Dec 06 2006
In Lugovoi’s Own Words
It seems Andrei Lugovoi has already done an interview (11/24/06) for the Moscow News on his relationship with Litvinenko and an extensive timeline. This will probably be as detailed as any reporting we get from the questioning he is to undergo today, and will be a useful reference to see if there are any changes to his story. More food for the theorists! Enjoy.
Major Update: As one of our readers pointed out there is more detail to the timeline here in the UK Times, especially phone calls which can be verified by records:
He had been due to meet Mr Litvinenko on November 2 for a business appointment with a British company interested in entering the Russian market. But Mr Litvinenko had called him and asked to meet a day earlier to discuss the project.
Mr Lugovoi said that he and Mr Kovron met him at the hotel where they were staying. The meeting had taken place after Mr Litvinenko met his Italian contact, Mario Scaramella, and not before, as reports have suggested.
“The initiative for the meeting came from Alexander to discuss this business opportunity. He told me that he might be a bit late because he said he was meeting an Italian, but he called me after that meeting and said he would be with us in 10 minutes,†Mr Lugovoi said.
“Kovron was sitting opposite me at the table with Alexander between us. There was some tea and spirits on the table but he did not order anything and he did not drink anything.
“After a while my son, who is eight, came up to the table and I introduced him to Alexander and then we left together for the vestibule where my wife was waiting, and I introduced her to him. Then I went on to the match with my family.
Phone records would confirm the phone call. The question is why would Litvinenko feel compelled to meet Lugovoi after Scaramella’s meeting? Was the information Scaramella showing Litvinenko a possible threat to a smuggling effort they all were involved in? We have Litvinenko taking a last minute call from Scaramella, then scrambling to meet Berezovsky and Lugovoi (and later a friend at a security consulting business) afterwards. The only reason to rush to these people directly is some sort of urgency in Litvinenko. He clearly indicated to Scaramella he should not worry about the email, but then he rushes to discuss it with his “business partners”?
I think Lugovoi could have met Litvinenko TWICE on that day – once in the morning and once in the afternoon – Lugovoi originally denied that the third guy Solenko was at the meeting but he could have been referring to the second meeting when his wife and kid were there before the soccer game. It is possible that both stories are true.
here is Luguvoi’s interview with the Times the same day Nov. 24:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2469663,00.html
Mr Lugovoi dismissed reports that a mysterious tall stranger named Vladimir had attended their meeting. He named the third man at the meeting in the London hotel as Dmitri Kovron, a businessman and childhood friend who was quite shor
and
Mr Lugovoi attacked Mr Litvinenko’s friend Alex Goldfarb for implicating him in the affair. He said that he had met Mr Goldfarb only a couple of times briefly. “I think he is just trying to attract attention to himself and maybe this is his way of doing it,†he said.
Probably meaningless but WAS Sokolenko at the meeting or not?
MOSCOW (Reuters) – British police in Moscow to investigate the Litvinenko poisoning case will on Wednesday attend the questioning of key witness Andrei Lugovoy, one of his associates said.
Lugovoy met Kremlin critic and Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko in London on November 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill. He subsequently died from a lethal dose of radioactive substance polonium 210.
“I think the meeting should be today. It was planned,” Lugovoy associate Vyacheslav Sokolenko told Reuters by telephone.
Sokolenko accompanied Lugovoy on the trip to London at the start of November, though he says he was not present when the meeting with Litvinenko took place.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-12-06T120542Z_01_L06821696_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-POISONING-WITNESS.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_C2_worldNews-9
here is a very early source mentioning an early meeting:
Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch, said police were keeping an ‘open mind’ on investigations, in which it had been established that Litvinenko met two Russians – one of whom he did not know – at the Millenium Hotel in central London on the morning of Nov 1.
One of the men, a stranger, had repeatedly urged him to join him in a cup of tea, Litvinenko was reported to have told detectives.
http://www.dailyindia.com/show/85831.php/Probe-into-Russian-ex-spys-death-expands
AJ I thin the fact that the first source about the early a.m. meeting was Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorism branch means something
Keeping this on the Lugovoi thread:
MOSCOW. Dec 6 (Interfax) – Investigators from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, together with Scotland Yard officers, have questioned businessman Dmitri Kovtun as a witness in the criminal case opened following the death of former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, lawyer Andrei Romashov told Interfax on Wednesday.
http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?menu=1&id_issue=11643001
An interview has been scheduled for today, but Lugovoi is still undergoing medical checks, and he has not been questioned so far,” the source said, adding that the questioning could be postponed until Thursday.
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20061206/56554982.html
here is some stuff about Lugovoy that hasn’t been referenced here and a history of what is know about his life:
Almost all available data about him comes out of two sources: the November 22 publication in the Moscow Kommersant edition, and the interview with Lugovoy on Ekho Moskvy radio two days later. The rest is the short interviews with him concerning Litvinenko’s poisoning, and rather shallow references to him in connection to the same story or to the former Aeroflot directorship’s financial fraud.
Information concerning Lugovoy himself in two abovementioned sources can be combined into a few lines of printed text. Moreover, almost all of it is about the years 1987-1997. It is unsaid when and where he was born, and what he was doing prior to 1987. The period after 1997 is described very poorly, and nothing new is added to what was previously published. For this reason, the evidence voiced by one of Lugovoy’s former subordinates is of a particular interest.
http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1152
more from the article above:
As concerns his present activity, Lugovoy told the Ekho Moskvy that he was «one of proprietors» of the Russia’s largest kvass manufacture factory in Ryazan area, owning the Pershin trade mark. However, in other part of the same performance it was mentioned that members of the Berezovskys family “till now address us concerning security and we provide it not only in the territory of Russia”. Almost simultaneously, in an interview to The Sunday Times, Lugovoy has added that the Pershin company has control share holdings in the sphere of security, soft drinks and wine, and it is estimated in 100 million dollars….
The owner of the factory is Eugene Boujele Vine, a society with limited liability, registered in the same city of Sasovo, Ryazan area. A Cyprian firm, Riverwall Investment Limited, appears its company-founder. It represents a typical offshore company and its activity is connected exclusively with the Eugene Boujele Vine. Riverwall Investment Limited has not shown itself with anything else, neither in Russia, nor in other countries.
It is remarkable, that we have found no mention about “the control share holdings in the sphere of security”, about which Lugovoy spoke in the interview to The Sunday Times, neither in the context of the Pershin trade mark nor Eugene Boujele Vine, or the Riverwall Investment Limited…
I am working away on Lugovoy all alone!; Here’s something else interesting:
Poison was stirred for Litvinenko still before his meeting with the informant, Oleg Gordievsky believes, noting that “Sasha was already feeling unwell before the lunchâ€. In an interview to The Times he has come out with an assumption that Litvinenko was poisoned by a former close friend of the family who had been secretly recruited by the FSB while in prison. Litvinenko was poisoned on the direct orders of the Kremlin because of his biting mockery of President Putin, according to Gordievsky. The Italian who met Litvinenko this very day, had no relation to this crime, he said. Scaramella reportedly hides his whereabouts. He announced that he had not been involved in the attempt of poisoning and was seriously afraid for his life. Gordievsky insisted that he did not know the identity of the Russian would-be killer. That person in due time had belonged to Boris Berezovsky’s environment, then appeared in prison, later was unexpectedly released and became a businessman, said he.
This businessmn was Lugovoy apparantly. Gordievesky is part of the Berezovsky group I believe. and this article was dated 11/20/06 so the Berezovsky group was already laying the groundwork for blaming Ludovoy.
oops source of above: http://www.axisglobe.com/article.asp?article=1140
from above link:
22.11.06: Russian, not Italian, trace of FSB in poisoning of Litvinenko
Alexander Goldfarb, who helped the former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko flee to Britain in 2000, said it is possible the thallium that sickened Litvinenko was sprinkled into his drink during a meeting at a central London hotel on November 1 before he went to the restaurant, the online edition of Gazeta.ru reported citing the head of the Civil Liberties Foundation. Goldfarb said the former FSB officer told him more details on yesterday’s morning about the day he was poisoned during a telephone conversation from his hospital bed.
Litvinenko briefly met with two people for tea in a hotel in central London before the lunch with the Italian academic and examining magistrate, Mario Scaramella, at a sushi bar in London’s Piccadilly, when he was supposedly poisoned, according to Goldfarb. He said that one of the men from Moscow whom Litvinenko had met with was Andrei Lugovoy, also an ex-officer from the former KG
the original source of the Vladimir story was Litvinenko himself (from axis source above):
23.11.06: Scotland Yard identify suspect in Litvinenko’s poison case
British police consider a mystery Russian identified only as “Vladimir” the prime suspect in their hunt for the assassin of Alexander Litvinenko, The Times said today. Without citing its sources, the newspaper said that Litvinenko told Scotland Yard detectives that he had arranged a meeting with an old friend – Andrei Lugovoy – and was surprised to meet another man, who introduced himself only as “Vladimirâ€. Lugovoy is reportedly a one-time head of security at a television station owned by controversial Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky. The stranger, described as a “tall, taciturn sharp-featured Russian in his early fortiesâ€, accompanied an ex-Kremlin bodyguard, Andrei Lugovoy, to the hotel, The Times said.
Litvinenko told police officers that he was suspicious of “Vladimir†because he was careful to disclose nothing about his identity or why he had turned up to what was supposed to be a private get-together. He apparently pressed Litvinenko to join him in a cup of tea, but said little during the brief meeting. Later that day Litvinenko complained of feeling violently ill. According to The Times, British detectives consider “Vladimir†crucial to the investigation, but the victim who holds the key to this investigation was unable to talk to police yesterday and doctors say that they do not know when Litvinenko may be well enough to be questioned again.
Fox news alert: traces of radiation at British Embassy (where Luguvoy met with the British in the days following his return from London) This guy really is the polonium fairy
I thought I read that Solenko was at the 4:30 meeting along with Kovrun. Lugovoi’s 8 year old son came in and was introduced to Litvinenko. Litvinenko himself said Solenko was at a meeting that morning and insisted they have tea. That’s my best recollection. There have been so many links and comments I am getting confused as to who said what and who linked to anything.