UK Daily Mail
Saturday, December 16, 2006

An ex-business associate of Alexander Litvinenko says the former Russian spy was murdered because of information he held on a powerful Kremlin figure.

Ex-spy Yuri Shvets said Mr Litvinenko was commissioned by a reputable UK firm to provide information on Russia.

He told BBC Radio 4 that Mr Litvinenko was poisoned after his dossier containing damaging details was deliberately leaked to the high-ranking Moscow figure.

Mr Litvinenko died in London on November 23 from polonium-210 radiation poisoning.

Mr Shvets says: "I cannot really be 100% sure, but I am pretty sure. Obviously there is always room for other suspicions, but in a tradecraft there is such a thing as most probable theory, and this is the one."

He said the British company wanted the eight-page dossier of commercial and political information before it invested millions of pounds in Russia.

Washington-based Mr Shvets, who advises businesses and individuals on legal and security issues in the former Soviet Union, said he talked to Mr Litvinenko in hospital.

Mr Litvinenko was convinced that he was poisoned when he met three Russians at the Millennium Hotel in London.

Mr Shvets said: "He drank a tea which was not made in front of him. He was agonised by the understanding that as a professional he failed. "He was always saying, 'I can identify my enemy a mile away'. But in this particular case, when it came to his own life, he failed."

Mr Shvets said British detectives investigating the death now have the dossier compiled by Mr Litvinenko.

Senior Scotland Yard officers had interviewed Mr Shvets, the BBC said.