The Litvinenko Inquiry

6.240 Mr Kovtun’s flight was scheduled to land at 7.25 that morning. There was no evidence
of its actual arrival time, but it must have landed on time, or perhaps even slightly
early, because Mr Kovtun can be seen on CCTV footage arriving at the Millennium
Hotel shortly after 8.30am. 215 The aircraft on which he had travelled was subsequently
tested by the German authorities, but no contamination was found. 216
6.241 Mr Kovtun did not have his own room at the Millennium Hotel. CCTV footage from
within the hotel showed that for the two days and two nights that he was in London on
this occasion, he shared room 382 with Mr Sokolenko. 217
What was Mr Kovtun doing in London?
6.242 Before continuing with the narrative of events on 1 November, it is perhaps worth
pausing to consider a question to which I have already alluded more than once. What
was the purpose of Mr Kovtun’s flight that morning? What was he doing in London?
6.243 The first point to address is whether Mr Kovtun’s trip had been planned with any
particular purpose at all. In his 2 June 2015 witness statement, Mr Kovtun denied this.
He said, in summary, that he had only come to London “by chance”, and that he only
decided to make the trip after he had resolved his business at the Aliens’ Registration
Office with unexpected speed. The relevant section of the witness statement stated
as follows: 218
“I have declared repeatedly and publicly that I arrived in London by chance on
1 November because I was anticipating serious complications in Hamburg while
arranging to have a ‘residence permit’ inserted into my new passport. That had to
be done because the old passport expired on 11.04.06. For reasons which had
nothing to do with me I did not receive the new passport until 17.08.2006, and I
arrived in Germany on 28.10.2006. This meant that I had involuntarily infringed
a whole series of provisions of the ‘residence permit’ law of Germany. Firstly, the
periods laid down for crossing the border had been infringed. In connection with
that I anticipated complications with having a ‘residence permit’ inserted into the
new passport and was prepared for the fact that I might have to stay in Germany
for 2-3 weeks and deal with residence and insurance matters, registration of the
company, or employment. It was entirely possible that I would have to engage a
lawyer. In any case I had not contemplated a trip to London until there was a happy
turn of events for me when the employee of the foreign affairs department simply
overlooked the abovementioned facts.”
I have underlined what appear to me to be the most important parts of this passage.
6.244 As I have previously remarked in relation to other sections of Mr Kovtun’s statement,
the fact that Mr Kovtun decided not to give oral evidence to the Inquiry means
that it was not possible to test him on difficulties and apparent inconsistencies in
his account. However, even without the benefit of having heard Mr Kovtun’s oral
explanation, it seems tolerably clear that this section of his statement is false and was
intended to mislead me. The suggestion made by Mr Kovtun is that he only decided
to travel to London after his appointment at the Aliens’ Registration Office on Monday
30 October – indeed, he states that he had not even “contemplated” making the trip
215
Mascall 16/26-32
216
Mascall 16/27-30
217
Mascall 16/32
218
INQ021208 (page 8)
Part 6 | Chapters 1 to 8 | The polonium trail – events in October and November 2006
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