The Litvinenko Inquiry

The Litvinenko Inquiry
4.139 Moving on, the question that I posed at paragraph 4.106 above was whether
Mr Litvinenko’s need to establish a network of sources to assist him in this investigative
work may have led him to associate with people who wished him harm.
4.140 The summary of the evidence relating to Mr Litvinenko’s private security work
that I have set out above contains references to Mr Litvinenko seeking to involve
Mr Lugovoy in a number of different projects. Mr Litvinenko and Mr Lugovoy were
old acquaintances; but the evidence is clear that it was this work that led to them
becoming closer in the period 2005.
Andrey Lugovoy
4.141 Mr Lugovoy is a central figure in the issues to which this Inquiry give rise. Although
he did not give oral evidence, I heard a good deal of oral evidence about him. I also
admitted into evidence a number of the accounts that he has given about the events
in question. It will be convenient to say a little by way of introduction about him at this
point.
4.142 I heard that Mr Lugovoy was born in Baku in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) in 1966, which made him four years younger than Mr Litvinenko. 133 Not unlike
Mr Litvinenko, Mr Lugovoy was born into a family that was proud of its military history
and its record of service to Russia. At a press conference in May 2007, Mr Lugovoy
said this about his family:
“I was born into a family of a military person. My grandad fought in the Russo-
Japanese war of 1904. He was awarded a St George’s Cross, one of the highest
military honours of the Russian empire. My other grandad took part in the storming
of Berlin. My father served in the army for 39 years. My brother is a steersman
on an atomic submarine and I am a professional military man by training. I was
brought up in the tradition of a real Russian officer. I am proud that for the last
few years in my opinion Russia started to gain its place in the world as a stage
of geopolitical importance, which has always influenced politics and I hope will
influence politics. It was so before the October revolution, and after it. There was
a small period of time when nobody took Russia into account for ten years. Now,
gentlemen, you will have to take Russia into account.” 134
4.143 In the passage that I have quoted Mr Lugovoy said that he was a military man by
training, and I heard some further evidence on that subject. I heard that he attended
military college, and then joined the Ninth Directorate of the KGB, which was
responsible for providing protection for senior state officials. Like Mr Litvinenko, on
the break-up of the KGB Mr Lugovoy continued to undertake the same work, albeit
for a differently named organisation. In Mr Lugovoy’s case, he was a member of the
Federal Protection Service (FPS), which was the successor organisation to the Ninth
Directorate. 135 It appears that Mr Lugovoy was never a member of the FSB. 136
4.144 I heard that in 1996 Mr Lugovoy resigned from the FPS to become Head of Security
at ORT, the television station that was run at that time by Mr Berezovsky and his
business partner Mr Patarkatsishvili. Mr Lugovoy remained in that job until 2001,
when he was required to leave the company. It will be recalled that that was at about
133
Mascall 8/14-16
134
INQ001886 (page 21)
135
Mascall 8/17-19
136
Mascall 8/25
80