The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 4 | Chapters 1 to 6 | Why would anyone wish to kill Alexander Litvinenko?
2000 by Stephen Curtis and Nigel Brown. Mr Curtis was a lawyer with a large network
of high net worth clients, whom he introduced to ISC. Mr Curtis’ clients included the
so called oligarchs Mr Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky.
Mr Curtis was killed in a helicopter crash in 2004. As I understood the evidence, the
business of ISC was thereafter split between Mr Brown, who went to work in Israel,
and Mr Hunter, who set up RISC in London. 99
4.109 Mr Hunter’s evidence was that he first met Mr Litvinenko in 2001 or 2002, when
introduced to him by Mr Berezovsky. He recalled that Mr Berezovsky thought that
Mr Litvinenko might be useful to his business. He remembered meeting Mr Litvinenko
on subsequent occasions, such as at other meetings with Mr Berezovsky. He appears
to have formed a fairly low opinion of Mr Litvinenko’s value as a possible source of
intelligence – his view was that Mr Litvinenko’s sources were likely to be historic and
also that the views he offered might contain a political slant. 100
4.110 There was evidence from others that Mr Litvinenko did undertake some work for RISC
in 2005 and 2006. Mr Hunter said that he had not been directly involved in such work,
and that it would have been handled by Mr Knuckey, RISC’s managing director, and
by Garym Evans and Daniel Quirke, the investigators who were, successively, the
people at RISC with whom Mr Litvinenko dealt on a day to day basis.
4.111 Written evidence of Mr Knuckey was read to the Inquiry. He recalled first meeting
Mr Litvinenko in the summer of 2004, when he conducted an investigation into the
firebombing attack against the houses of Mr Litvinenko and Mr Zakayev (see above at
paragraph 4.26). He added, “I believe he was known by the CEO Keith Hunter before
then.” 101
4.112 Later in the same statement, Mr Knuckey stated that, “during 2005 our company
decided to use [Mr Litvinenko] as a source”. 102 He said that he asked a member of
his staff, Mr Evans, to manage Mr Litvinenko, and that when Mr Evans left RISC in
February 2006, he “passed the management of Litvinenko to Dan Quirke”, 103 another
member of staff at RISC.
4.113 Mr Evans gave oral evidence to the Inquiry, and his evidence was broadly consistent
with that of Mr Knuckey. He recalled being introduced to Mr Litvinenko by either
Mr Hunter or Mr Knuckey, or both, in about the middle of 2005. 104 Although he was told
that he would be working with Mr Litvinenko, and the two met at the RISC offices in
London about seven or eight times over the next few months, it does not appear that
Mr Litvinenko was actually engaged to conduct any enquiries for RISC during the time
that Mr Evans was managing him. Mr Evans said that when the two met they spent
time discussing Russian politics. Mr Evans thought that Mr Litvinenko was keeping
himself occupied, and also trying to build a relationship with RISC. 105 There must have
been some substance to the relationship between RISC and Mr Litvinenko, because
Mr Evans remembered giving Mr Litvinenko two mobile phones and SIM cards at the
latter’s request – Mr Evans assumed they were to help him keep in touch with his
“network of contacts.” 106 Mr Knuckey’s evidence was that RISC had gone further and
99
Hunter 11/4-9
100
Hunter 11/25-29
101
Knuckey 7/36
102
Knuckey 7/45
103
Knuckey 7/45-46
104
Evans 7/20
105
Evans 7/33
106
Evans 7/26
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