- [31:56]
B
Yeah, it does. Yeah. And you can also see why it's kind of useful for Litvinenko because he's doing this due diligence work. Can't go back. 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 seems pretty good. So it looks like Livoniengo did trust Lugovoy, and I think that will be proved, obviously a mistake. And he's going to introduce Lugovoy to Marina Berezovsky's big. I mean, Berezorski has this crazy birthday party at Blenheim palace in January 2006, which Lookevoy is going to attend. I don't know where you have your birthday party, David, but Blenheim palace is not where I, I have mine. Mine's normally down the curry house down the road, if, if anywhere.
- [32:40]
A
I think if, you know, if the podcast continues to do. Well, Gordon, I mean, don't. Don't cross it off. Don't cross it off the list. Don't cross it off the list. That's where. But that's where I think. I think it'll be Sandbrook or Holland. Who have their birthday party there first. Before.
- [32:53]
B
Yeah, before we do. Rest is history, guys.
- [32:55]
A
Yeah, guys can dream.
- [32:56]
B
Throw us an invite. You know, we'll serve drinks or something like that. But but so they're going to start doing some business together. Litvinenko gets Ligavoy to help with the vodka investigation. Spring 2006. These different companies are, you know, employing Litvinenko. He's realizing it's useful. One of the companies is trying to do deals with Gazprom. Litvineko 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 are away on holiday. 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 Lugovoy is also going to introduce Litvinenko to a second person, a guy called Dmitry 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 Lugovoy comes across as, when you see him being interviewed as a kind of Russian FSB hard man, you know, whereas Kovtoon, 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.
- [34:29]
A
Well, and who is Kovtoon? Where does he. Where does he come from?
- [34:34]
B
Kovtun and Lugaboy had been old friends as children because their fathers had served together in the army. 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 Covetun 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.
- [35:17]
A
I mean, hold on, that came out of nowhere. You just like kind of dropped. Drop that in. Was that. That was his Wife saying that that was his wife. That's a quote.
- [35:27]
B
So he's telling his wife. I mean, so, I mean, it's one thing for, you know, your wife to go, ah. He was a bit of a dreamer. He's always trying to come up with schemes.
- [35:35]
A
He's a bit of a dreamer. Wanted to be a porno star.
- [35:38]
B
Yeah. So bizarrely, that marriage breaks down.
- [35:42]
A
Yeah, it's odd. Didn't see that coming. Didn't see that coming.
- [35:45]
B
But then he's gonna. 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, this guy. 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. Dmitri was no handyman. He could not even bang a nail into the wall.
- [36:24]
A
The. I mean, these are devastating quotes from the. From the X. Yeah.
- [36:31]
B
I think we're getting a picture. Picture of Cobtoon here.
- [36:34]
A
So Cobtoon, though, he goes back to Moscow. He goes back.
- [36:37]
B
It's kind of interesting, isn't it? He claimed asylum and 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, you know, your surveillance skills for my security firm. So we've got this relationship between Lugovoy and Litvinenko and this is. I think we'll talk 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 realize that Lugovoy could be useful potentially to be pitched at. 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 guess.
- [38:03]
A
I. I don't find the definitional point to be that murky. I think he is acting as an agent. You know, it just. 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 £2,000amonth from MI6. It's going directly to his bank account as part of that. I could imagine at any point an MI6 officer, you know, 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, you know, their political beliefs, their connections, their network. 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 Gordievsky. Right. He's. Not that 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. It's almost implausible to me that MI6 wouldn't have sat down with him and tasked him for that kind of information. So, yeah, he's. You know, I think he's. He's an. He's an agent. He's just not in. He's just not in Russia, and he's just not providing fi. But he's an. He's an agent.
- [39:39]
B
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 €2,000amonth for consulting services and that they have, you know, the major has meetings with MI6 over whiskey and 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. 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 Lugovoy, because Litvinenko looks like he was trying to provide access to Andrey 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, you know, make it sound like MI6 was behind the murder and things like that. But the suggestion is that Lugovoy is introduced to British intelligence and Lugovoy will claim that he will later say it began to dawn on me that these meetings for business consultancy which had been set up were not.
- [41:30]
A
Slowly it began to dawn on me,
- [41:33]
B
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 renumeration was to involve me gradually intercooperation. 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? 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. That does feel plausible that that's what happened with Lugovoy.
- [42:19]
A
Does it make sense that MI6 would want to recruit Lugovoy? Would he make sense as a. As an asset of some kind?
- [42:28]
B
Yeah. What do you think? I mean, 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.
- [42:53]
A
He's got a company, so he could provide all kinds of services, cover services, things like that, for, you know, agents or officers who want to go in and out. Yeah, all kinds of interesting things you could do with a guy like that.
- [43:06]
B
Yeah, I think so. And so he's going to claim that they, you know, the Brits were trying to, you know, gather dirt on President Putin and his family and incriminate people or 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 approaching 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. 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. 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, isn't it?
- [44:25]
A
And of course, Litvinenko and British intelligence think that they're cultivating Lugovoy as some kind of agent. And it. 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, after this set of interactions, what the Russians now think is that former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko is in. Is in the middle of this swirl and is working actively with MI6 to penetrate Russia and Russian institutions. Right. So, yeah, 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.
- [45:28]
B
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. And it had been co authored with Lugoberg.
- [46:06]
A
It's really short.
- [46:06]
B
It's really short. It's not very good, is it?
- [46:09]
A
A couple paragraphs.
- [46:11]
B
So he's been doing this work with Lugeboy and it's a pretty crappy report. And the guy who runs the company is like, that's not good enough. And he meets Lugovoy 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 Shvetz, former KGB officer who now lives in America, once met him at a diner in Virginia. And he.
- [46:32]
A
Well, hold on, hold on. What diner? What was the context for the diner visit with Yuri Shvetz?
- [46:36]
B
Well, I was in a.
- [46:37]
A
It was.
- [46:37]
B
Maybe it was more like a mall, I can't remember, 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, but. So Litvinenko, the Lugovoy cooperation created a crappy third of a page report. Now he does something of the Schwetz and it's like eight pages, you know, about Viktor of Adolf, you know, really interesting. But here's the thing. Litvinenko, late September, gives this eight page version that he's done with Shvets 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 Lugeboy. And Shvetz, 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 dollars for Ivanov. 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 Schwetz and Litvinenko find its way to the fsb. You know, he. He'll say, oh, I was stopped at the airport, they found it on me. 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, you know, for them, which are costing them, you know, millions and millions of dollars. So there you, you know, so you've got another motive now, haven't you?
- [48:34]
A
We've got a commercial motive because the due diligence is costing Putin allies money. We have a political motive because Litvidenko 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 Litvinenko is an access agent, a social broker of some kind, a consultant for MI6. So, yeah, there's a lot of. A lot of reasons to do it. So as we get into the middle of 2006, Livonetico has been in the UK for how many years?
- [49:23]
B
Five, five to six years? Yeah.
- [49:26]
A
Yeah.
- [49:26]
B
So he's heating up.
- [49:28]
A
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, time to act.
- [49:48]
B
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.
- [50:03]
A
Well, maybe there, Gordon. Let's end this episode. When we come back next time, we're gonna 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.
- [50:21]
B
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@the restisclassified.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 Litvinenko case and talk to people who are directly involved and you get ad 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.
- [51:00]
A
Well, at least one of those two things, Gordon. least one.
- [51:03]
B
Yeah, do get your tickets for that because they're going fast. But otherwise we'll see you next time.