A dossier drawn up by Alexander Litvinenko on the Kremlin’s takeover of the world’s richest energy giant will be given to Scotland Yard today as police investigate the former KGB spy’s secret dealings with some of Russia’s richest men. It emerged yesterday that Mr Litvinenko travelled to Israel just weeks before he died to hand over evidence to a Russian billionaire of how agents working for President Putin dealt with his enemies running the Yukos oil company.
He passed this information to Leonid Nevzlin, the former second-in-command of Yukos, who fled to Tel Aviv in fear for his life after the Kremlin seized and then sold off the $40 billion (£21 billion) company. Mr Nevzlin told The Times that it was his “duty” to pass on the file. “Alexander had information on crimes committed with the Russian Government’s direct participation,” he said. “He only recently gave me and my attorneys documents that shed light on the most significant aspects of the Yukos affair.”
Investigators have told The Times that Mr Litvinenko had apparently uncovered “startling” new material about the Yukos affair and what happened to those opposing the forced break-up of the company.
Several figures linked with Yukos are reported to have disappeared or died in mysterious circumstances while its head, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and others have been jailed. Originally it was Mr Litvinenko’s vocal opposition to President Putin’s rule that led to accusations of Russia’s secret service involvement in his death, but police are investigating whether he made enemies through his links with a number of oligarchs.
Detectives involved in what they admit is one of the most complicated inquiries Scotland Yard has faced say that they are working through Mr Litvinenko’s formidable list of friends and foes, which includes some of the world’s wealthiest men.
This case becomes stranger and stranger but how long before Putin starts saying, “The Joooos did it!”
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