The Litvinenko Inquiry

Part 3 | Chapters 1 to 5 | Alexander Litvinenko
3.46 Marina Litvinenko’s witness statement describes Mr Litvinenko being tasked with
“looking into the possibility of assassinating Berezovsky” 33 and in her initial oral
evidence before me she stated that she did not believe that Mr Kamyshnikov had
given Mr Litvinenko a formal instruction to kill Mr Berezovsky; the substance of the
exchange, in her view, was limited to Mr Kamyshnikov asking Mr Litvinenko whether
he could kill Mr Berezovsky. 34 In later questioning, Marina Litvinenko took a firmer line,
accepting the proposition from her counsel that Mr Litvinenko understood that he had
received, “an unequivocal instruction to commit an act of murder by his superior within
the FSB in a secret, unaccountable unit”. 35
3.47 I do not regard these distinctions as being of great importance. I am not in a position
to make any findings about the precise terms in which Mr Kamyshnikov may have
discussed the killing of Mr Berezovsky with Mr Litvinenko and his section in late 1997.
And that issue, moreover, is not of central importance to this Inquiry. Of much greater
importance for my purposes are the decision that Mr Litvinenko took to expose what
he regarded as an FSB plot to murder Mr Berezovsky, and the events that were then
triggered – events that, as we shall see, may have contributed to Mr Litvinenko’s
death in London nine years later.
Whistleblower
3.48 The evidence I heard was that Mr Litvinenko and his colleagues, including Mr Gusak,
were unhappy with the orders they had been given. They were particularly concerned
about the orders relating to Mr Berezovsky. They took a number of steps in response,
the culmination of which was the well known press conference on 17 November 1998,
in which Mr Litvinenko and others publicly denounced the FSB in front of the world’s
media. Before dealing with the press conference, I will briefly outline the evidence that
I have heard regarding the escalating events that led up to it.
3.49 Marina Litvinenko stated that Mr Litvinenko’s first act, after considering what to do
for several weeks, was to go to see Mr Berezovsky, and tell him about the orders
that he had received. It seems that Mr Berezovsky did not initially take the matter
seriously, but this changed when Mr Litvinenko went to see him again (in March 1998),
accompanied by some of the officers in his section. 36
3.50 Acting on Mr Berezovsky’s advice, Mr Litvinenko and his colleagues raised their
complaints with Evgeny Savostianov, who was at that time President Yeltsin’s Deputy
Chief of Staff. He referred the case to the Military Prosecution Service, and told them
that they should file an official complaint. 37
3.51 Mr Litvinenko and his colleagues were concerned at what steps might be taken against
them. There were discussions as to what to do. The men decided to make a video
record of their allegations, which could be released, as Marina Litvinenko put it in her
oral evidence “in case somebody will be arrested or, worse, somebody will be killed”. 38
Mr Berezovsky arranged for this to be done by means of a filmed interview conducted
by Sergei Dorenko, who was a well known broadcaster at his television station ORT.
The interview was filmed during the night of 19 April 1998 at Mr Berezovsky’s dacha.
33
INQ017734 (page 6 paragraph 16(c))
34
Marina Litvinenko 3/53 lines 20-22; 3/55 lines 4-9
35
Marina Litvinenko 4/85 lines 10-14
36
Marina Litvinenko 3/55-56; INQ017734 (page 6 paragraph 18)
37
INQ017734 (pages 6-7 paragraph 19)
38
Marina Litvinenko 3/69 lines 22-23
21