The Litvinenko Inquiry
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<strong>The</strong> <strong>Litvinenko</strong> <strong>Inquiry</strong><br />
paid Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> £1,000 in cash to mark the start of their relationship. He said that<br />
Mr Evans would have made the payment, but, whilst Mr Evans did have a “vague<br />
recollection” of paying Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> a much smaller amount for expenses, he had<br />
no memory of this. 107 <strong>The</strong> other notable feature of Mr Evans’ evidence was that he<br />
remembered meeting Mr Lugovoy, with Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>, at the RISC offices in London<br />
at some stage in the last quarter of 2005. 108<br />
4.114 Mr Quirke also gave oral evidence to the <strong>Inquiry</strong>. He said that he was introduced to<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> in February or March 2006, shortly before Mr Evans left the company,<br />
and took over as Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong>’s handler from that time. 109 His understanding was that<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> was:<br />
“… trying to establish a business, he was working hard, I think he was short<br />
of money. I think monies that he’d previously got from – as like a retainer from<br />
Mr Berezovsky had ceased and that left a hole in his finances.” 110<br />
4.115 Mr Quirke said that he met Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> five or six times after the handover meeting.<br />
<strong>The</strong> last of those meetings was on 17 October 2006, a meeting to which I shall return<br />
in due course.<br />
4.116 <strong>The</strong> evidence I heard was that Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> was formally tasked with his first piece<br />
of investigative work for RISC at around the time of the handover from Mr Evans to<br />
Mr Quirke. Mr Knuckey asserted in his statement that he gave Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> this piece<br />
of work at some point in the first quarter of 2006. 111 Mr Quirke’s evidence was broadly<br />
consistent – he thought that the tasking had commenced shortly before he took over<br />
from Mr Evans. 112 <strong>The</strong> case on which Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> was tasked was a long-running<br />
case in which RISC acted for Stolichnaya vodka. Mr Quirke explained that RISC<br />
were undertaking investigations on behalf of Stolichnaya into what he described as a<br />
scheme sponsored by the Russian government to put the company out of business<br />
by, as he put it, “flood[ing] the market with knockoff versions of the brand.” <strong>The</strong> task<br />
that Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> was given, apparently by Mr Knuckey, was to make enquiries into<br />
the Russian agriculture minister, named Mr Gordeyev. 113<br />
4.117 Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> did not conduct this investigation alone. Rather, he enlisted the<br />
assistance of Mr Lugovoy. <strong>The</strong> evidence of both Mr Knuckey and Mr Quirke was that<br />
Mr <strong>Litvinenko</strong> and Mr Lugovoy attended a meeting at RISC’s offices in London in about<br />
April or May 2006 when they presented the fruits of their investigation. Mr Knuckey<br />
and Mr Quirke were not impressed. Mr Quirke explained that the information, “was<br />
not up to the standard we expected … [it] appeared to have been culled from Russian<br />
internet sites.” Mr Lugovoy demanded US$10,000 for the information – Mr Quirke<br />
said that Mr Knuckey agreed to make a payment of US$7,500 to an account operated<br />
by Mr Lugovoy in Cyprus, in part because, “We wanted to cultivate and build this<br />
relationship.” 114<br />
107<br />
Knuckey 7/45-46; Evans 7/26-27<br />
108<br />
Evans 7/31<br />
109<br />
Quirke 11/60<br />
110<br />
Quirke 11/68<br />
111<br />
Knuckey 7/49<br />
112<br />
Quirke 11/73<br />
113<br />
Quirke 11/70-74<br />
114<br />
Quirke 11/82; Knuckey 7/46-49; Hunter 11/45-46<br />
76