The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 8 | Chapters 1 to 6 | Who killed Alexander Litvinenko?
attended. Put another way, I do not have their explanations for inconsistencies or
gaps in their accounts. This may lead to me making findings against them that I would
not have made had they given their explanation. There is no avoiding that.
8.85 There is a further, related point. There were some serious deficiencies in the evidence
from Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun that was available to me. I have referred to these
deficiencies during my review of the evidence and it will suffice here to give four
examples.
8.86 First, there are some striking anomalies in the accounts that both men have given of
their meeting with Mr Litvinenko on 1 November. Both men have stated, in insistent
terms, that it was Mr Litvinenko who made the first contact on that day, and asked to
meet up. Mr Litvinenko, on the other hand, said that Mr Lugovoy had telephoned him
and suggested the meeting. It is plain from the telephone schedule that Mr Lugovoy
and Mr Kovtun were wrong about this (see paragraphs 6.275 – 6.282).
8.87 Mr Lugovoy initially declined to give an account of the meeting at the Pine Bar
because, he said, the room had been covered by, “high quality video equipment,
which doubtless recorded the meeting”. In fact, there was no such video equipment in
the Pine Bar, and it is not credible that Mr Lugovoy, as a security professional, could
have mistakenly thought that there was. One is left, therefore, with the conclusion that
he was lying about this (see paragraph 6.315).
8.88 Mr Kovtun told a German newspaper in December 2006 (i.e. a few weeks after the
meeting in the Pine Bar) that he did not have a clear memory of the meeting and that
at the time he had paid more attention to his cigar. More than eight years later, the
statement that he provided to the Inquiry contained a detailed account of the meeting,
including an assertion that Mr Litvinenko “grabbed the teapot on the table and, without
waiting for an invitation, poured himself some tea” and that he “gulped down two
cups of hot tea one after the other … [and] then had a coughing fit” (see paragraphs
6.318 – 6.319). There is no reason at all to think that Mr Kovtun’s memory had
improved dramatically so many years after the event. The only logical conclusion is
that he was lying on one or other (or both) of the two occasions.
8.89 Second, in the years since 2006 Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun have given markedly
different accounts of a conversation that one or other of them is supposed to have
had with Mr Litvinenko on 17 October 2006. I have set out the various accounts
that they have given at paragraphs 6.144 – 6.149 above. A common theme of these
accounts is the claim that Mr Litvinenko was trying to engage the two men in a
blackmail scheme. However, the discrepancies between the accounts (for example,
where the conversation took place, the target of the intended blackmail, and to whom
Mr Litvinenko was speaking) are so great that they cannot be explained by confusion
or loss of memory. In my view, they are only consistent with a deliberate attempt to
mislead.
8.90 Third, the explanations that Mr Kovtun has given as to the purpose of his travel to
London on 1 November are profoundly unsatisfactory. For the reasons that I have
explained at paragraphs 6.245 – 6.250 above, this appears to be another example
of Mr Kovtun providing misleading information about an important issue in the case.
8.91 The deficiencies in the accounts that have been provided by Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun,
of which the matters set out above are only examples, lead to two conclusions. First,
I do not regard the evidence that the two men have given about these events as
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