The Litvinenko Inquiry

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