Russian Agent Defects, Alleging Plot to Kill Berezovsky

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Nov 27, 2000 | by Jamie Dettmer

A former Russian intelligence colonel defected to Britain in November, claiming he had been ordered by his superiors to kill a media and oil tycoon who helped Vladimir Putin rise to the Russian presidency.

Fearing for his life, Alexander Litvinenko asked for political asylum after flying into London with his wife and child and was hurried away to a secret location by British intelligence officials.

Diplomatic observers say that Litvinenko may have been caught in the middle of a power straggle between the "spooks and crooks" at the center of the alliance that backed Putin and persuaded his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, to resign before last winter's presidential election.

According to Litvinenko, he was instructed in 1998 to kill Boris Berezovsky, who fell out with Putin this winter shortly after the former spy was elected president.

On his arrival in London, Litvinenko issued a terse statement saying he had fled as a result of the "permanent persecution on the part of the Russian special services." He alleged that threats had been made against the lives of his wife and child.

"I have repeatedly asked prosecution agencies to protect me and my family. But there was no reaction to my requests," he said.

British political sources say it is likely that the defector's request for asylum will be granted -- if for no other reason than that he may have information on who was behind the mysterious apartment bombings in Moscow last year that the Kremlin blamed on Chechen rebels.

There has been some circumstantial evidence to suggest that the bombings, which helped to rally Russian public opinion behind the war effort in Chechnya, was the handiwork of either Russian military-intelligence or security units linked to the Kremlin. There also have been allegations that Berezovsky himself may have been involved in the plot.

Litvinenko first made his Berezovsky-assassination allegations at a press conference two years ago in Moscow. His claims caused a sensation but were dismissed by most of the Russian media -- a great chunk of which is controlled by the Russian government.

He accused the FSB, the KGB's successor agency, of carrying out murders, assaults, torture and extortion. He was arrested in March last year on suspicion of "abuse of power" but was released eight months later after a court-martial ruled the charges should be dropped. But he immediately was rearrested on new allegations and sent back to jail before being freed in December.

Just days before Litvinenko's defection, Russian prosecutors announced they were likely to file fraud charges against Berezovsky as well as embezzlement charges against another Russian tycoon, Vladimir Gusinsky. The cases on one level are separate -- Berezovsky is accused of looting the Russian airline Aeroflot, while Gusinsky is under fire for illegally transferring money overseas from his media empire.

But on a broader political level the moves against both tycoons are being seen as a Kremlin effort to reduce the power of the Russian "oligarchs," a group of immensely wealthy businessmen who profited from cronyism and their friendships with the Yeltsin family.