The Litvinenko Inquiry

6.290 Mr Scaramella said that he had shown Mr Litvinenko the emails from Mr Limarev,
but that Mr Litvinenko had not taken the warnings in the emails seriously. According
to Mr Scaramella, Mr Litvinenko’s reaction had been; “it doesn’t matter, if it’s from
Evgeni, it means not credible… it’s shit if it’s from Evgeni”. 272
6.291 Mr Scaramella said that he and Mr Litvinenko had parted when they left itsu.
Mr Scaramella walked back to his conference. Mr Litvinenko, as we have seen,
walked to the Millennium Hotel.
6.292 Following Mr Litvinenko’s death, Mr Scaramella’s room at the Thistle Hotel, the internet
café that he had used and the table at itsu where he had sat with Mr Litvinenko were
all tested and found to be free from contamination. 273 I have referred at paragraph
6.101 to the contamination that was found in itsu on the table adjacent to that at which
Mr Litvinenko and Mr Scaramella sat on 1 November – it seems likely that that table
was contaminated on 16 October when Mr Lugovoy, Mr Kovtun and Mr Litvinenko
sat there after the Erinys meeting. The papers that Mr Scaramella had passed to
Mr Litvinenko were also tested. They were found to bear low levels of secondary
contamination, but nothing like the levels that would have been expected had the
pages been in contact with a primary source of polonium. 274
The Pine Bar
Part 6 | Chapters 1 to 8 | The polonium trail – events in October and November 2006
6.293 Mr Lugovoy and his party were, as I have already said, staying at the Millennium Hotel
on Grosvenor Square. Next to the reception area on the ground floor of the Millennium
Hotel is a bar called the Pine Bar. It was in the Pine Bar that Mr Lugovoy, Mr Kovtun
and Mr Litvinenko met during the afternoon of 1 November 2006. The forensic and
other evidence strongly indicates that it was during this meeting that Mr Litvinenko
drank green tea poisoned with polonium.
6.294 The CCTV footage taken by various cameras sited in the reception area of the
Millennium Hotel established the timings relating to the meeting in the Pine Bar that
afternoon.
6.295 The footage showed Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun returning to the hotel at about
3.30pm. 275 In the period of about half an hour before Mr Litvinenko arrived (during
which Mr Lugovoy made his “come quicker” phone call), there is footage of both
Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun going separately into the men’s lavatories just off the
reception area. 276 There is then footage of Mr Litvinenko arriving in the reception area
and speaking on his mobile phone, which is consistent with entries on the telephone
schedule showing him making two short calls to Mr Lugovoy at 3.59pm, presumably
saying that he had arrived. 277
6.296 At the end of the meeting, CCTV footage shows the arrival back in the hotel of
Mr Lugovoy’s family, and Mr Lugovoy himself walking in the reception area, at shortly
after 4.30pm. 278 There was no CCTV footage of Mr Litvinenko leaving the hotel, but
footage from a camera in a nearby street showed him walking away from the hotel at
272
Scaramella 15/134-135
273
Mascall 16/75-77; 30/155-156
274
A1 20/85-87
275
Mascall 16/87
276
Mascall 16/88-91
277
Mascall 16/92-94
278
Mascall 16/170-172
169