Alexander Litvinenko: "killed for sensitive info on Kremlin boss"
Died from polonium-210 poisoning
A former Russian KGB major says Alexander Litvinenko was killed because he had collected sensitive information on a high-ranking Kremlin official.
by NewsNetNebraska
December 17, 2006
Yuri Shvets, a former Russian spy now based in America says Alexander Litvinenko was killed because he had collected sensitive information on a high-ranking Kremlin official.
Shvets made the revelation in a story published by the Sunday Times in Great Britain and said Litvinenko, a former Russin spy had been doing due diligence work for a British company on the official, who was facilitating a business deal.
Yuri Shvets, a former KGB intelligence officer trained at the KGB Academy in the same class as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Shvets claims Alexander Litvinenko was killed because he had collected sensitive information on a high-ranking Kremlin official. Photo:CI Centre
Shvets believes Litvinenko had put together a damaging eight-page dossier with details on the official which may have ruined a multi-million-dollar deal with the British company.
The claims shed new light on the activities of Litvinenko, who died on November 23 after being poisoned with polonium-210, a radioactive substance.
His death has been the subject of several theories, including claims that he was murdered in a Kremlin plot to silence his criticism of Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Shvets is a former KGB major who now works from Washington, advising businesses on corruption and security in the former Soviet Union.
He has been interviewed by detectives from Scotland Yard. He gave his first full interview last week to his friend Tom Mangold, a journalist, in a programme for BBC Radio 4.
Shvets says Litvinenko came to him for help after a British security company had offered him a $100,000 contract to do due diligence work on five Russian figures.
One of the five, whom Shvets refused to name, is said to be a powerful Kremlin official.
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Russians remember dead journalists
Russian journalists lit candles today and read a roll-call of more than 200 colleagues who have died violently since the fall of the Soviet Union at a rally heavy with criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
Holding photographs of murdered reporters such as Anna Politkovskaya and Paul Klebnikov, two of 211 journalists killed in Russia in the past 15 years, supporters accused authorities of not doing enough to track down the assassins.
About 250 journalists and supporters rallied in a central Moscow square under writer Alexander Pushkin's statue, hemmed in by hundreds of police.
"When journalists are killed and the authorities do not find their killers it means that the authorities do not want people to know the truth," said Alexei Yablokov, an academic.
"Such a country is going nowhere, has no future and is going towards fascism. That is why I am here: I do not want my Russia to become a fascist country."
"Who ordered the murder of Anna Politkovskaya?" asked one placard. Politkovskaya, a journalist known for her opposition to Kremlin policies on Chechnya, was killed on October 7th outside her central Moscow apartment. Another read: "Anna Politkovskaya - the country's conscience."
The Russian Union of Journalists says 211 journalists have been killed in Russia since 1992. Of those, 109 were killed while former president Boris Yeltsin was in power and 102 have been killed in Putin's six years in power.
Some were killed in car accidents but most were murdered.
http://www.ireland.com:80/newspaper/breaking/2006/1217/breaking44.htm