The Litvinenko Inquiry

The Litvinenko Inquiry
paid Mr Litvinenko £1,000 in cash to mark the start of their relationship. He said that
Mr Evans would have made the payment, but, whilst Mr Evans did have a “vague
recollection” of paying Mr Litvinenko a much smaller amount for expenses, he had
no memory of this. 107 The other notable feature of Mr Evans’ evidence was that he
remembered meeting Mr Lugovoy, with Mr Litvinenko, at the RISC offices in London
at some stage in the last quarter of 2005. 108
4.114 Mr Quirke also gave oral evidence to the Inquiry. He said that he was introduced to
Mr Litvinenko in February or March 2006, shortly before Mr Evans left the company,
and took over as Mr Litvinenko’s handler from that time. 109 His understanding was that
Mr Litvinenko was:
“… trying to establish a business, he was working hard, I think he was short
of money. I think monies that he’d previously got from – as like a retainer from
Mr Berezovsky had ceased and that left a hole in his finances.” 110
4.115 Mr Quirke said that he met Mr Litvinenko five or six times after the handover meeting.
The last of those meetings was on 17 October 2006, a meeting to which I shall return
in due course.
4.116 The evidence I heard was that Mr Litvinenko was formally tasked with his first piece
of investigative work for RISC at around the time of the handover from Mr Evans to
Mr Quirke. Mr Knuckey asserted in his statement that he gave Mr Litvinenko this piece
of work at some point in the first quarter of 2006. 111 Mr Quirke’s evidence was broadly
consistent – he thought that the tasking had commenced shortly before he took over
from Mr Evans. 112 The case on which Mr Litvinenko was tasked was a long-running
case in which RISC acted for Stolichnaya vodka. Mr Quirke explained that RISC
were undertaking investigations on behalf of Stolichnaya into what he described as a
scheme sponsored by the Russian government to put the company out of business
by, as he put it, “flood[ing] the market with knockoff versions of the brand.” The task
that Mr Litvinenko was given, apparently by Mr Knuckey, was to make enquiries into
the Russian agriculture minister, named Mr Gordeyev. 113
4.117 Mr Litvinenko did not conduct this investigation alone. Rather, he enlisted the
assistance of Mr Lugovoy. The evidence of both Mr Knuckey and Mr Quirke was that
Mr Litvinenko and Mr Lugovoy attended a meeting at RISC’s offices in London in about
April or May 2006 when they presented the fruits of their investigation. Mr Knuckey
and Mr Quirke were not impressed. Mr Quirke explained that the information, “was
not up to the standard we expected … [it] appeared to have been culled from Russian
internet sites.” Mr Lugovoy demanded US$10,000 for the information – Mr Quirke
said that Mr Knuckey agreed to make a payment of US$7,500 to an account operated
by Mr Lugovoy in Cyprus, in part because, “We wanted to cultivate and build this
relationship.” 114
107
Knuckey 7/45-46; Evans 7/26-27
108
Evans 7/31
109
Quirke 11/60
110
Quirke 11/68
111
Knuckey 7/49
112
Quirke 11/73
113
Quirke 11/70-74
114
Quirke 11/82; Knuckey 7/46-49; Hunter 11/45-46
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