The Litvinenko Inquiry

The Litvinenko Inquiry
until then. That is plainly inconsistent with the fact that a return ticket from London to
Moscow had been purchased for him on 27 October and that Mr Kovtun himself had
purchased a ticket from Hamburg to London on Sunday 29 October – the day before
his appointment at the Aliens’ Registration Office. I simply do not accept that these
arrangements would have been made unless a decision had already been taken that
Mr Kovtun would travel to London on 1 November.
6.245 If that is right, there must have been a reason for the decision that Mr Kovtun made
to make a special trip to London. The statement also raises a further question – why
is Mr Kovtun now attempting to confuse the issue?
6.246 There are some suggestions in Marina Wall’s interview transcripts that Mr Kovtun was
intending to go to London in order to watch the Arsenal v CSKA Moscow match. For
example, she said at one point; “Dmitry wanted to go to London to a football match.
He told me that he wanted to meet up with two friends in London and they then
wanted to go to the football match.” 219 It is clear, however, that this was not the reason
for Mr Kovtun’s trip to London. Apart from the fact that Mr Kovtun makes no mention
of any plan for him to attend the match in his recent statement, there is evidence, to
which we shall come, that there were not enough tickets for Mr Kovtun to go to the
match, and it is clear on the evidence that he did not in fact go to the match.
6.247 In the Declaration that he made at the British Embassy in Moscow on 23 November
2006, Mr Kovtun gave a different explanation for his trip to London. At that time, he did
not say that he had made the trip simply “by chance”, or that he had come to watch
the football match. Rather, he said: 220
“The second time that I came to London was on 1 November 2006. I came from
Hamburg, having agreed my visit with Continental Petroleum Ltd, with the aim
of passing several documents to one of the members of the Board, Dr Shadrin.
Mr Lugovoy was present at the talks, with Dr Shadrin as my main partner in the oil
field development projects.”
6.248 I will turn to Dr Shadrin’s evidence about his contact with Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun
shortly. In summary, however, he contradicted the idea that there was any pressing
business justification for Mr Kovtun’s journey to London. He could not recall any
important business being discussed when Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun came to his
offices on 1 November – most of the time was spent talking about football. And in any
event, he made regular visits to Moscow at that time and they could have seen him
there if they wished. They did give him some documents, but these were standard
‘Know Your Client’ compliance documents. There was no need to deliver them by
hand and certainly no need for Mr Kovtun to make a special trip to London to do so.
6.249 Mr Kovtun’s 2 June 2015 witness statement does disclose one further possible motive
for his trip to London, namely a desire to contact C2 and ask him if he would like
to move to Moscow and become the chef at a new restaurant that Mr Kovtun and
Mr Lugovoy were planning to open. This is another matter to which I shall shortly come.
Mr Kovtun has not of course said, either in his June 2015 statement or anywhere else,
that a desire to speak to C2 was what prompted him to come to London. As we shall
see, having arrived in London Mr Kovtun made very limited attempts to meet C2, and
appears never to have put his proposal to him at all.
219
Jolly 32/60
220
INQ002696
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