The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 4 | Chapters 1 to 6 | Why would anyone wish to kill Alexander Litvinenko?
Mr Goldfarb, financed by Mr Berezovsky, had set up for the purpose. It was printed
in New York and also in Latvia, in the latter case with the intention of transporting the
books into Russia. 38 I will return below to what happened when this was attempted.
4.41 I should add that I heard that Mr Litvinenko, with assistance from Mr Goldfarb,
subsequently wrote an extended essay that was described as, “a distilled version
of what he had said on The Gang from the Lubyanka.” 39 That document, which was
never published, was titled The Uzbek File, and I have admitted a translated copy into
evidence. 40
4.42 Unsurprisingly, these activities on the part of Mr Litvinenko and others do not appear
to have gone unnoticed by the authorities in Moscow.
4.43 I have referred above (at paragraphs 4.12 – 4.13) to the threat from Mr Barsukov
that Mr Litvinenko received whilst visiting Mr Bukovsky in about May 2001, by way of
a phone call from his former subordinate, Mr Ponkin. In a witness statement dated
10 October 2003, Mr Litvinenko suggested that he had in fact received a number of
calls from Mr Ponkin at around that time, and that Mr Ponkin had conveyed warnings
about Mr Litvinenko’s activities in the UK. In his statement Mr Litvinenko said that:
“Ponkin passed on to me threats made by the FSB to kill me and warnings not to write
books or to speak out against various matters.” 41 There were other similar incidents.
4.44 Mrs Litvinenko described an incident when an official from the Russian Embassy in
London came to the door of her flat demanding to see Mr Litvinenko. 42 This evidence
appears to correspond with a letter, dated 22 March 2002, written by Mr Menzies,
Mr Litvinenko’s solicitor, to the Home Office. The letter refers to “repeated visits” being
made by an official from the Embassy, whose manner was described as “persistent
and harassing.” 43
4.45 Later in 2001, on 12 October, Mr Litvinenko received an email from his friend
Mr Trepashkin in Moscow. The email gave news of a more explicit threat that
Mr Trepashkin said he had heard from Victor Shebalin, another of Mr Litvinenko’s
former colleagues from URPO days. The first paragraph of the email made a direct
reference to Mr Litvinenko’s book The Gang from the Lubyanka. It went on (in
translation):
“I had a meeting today with Victor Shebalin, who has wide contacts with the FSB
employees as a former colonel of the FSB. During our conversation he stated,
that you are ‘sentenced’ to extrajudicial elimination, meaning that you definitely
will be killed after publication of your last book. He also asked to stress that he
will not going to do anything with his murder [sic]. He repeated this several times.
Shebalin did not say who exactly is going to eliminate you, but he hinted that such
persons do exist. (So, you can write your last will in advance.)” 44
Amongst the documentary evidence there is a further letter from Mr Menzies to the
Home Office about this email. That letter recorded Mr Litvinenko’s response to the
email, namely that he, “does not consider that there is likely to be any substance
38
Goldfarb 5/79-80
39
Goldfarb 26/28-30
40
INQ017384
41
INQ014928
42
Marina Litvinenko 4/18-20
43
HMG000307
44
INQ015366
59