The Litvinenko Inquiry
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Litvinenko</strong> <strong>Inquiry</strong><br />
unusual about the tea or the way that it had been drunk. He said, “it was as normal<br />
as any other table or any other time”. He disassociated himself entirely from various<br />
sensational accounts that had been attributed to him in the press.<br />
6.303 One oddity in the evidence is an entry in the telephone schedule indicating that<br />
Mr Lugovoy made a telephone call to Mr Voronoff at 4.00pm – i.e. just the time that<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> was arriving at the Pine Bar – that lasted for nearly six minutes. 284<br />
Neither Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> nor Mr Lugovoy referred to this call in their accounts of the<br />
meeting. It is unexplained.<br />
6.304 Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> described the meeting in the Pine Bar on a number of occasions during<br />
the course of his interviews with DI Hyatt. <strong>The</strong> relevant sections of the transcripts<br />
of the interviews were read in the course of DI Mascall’s evidence. In summary,<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> described arriving at the Millennium Hotel and Mr Lugovoy taking him<br />
to a table in the corner of the Pine Bar. His description of the position of the table is<br />
consistent with the position of table 1, where Mr Andrade said they had been sitting.<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> said that he had been sitting talking to Mr Lugovoy alone for some time<br />
before Mr Kovtun joined them. In an important passage of the interview transcript,<br />
which I have set out below, Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> described drinking some green tea that was<br />
already on the table. On Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s account, this was before Mr Kovtun joined<br />
them. Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s description of this part of the meeting was as follows: 285<br />
“<strong>The</strong>re was nobody else there. He [Lugovoy] said that he was leaving for football<br />
match now so let’s discuss things for 10-15 minutes and that’s it. So. Next day we<br />
were due to go to Global Risk. Well… we discussed how we’re going to go there<br />
and he said that he was looking for his interpreter… And what time we would go<br />
there, either at ten, or ten thirty. So… <strong>The</strong>re were a few mugs on the table and<br />
there was also a tea pot, such a metal one, there was tea there. It was silver<br />
in colour, made of silver, not silver, the legs… expensive metal. It’s a rich hotel.<br />
Straight away a waiter came up to us… I could not see him because he came up<br />
from the back. He asked ‘Are you going to have anything?’ I think Andrei asked,<br />
‘Would you like anything?’ I said, ‘I don’t want anything’, (INAUDIBLE) and he said,<br />
‘Okay well we’re going to leave now anyway so there is still some tea left here if<br />
you want you can have some.’ And then the waiter went away or I think Andre<br />
asked for a clean cup, and he bought it [sic]. He left and when there was a cup I<br />
poured some tea out of the tea pot, although there was only little left on the bottom<br />
and it made just half a cup. Maybe about 50 grams. I swallowed a several times<br />
but it was green tea with no sugar and it was already cold by the way. I didn’t like<br />
it for some reason, well almost cold tea with no sugar and I didn’t drink it anymore.<br />
Maybe in total I swallowed three or four times, I haven’t even finished that cup.”<br />
6.305 Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> went on to describe Mr Kovtun (who he called ‘Volodia’) coming to sit at<br />
the table and the conversation about the next day’s planned meeting with Mr Quirke.<br />
He said that they were talking for about 20 minutes. He mentioned a ‘tall Russian’<br />
coming to the table, which is probably a reference to Mr Sokolenko arriving back in<br />
the hotel with Mrs Lugovoya and the children. In describing the end of the meeting,<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> said: 286<br />
“In the end [Lugovoy] looked at his watch, he said my wife is about to come. <strong>The</strong>re<br />
in the hall Andrei’s wife turned up, she was waving her hand and he said, that’s<br />
284<br />
INQ020044 (page 5)<br />
285<br />
INQ016582 (pages 5-7)<br />
286<br />
INQ016593 (page 4)<br />
172